You know what it is like when you come face to face with a reality that is so absurd, so out of what you have experienced thus far and you ponder upon the numerous possibilities, for many days and years, in an attempt to seek out the truth. But the truth is it could be due to something so very obvious, like I finally discovered why I am getting electric shock while playing guitar; or in the absence of an imminent repetitive pattern, it would simply remain as a mystery. Like that one morning I woke up, I discovered a dead roach beheaded on my kitchen floor.
I don’t sleepwalk; I flee when I see roaches; and I kill them with my can of insecticide spray. I don’t execute roaches, like that one aunt I knew who would pick up a huge live roach with her bare hand, over the toilet bowl she would tear it into two pieces swiftly and flush the parts down. That decades old image has lived with me for ages. And dare I say, for many years to come.
Monday morning started as uneventful as ever till I saw a dead roach on the floor, while I was boiling water for our coffee. First I felt relieved. Because it was dead. Then I noticed something bizarre. Its head was separated from its body for a good distance, both upside down, covered with ants. What could possibly behead the roach? Do roaches get into fight and tear each other’s heads off? Was it attacked by a home lizard? Or was it disassembled by the ants for easy transportation? Did It fall down from the ceiling and broke its neck, literally so much so that its head fell off?
A dead beheaded roach that set my imagination ran wild.
When Cynthia stepped into the kitchen, for her cup of coffee, while I was ironing my shirt, I shared with her my bizarre observation. “It was roach vampire,” she said casually. “Like a vamp-roach?” I exclaimed. “Like in the movie Blood, its head got exploded by a vampire hunter,” she replied calmly as she carried her breakfast leaving the kitchen and headed to the living room ready to start the day with today’s paper. The visual image and the countless possibilities that overcharged my brain didn’t seem to bother her.
“Did you throw it away?” Cynthia asked with her eyes and thought glued to today’s paper. “Yes, both the head and the body,” I replied as I dipped deeper into my pool of imagination on the endless possibility of a roach beheaded.
Could it be …
6 replies on “A Roach Beheaded”
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
From ‘The Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka
Chuang Shyue Chou – OK, I think I am liking the author already!
http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/stories/kafka-E.htm
The entire story.
Chuang Shyue Chou – Cool, I will check it out when I am back from Spain 🙂
It’s that damn lizard you have been keeping in the house, and now it has grown to a size of immense proportions, tearing up roaches and insects. The start of King Kong 2…
Darkspore – Wow … you could be right! I thought I have seen a gigantic lizard at home one day … for real.