Art Poetry And Short Stories by local mobile al artists

"ROACHES UNDER THE TRAILER"  A SHORT STORY

The heat came down like a punishment, sticking to my skin, crawling into my lungs. It was one

of those nights where the air itself smelled like something dying — old beer, grease, mildew.

The fan in the corner clattered uselessly, pushing the stink around.

And then I heard it again.

Scritch-scratch.

Under the floorboards.

The roaches.

I sat there in my torn-up recliner, bottle of Barton's vodka sweating in my hand, and stared at the

place where the sound was coming from — right under my feet. Little teeth, little claws, gnawing

and scrabbling. Like they were trying to chew their way into my brain through the soles of my

shoes.

I leaned back and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. I told myself it didn’t matter. I told myself

they were just insects, trying to survive like everything else out here. But every time I heard that

scratching, it lit a fuse inside me. Not anger exactly — something colder. Something older.

They weren’t just roaches.

They were a reminder.

That no matter how many times you cleaned up, no matter how many times you started over,

there was always something filthy living underneath you, waiting for you to stumble.

I stubbed the cigarette out on the arm of the chair.

Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I’d crawl under there and finish this.

Tonight... I just needed another drink.

Tonight, I'd let them scratch.

Morning broke in a dull gray haze. Clouds hanging low, thick as wet wool. I woke up on the floor

with the bottle beside me, feeling like something scraped out of a drain.

The roaches were still there. I could hear them, busy as ever, tearing through the guts of the

trailer.

Today was the day.

I got up, dizzy, angry, half-sick.

I pulled on my boots, the ones with the cracked leather and the steel toes. Grabbed the old

crowbar leaning against the door. My hands shook as I tightened my grip. It wasn’t just about

the roaches anymore. It hadn’t been for a long time.

This was about proving I could still fight something. Even if it was just roaches.

I stepped outside. The yard was all dead grass and rusted junk — a lawnmower without wheels,

a washing machine full of rainwater and mosquito larvae. The trailer sat hunched on

cinderblocks like some wounded animal, the metal siding stained and peeling.

I dropped to my knees and lifted the ragged flap of torn skirting. The smell hit me — piss, mold,

rot. My gut clenched but I crawled in anyway.

It was dark under there, a low belly of shadows. I moved inch by inch, feeling the damp dirt soak

into my jeans. My heart hammered. Every noise felt huge in the close air — my breathing, the

crunch of gravel, the scrape of my crowbar dragging behind me.

Then I saw them.

A pair of shining eyes in the dark.

Then two more.

Then a dozen.

Then a hundred.

The roaches froze, watching me, their wings heaving, their antennaes active. They weren’t

afraid. They were waiting.

And for one long moment, so was I.

The crowbar slipped from my hand, vanishing somewhere in the black tide at my feet.

The roaches were everywhere — a living carpet of hunger and cold intelligence.

They crawled over my body, into the folds of my ruined clothes, under my skin, inside my ears.

I fought them at first.

Instinct. Pride. The last flicker of a human being.

But they knew better.

They knew what I was: weak, rotting, already half-dead.

They weren't attacking me.

They were welcoming me.

The pain became something else — a heat, a buzzing.

My fingers curled inward, hard and knotted, like broken twigs.

My spine twisted, snapping like dry wood.

My mouth filled with bitter mucus, my tongue splitting down the center, my vision collapsing into

fragments of light and shadow.

I screamed, but no sound came out.

Only the dry, rattling click of mandibles.

I wasn’t in the roaches.

I was one of them.

Small.

Ugly.

Hungry.

Free.

I scurried across the filth, past the sagging corpses of my memories.

The trailer loomed above me like a dead god.

The sky was a sheet of cracked glass.

No sorrow.

No mercy.

No past.

Only the endless hunger.

Only the cold satisfaction of survival.

I vanished into the swarm, just another black shape in the endless tide of decay.

And for the first time in my life,

I felt clean.

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