Closer encounters of the six-legged kind

Image by Alex Wild, University of Texas at Austin, Creative Commons license.

With all the troubles facing the world, isn’t it nice that we can enjoy these weekly interludes discussing the issues that really matter, such as cockroaches crawling up the inside of your jeans leg.

Yes, that really happened. Our newest reporter, Heather Osbourne, who is eager to see her stories given away for free online because she has no bills or other financial obligations, told the story one day as I related a tale from a Facebook friend about a cockroach that turned up on her pillow. Which would you like to hear first?

Before she made the serious mistake of entering journalism, Heather worked as a physical therapist. One day as she was attending to a patient, she felt what she described as a tickling sensation on her leg, inside her jeans. The sensation became so persistent she went into another room to see what was causing it – and discovered a large cockroach crawling up her leg. Naturally, she screamed, which disturbed the patients and irritated the staff.

Scream?

Had it been I, the entire room would have been flamethrowered and salted with plutonium.

But that isn’t as horrible as the poor woman on Facebook who woke up and sensed that something was crawling on her pillow. When she turned on a light, she saw a large cockroach skitter away. She too screamed, as I would have, and put her husband to work killing the intruder as she stripped the bed of linens. I assume she washed them. I would have sent them on the next probe to Mars.

You’re sensing I don’t like cockroaches. Very perceptive.

My hatred started with an awful night spent trying to kill a six-legged unwelcome immigrant that invaded my bedroom and terrorized me for several hours. He was a frisky cuss that liked to fly — unnerving when he plopped on the hot metal lamp hood 6 inches above my face.

I sprayed Mr. Roach with insecticide and the thing went crazy, performing poison-induced acrobatics as it zinged around the room, sometimes on foot, sometimes in the air, at least once flying directly toward me. At one point I actually ran out of the room and slammed the door, gasping for breath, like every victim in every monster movie who is scheduled to die in the next frame.

At last the thing crawled into a box containing the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle (I think) and I slammed the lid shut, then listened to it scratch against the cardboard all night. I never opened that box again. I threw it in the garbage.

I think if one of the things touched me I might actually keel over dead – wait a minute! That actually happened (not the death part). I was opening the laundry room door when a cockroach dropped off the ceiling and fell down the back of my shirt. You talk about agile. I was doing the chicken dance all over the laundry room while screeching, “Ew, ew, ew!” and pawing at myself.

And, of course, there was the time Mom almost killed us. We were in our car, a ’68 Ford Torino, driving down Brooks Street when Mom felt something crawl across her gas pedal foot. She glanced down and saw a large bull cockroach on her foot. We nearly ran off the road while she tried to get the thing off her, and we did pull over to banish it from the car.

I was reminded of all this just yesterday. I walked into my bathroom, flicked on the light and instantly detected that something was amiss. It took a moment for my sleep-addled brain to register that a dark spot had appeared on the wall, and it was moving.

I keep a can of Raid in that bathroom because it seems to be the Ellis Island of cockroaches entering my house. For laughs you should see me reach for the air freshener and grab the can of bug spray instead.

I gave the roach a spritz of Raid – not air freshener – then ran for the door in the likely event the roach took to the air. It actually did fan its wings once or twice but ultimately fell into the bathtub with a wet, slapping sound, as if somebody had dumped a 48-pound cobia on the bathmat.

Living in Florida means coexisting with cockroaches and palmetto bugs, a source of never-ending fear for folks with katsaridaphobia. It’s like taking seriously the threat levels issued by the Department of Homeland Security.

But as they say, you should do one thing every day that scares the dickens out of you.

This column was originally published in the April 9, 2017 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .