On Poison and Roaches

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My roommate and I are doing battle with roaches at our apartment daily. We have bought an impressive amount of poison to destroy them, so much so that our lives are probably in greater danger than the roaches’. Poison is one of several jokes du jour.

“What is that really nice vegetal note I’m tasting in this quiche? Is that pineapple sage?”

“No. It’s poison.”

“Nice.” *keeps eating*

I went to the grocery store to buy more roach poison. The clerk pointed out to me an environmentally safe, less toxic roach poison. I politely declined and bought the most poisonous one I could find. In my mind, I fantasized about telling the clerk what I really wanted: the most terrible roach poison that the brightest minds of our generation could create. A roach poison that would be contained in an ominous metal case, handcuffed to a navy SEAL. You would have to sign waivers, give up your rights against search and seizure, and it would cost tens of thousands of dollars. It would kill roaches, and all other carbon based life. When applied, it would literally cause the air to burst into flames. Even speaking its name aloud would open up a chasm in the earth from which demons would clamber out of to drag the innocent back into the jaws of hell.

I think our working title for the poison was "Raid: Apocalypse". 

Raid: Sum of All Fears edition

…

What kind of amaro did you use in this cocktail? Poison.

How do you keep your hair looking so shiny? Poison.

What are you planning on doing during your vacation? Drinking poison. Poison and snorkeling.

I think killing roaches is a mission that unites just about everyone in this world. There aren’t a lot of people standing up for roaches, and those that do get ostracized pretty quickly. Maybe killing roaches is the only way all of us non-warlords can perpetrate genocide. Take out the garbage. Fold laundry. Wash the dishes. Then spray poison gas on a roach hospital. Drop cluster bombs on the playgrounds that the roach children frolic in. Bury landmines outside of roach city hall. We are selecting dense civilian roach targets of massive cultural importance. We are burning their roach holy lands to the ground. Massacring entire roach continents- every time leaving a sole survivor. As it backs away in horror we lean in close and whisper, “tell the story of what happened here, tell your friends what is about to become of them.” The roaches run from their homes, gasping for breath, and we cut them down from helicopters. We crack jokes and laugh as we force the roaches to dig their own graves at gunpoint.

Dear roaches: I am going to step on you.

Every time I draw my boot away from the mutilated corpse of a roach, I laugh and imagine that on the day we have to meet our makers, they will tell us what horrifyingly bad karmic implications our casual roach slaughter have for us.

“Justin, you will be reincarnated as a toilet brush, for killing a million roaches in your lifetime.”

“What?! No! They’re gross! They carry diseases! I had to!”

“They’re cleaner than you were. They had hopes and dreams. You killed them. Now you will contribute to cleanliness in the same way that roaches fastidiously clean themselves.”

“Goddammit.”

“Yep!”

I still step on them.