Disgusting Creature (redone)!

(OK, I had posted this on my blog on Saturday; it even showed up, but now it has disappeared and I must rewrite it. Let us see if it has as much of Dickensian melodrama and Rushdie-esque grandioseness as the first one did).

‘Twas the night before Saturday and all was still.
I lay in bed huddled; the AC was chilled….

It was about 11 pm on Friday night and the curtains were drawn and down, the windows shut after my daily (nightly) dose of calming silent night air, the lights switched off and the AC on. I was tucked into bed with the edges of my blanket carefully folded under me as though I were the stuffing in my own little burrito/Frankie. Or pancake, even. When suddenly I heard a little “patter” and the sensation of a tiny thud upon my bed. Thinking it was the AC playing up again, I switched on the lights, albeit reluctantly, and felt around for a wet spot, making sure to check the soft toys and assorted pillows spread out in disarray over my bed. Finding nothing, I grumbled about having to be dislodged from my ‘sweet spot’ (I love you Full House!), and set about rearranging myself in my blanket all over again, and switched off the lights. A few minutes passed and I heard another loud patter. Attributing the cause of this mystery to my resident poltergeist, who would frequently snap the cables of my TV and make other assorted mysterious and seemingly dangerous sounds, and who had been inactive for a while, I rolled over in my wrapping and fell asleep.

I was jolted awake by a particularly loud “PAT” that seemed to have landed upon me! Still lost in a haze of semiconsciousness and the dreary pathways of habit, I stuck my hand out from under the blanket and felt around for a wet patch in the dark. I even felt my shirt but no wetness had seeped in through the material onto my back. I did feel a slight vibration that rendered me motionless for some time. I placed my hand tentatively on my top and felt something shaped like a pistachio shell, but without a nut inside. In my sleepy state, I imagined that I was once again wearing the maadalya (talisman made on silver/gold and filled with prayers, for protection, usually tied around the neck with a black thread to ward off evil), and suddenly missed it. I imagined it split open, with the prayers tumbling out…. But something struck my muddled-in-dreams mind as odd. I’d never owned a pistachio shaped maadalya. And somehow the appearance of this silver object on my back filled me with apprehension. I placed my hand hesitantly, this time, inside my shirt and onto my shoulder blades, and felt the reassurance of that cool, supposedly silver pistachio shell. Till it vibrated. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

My nervous system came to my rescue and my hand swept away the mysterious presence on my back and it flew, landing with a thud on the floor. I sat up in bed, unaware of my heartbeat, breathless and unable to think, as my hand fumbled for the light switch. I turned and glanced at my phone; it was 12:47 am. I leaned forward to peek over the bed, seeking this presence that had made itself felt as a blasphemy of my dreams. I scanned the floor and witnessed a yelp/shriek escape my lips as I discovered it under my cupboard.

A HUGE FAT BLACK INSECT, waddling about surreptitiously but confidently. Its hips swayed seductively as it moved – right-left-right-left. Its wings or whatever vibrated periodically and in doing so, lifted coyly and offered me, horrified voyeur, a glimpse of its ample amber rear. It was not quite a cockroach, not quite a bee, but a mixture of the two. Oh, i looked it up and finally found it n the net!!! It was a HISSING COCKROACH (Gromphadorhina portentosa), found originally inthe rainforests of Madagascar! EEEK!

I stay stock still, like Kay frozen in ice for eternity. I hear the door of my parents room, across from mine, fiddling and squeaking, and my mind leaps in rapture, thinking that they have heard me and that help is here at last. Alas, it is only them shutting an obstinate cupboard, and I hear my fathers obnoxiously-slippered steps receding, as my mind again recoils into a dejected lump. It then tries frantically to gather the guts to run across the room. It does, and after a pregnant pause in which my muscles tense, ready for a torpedo launch, my body leaps off the bed and covers the area from my bed to the door in a couple of light leaps, so as to minimise any ground vibrations that may cause the perpetrator and violator of the beautiful skin between my shoulder blades, that no guy also gets to touch, to leap up and in Dionysian frenzy propel itself onto any other, even more offensive/sensitive body part.

The doors fly open as I run in, squealing like a confused banshee, upon my formerly sedate though now surprised parents, and wail and gesture incoherently about a huge insect. My father, looking at me in wonderment as though he is discovering my lack of presence of mind for the first time, tells me to call I servant and have him catch it. I gaze at him in disbelief – does he really expect me to stay in the presence of that creature from an alien world??? I adamantly refuse to go into my room again and my father and long-suffering servant go in to investigate. They come out after a few minutes having found nothing, and my father orders me, albeit kindly, back in. Knowing that only visual proof is sufficient for my father – he needs to be shown the money – but incredulous that such a massive creature – 3 inches of jet black dorsal surface – I swear - should be invisible to the probing eye of these men, I descend further into the madness and confusion that people feel when they are not believed. My mother, more sympathetic, decides to go in and look for herself, and I shout from the safety of their room to look on all open surfaces and under the mattress because it can fly. Yet even she, my mother, my creator, my protector, is unsuccessful. She too suggests the dastardly scheme that will destroy my peace of mind for the night – that I GO BACK TO SLEEP in that room in which my violator is no doubt, lurking in sadistic vengeance, and likely has groupies waiting in the vents of my AC, ready to launch a gang attack.

I insist that my long-suffering and rather sleepy servant make my bed in my sister’s room. Somewhere in the corners of my brain I really do feel sorry that he is awake and messing about in my account, but the feeling in the foreground is that I am much more sorry for myself. I am trying to ignore the itchy pokey creepy sensation I am experiencing as a result of many appendages having rested on my skin. I run into my room, collect the things I need for aerobics bright and early at 6am, while demanding that he check inside my open gym bag and in my shoes.

Presently, I am cuddled into the somewhat smaller bed in my sister’s room, and praying for no intrusive presence there, especially the plump and prosperous cockroaches that are known to inhabit the recesses of her bathroom occasionally, given that the main building duct runs through it.

5:30 is upon me soon enough, and I gaze at my phone sleepily, and decide hesitantly, somewhat doused in guilt, that my trauma of the night before is sure to have lost me some calories, and anyway I have not slept the required amount and shall hence be more unproductive than usual at work. So off goes the phone and over I roll.

7:30. I have decided to sleep 20 minutes later than usual to compensate myself for the half hour wasted last night, though the snooze alarm doesn’t help. I stumble back into my room, to find the curtains up, sunlight streaming in, the mattress rolled up and the room and bathroom freshly sprayed with insecticide (Thank you Prakash for being so diligent and conscientious and all those other adjectives that schoolteachers like to use in report cards!)

I shower thankfully, soaping the violated parts, where I am grateful to notice that no strange itch or rash or other foreign growth has developed. And scamper off to work.

I have a long weekend ahead!

P.S. Oh, my mother found it hiding in the doorway away from the insecticide (which is what they do apparently, according to the link above). She agreed that it was HUGE, but she thought it was a bee.

PPS WHO ON EARTH WOULD WANT TO REAR THESE ROACHES OR ANY OTHER, HOWEVER DOCILE AND EASY TO HANDLE THEY MAY BE?