skeet scare

A mosquito joins me in the shower. It is huge; jurassic, even: the kind fixed in amber. Its legs are shaky as it tries to balance on the ceiling. ‘Must be tough standing against gravity like that,’ I think until it is unsteady and swoops toward the shower head, my head. Now terrified by its presence, I cower in the corner, away from the heat of the water: goosebumps. I momentarily lapse into sentimentality with a ‘Maybe it is lonely’ until I realize that it most likely carries West Nile Disease (because all mosquitoes carry West Nile).

I want to kill it. I want it to go away. But I can’t strike now because it is resting on the shower light, and if I accidentally hit the light too forcefully I may break the light and then lose my security deposit and a mosquito is not worth my security deposit, unless, of course, it carries West Nile. 

Once it settles into the corner opposite of mine, I grab the body wash bottle and take two steps forward and stab but miss and now it is closer and showering with me and I scream and kick in donkey and there has never been this much excitement at 7am.

Landing on the side of the tub, it is either surrendering or regaining stamina, and I cannot face this second option, so I quickly strike once, twice, three times more and its body breaks into various pieces under my plastic pomegranate-smelling force. 

Its legs are first in the liquid funeral procession to drain. And then the rest follows: wings, head, torso (though torso gets stuck on the mat and I must force its direction into the silver lining). 

It is not until several days later, while I am sipping from a glass of water, that I remember water is recycled through pumps, and I choke on mosquito's disintegrated wing.