I Will Live in a Fortress if I Must

When one arises at 1 a.m. in order to pee and perhaps grab a light snack from the kitchen, one does not expect to encounter a creature from the deep, an agent of Satan, a monster of the dark. Yes, my friends, we are talking about a Water Bug.

If you do not live here, think of a roach of gigantic proportions. If you do live here, you are quaking while you read this.

It just appeared. Brown and ugly, ugly as a fungus on a mold.

I stumbled around a bit while grabbing the nearest potentially lethal bottle of spray liquid I could find. It turned out to be soap scum stuff that pretty much eats the veneer off my shower. I sprayed, the devil ran not under the door to the hallway toward which it had appeared to be heading, but back toward my bedroom.

I believe I screeched once.

I have no desire to kill anything that big, much less a desire to clean up whatever ookiness I have made by killing such a creature. For now, I have barricaded myself in my room in an attempt to peacefully finish my book ("The Inner Circle," T.C. Boyle, about Kinsey) and quietly suppress chills that are plaguing my grossed-out spine.

Who decided to call these things water bugs? What the hell is that about?

Blech. Ick. Yuck.

Addendum: My train ride this evening included a man with unusually deformed legs, two deaf men, two transvestites and a man with a very bad hair piece. It was a confluence of sorts you don't see every day, but you are strangely happy you did. New York in all its heterogeneity, courtesy the Sunday evening A.