Cockroach

Fear is inherent to people. It is diverse and vivid, like other human emotions. Some are afraid of things that others find endearing. Some merely flinch when frightened; others need help to recover from shock. And fears themselves are countless.

There was once a girl who had her own fear. Quite trivial for her gender—cockroaches. All kinds of cockroaches—large, reddish ones or their tiny offspring. To her, they were all the same, and each of them could drive her into hysterics at the mere sight. Many might consider this foolish—women, they say, are afraid of anything that moves and looks unpleasant. She thought so too. But the fear did not diminish; it only grew, sinking its tenacious roots deeper into her mind. Still, she was stronger—cockroaches could be killed, struck from a distance if one aimed well. And that saved her.

One evening, returning from the university, she noisily shrugged her bag off her shoulder—stuffed with notebooks and drafting tools, it had pressed unbearably against her hip with every step. Spring outside was already making itself known—dog droppings had opened swimming season in the puddles and lurked behind every flimsy island of dirty snow. The air made her head spin with the intoxication of warmth, the sweetish scent of decay, and a sharp dose of freshness. The sun, like a modest maiden covering her naked body with sheets, hid behind ragged clouds in the dazzling azure sky. If not for that cursed bag, the girl would gladly have walked a couple of extra kilometers through this blooming paradise. But drafts, calculations, and an engaging volume by a foreign author awaited her. The first two inspired no enthusiasm, but the book was another matter. Its noble author had created a world where the key figures were homunculi and golems. And every page filled our heroine’s life with these wondrous creatures. Especially since around her stood the damp and shabby walls of the university dormitory, where the shadows of her fears took on physical form. Despite the cleanliness she maintained, dull slaps could often be heard at night behind the wall—cockroaches coming for food or simply out of spite. There was a legend in her building that on the first floor, in the boys’ section, a group of these creatures had banded together and carried off half a Snickers bar from under someone’s nose. Everyone laughed at the story, but our young lady, behind her mask of composure, shuddered and panicked. And when darkness fell, she would lock the door to the shared kitchen, climb onto her bed, and place her slippers on the bedside table—she was certain that in the morning, half-asleep, she would step on one of those monsters that had crawled into a slipper. Her roommates laughed at her phobia, but she was used to it—her brother had often shoved large mustached bastards into her pockets as a child, sometimes even down her collar, laughing like a madman.

And on that Friday evening, taking a cup of fragrant tea, she crawled under the blanket, hid her slippers, and opened her book. Her roommates had gone to a club, and behind the wall no one had started drinking yet. The perfect time for silence. But after an hour and a half, she needed the bathroom. It was late; no one was in the section, so slipping into the restroom was frightening—the shadows of mustached bugs seemed to follow her there as well. But her bladder refused to wait until morning, and she had no choice but to obey. Entering the stuffy little room, she first slammed the door loudly. From the darkness came faint rustling sounds—hundreds of cockroaches scattering to their corners. Then she turned on the light—the feeble bulb under the ceiling cast a dim glow and twitching shadows that swayed with the movement of the light source. Pulling off her worn shorts and then her underwear, she sat down on the icy toilet seat. She dared not lower her gaze—everywhere she imagined the reddish antennae of the hated insects. Only one thought filled her mind: “Faster. Come on, faster! Please!” And just as she began to rise, the bulb burst with a crack from a voltage surge. Panic seized her—she felt as though the cockroaches were flooding toward her and already climbing up her legs. Jerking unnaturally, she ran out of the bathroom with her shorts down, grabbed the air freshener from the shelf, and sprayed a stream of nose-burning lavender scent at the shadows behind her. She was not mistaken—the bugs were indeed around the toilet, though a couple had already scattered; she crushed the remaining three with her slippers as she fled. Anger clouded her mind—she stormed into her room, grabbed a can of insecticide, and furiously began sowing cockroach death in every corner of the bathroom, then the kitchen. After ten minutes of precisely directed genocide, she calmed down and returned to bed. Sleep closed her eyelids as quickly as dozens of insects had died. She could not imagine a sweeter sleep.

Through her sleep, she felt a touch on her shoulder. Waking but not fully aware, she turned over. Her sticky eyes suggested someone large—her mind immediately offered the possibility of the security guard from downstairs. But what he was doing in her room remained a question. Blinking, she realized she was mistaken. Gravely mistaken.

In her favorite books, golems were often made from assembled parts—stones or logs. Sometimes they were simply brought to life from water or sand. But there were also masters who stitched their monstrous servants from the bodies of the dead. Necromancers animated them with black magic and bent the rotting masses to their will. But those were fairy tales. At least, she had thought so.

She rose slightly from beneath the blanket and stared stupidly at the figure—she thought she was still dreaming. Before her stood a painstakingly stitched heap of small and large cockroach bodies. Thin antennae stuck out in all directions like sparse fur. Shiny rust-colored shells overlapped, forming a kind of scale with a copper sheen. Especially black insects were twisted together into one whole, forming monstrous six pairs of legs. The head consisted of the smallest cockroaches—their offspring, the girl guessed. And instead of eyes, there were two hollow sockets from which protruded the same twitching antennae of living brethren. In height and build, the creature was no smaller than Antonych—the security guard downstairs. But the smell… the smell was the most terrifying part of that nightmare composition. The odors of decay and death walked hand in hand with the innocent scent of lavender. Silent horror ran cold fingers down the girl’s spine and clutched her throat. Meanwhile, the cockroach golem raised its twisted limb to her face—she screamed, but its limb plunged into her open mouth. With its second and third limbs it pinned her to the bed. Her eyes bulged; her hands grasped the black, glossy limb shimmering like black gold and slid uselessly along it, trying to gain purchase. The golem did not budge, and streams of insects flowed down from its head toward its body with legs. They approached her face, and in her terror she began to vomit. The vomit sprayed through her nose—its потокs caught the first rows of the blackening wave of attackers and carried them downward. But the rest, unceasing, crawled over her face, entering her ears, nose, and mouth. She kicked and thrashed, but the golem stood firm and held her. Within moments she lost consciousness, and the golem, lifting her body from the bed, threw it onto the floor, where it was already awaited by a shimmering ocean of cockroach backs.

When dawn came, her roommates returned to the room and, to their horror, found only their neighbor’s skeleton, buried beneath a huge pile of cockroach bodies. Her mouth was wide open, and a book about golems was pressed to her chest.