I was tooling around in the bathroom (don’t get the wrong idea, though you’re allowed to) and I noticed something right queer. It was a cockroach. It was crusted sticky-dry against the wall, its abdomen crushed into nothingness. Only the head, a part of the thorax and a few inert legs remained. It waved its feelers. I moved out of sight, and it subsided. When my shadow engulfed it again, its feelers resumed their frantic gesticulations. I felt a pity that always finds itself filling me at the strangest moments. It reminded me of a sad graphic novel I read not long ago entitled Robot Dreams by Sara Varon.
Dog built a robot for companionship and one day Dog took Robot to the beach. Robot rusted something fierce, so Dog just left him at the beach. Robot spends quite a time in the sand, slowly crusting under the surf, losing himself in his electronic dreams, while Dog suffers extreme oscillations of loneliness and guilt.
So, the cockroach waving his antennae on the wall made me so sad but yet so amazed at its awesome tenacity. I debated as whether to perform a mercy killing, or to let it live for as long as it lives. The question is still simmering in my mind, and a full boil is not within sight.
vignettes 