Roachville

The sound of rain woke me up and I listened to the pretty pitter-patter above me and Ely. After a few minutes, I walked to the front of the shop and gazed outside. The wind had covered the glass windows with fat raindrops, sliding like perfect tears down a transparent cheek. Shivering, I tiptoed back to Ely, still lying in the middle of the jungle and wrapped in my purple blanket. I rested my ear against his heart to make sure it was beating and I heard the deep drum inside his ribcage. It was strong but it sounded far away, as if Ely slept somewhere else: in a different plane of existence, maybe. I put on my bra, my t-shirt and my jeans. Thinking hard of the way of the samurai, I followed the path leading to Ely’s office, where, after the wearisome encounter with Sommai, I had locked the naga. I switched on the light, but it burned itself out straight away. ‘Merde,’ I muttered, and I waited for my eyes to get used to the darkness. Next to some shelves, the naga’s blue light pierced through the small rucksack. I crept across the room towards it and put it on my back.

My throat felt as rough as sandpaper and I fumbled in the dark to the small sink along the wall. I groped inside the cupboard above the sink and poured myself a glass of water. I drank one glass and refilled it. I kept drinking as if I had been in a desert for days. Glass in hand, I thought about Ely lying nearby and shots of anticipated pleasure ran up between my legs.

Without warning, the door slammed itself shut with an ugly noise. The wind had nothing to do with this and I stayed paralysed for a few seconds. Now, nothing would disturb the impenetrable wall of pitch blackness in the room. Part of me wanted to escape, but it wouldn’t be of any use trying to open that door. So I waited, forcing my thoughts to turn inside myself and keeping my breathing flowing nicely, in and out, the most natural thing in the world. The air felt like soup and I wasn’t sure I was me anymore or if I was dreaming. I looked down, hoping to make out my wriggling toes, determined to wait until dawn if need be.

The tiniest of scuttles suddenly disturbed the muddy air and I lifted my gaze up. Faceless man stood in front of me, only a couple of inches away. I could see the fraying filaments of his grey suit and fear enveloped me like a ferocious tsunami. His head almost touched the ceiling, towering above me, but he bent down at an impossible angle to bring his face in front of mine. I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. Like two flexible tentacles, his arms rose to the side and floated towards me. Out of his melted skin, a black hole very slowly curled itself inward to form a cruel mouth.

‘GIVE ME THE NAGA!’ he ordered in a deafening voice. My eardrums reverberated painfully.

The face came even closer and his arms constricted around my legs. Slowly, they wound their way up, wrapping up towards my ribcage. Fear paralysed me. The pressure around my legs grew stronger. I was going to disintegrate. I closed my eyes, trying to stifle the panic. I took a few deep breaths. I had to do something.

The mouth started forming words again and icy air stung my face. I couldn’t let him speak again. My fingers tightened around the glass of water I had been holding and I directed all my will inside my arm, raising it above my head. With all the strength I could gather, I hit the mouth. At the first blow the melted face recoiled slightly. I hit it again. At the fifth blow, the glass cracked, while the tentacles contracted tighter on my body as if trying to squeeze the air out of me. I hit him faster and faster. The black mouth twisted in all directions, yelping a manic hyena laugh but trying to close itself. I shouted as loudly as I could.

‘Leave me alone!’

The glass shattered against jagged teeth with an atrocious sound. I stopped hitting the face. The tentacles’ hold on my body weakened and Kenneth Tann’s features appeared through the nightmarish face. A red cockroach scurried out of the black hole. Suppressing a violent choke, I pierced it with the pointy edges of the glass. Another giant insect crawled slowly out, followed by more frantic legs and writhing translucent bodies. I froze at the sickening mound regurgitating all around Tann’s teeth, tongue and lips.

‘I will never give you the naga!’ I screamed, grabbing a cockroach and squashing it inside my fist, while I hit another one about to jump out of the mouth.

‘You had a bad start in life, but so what? You love wallowing in your self-pity. Nothing is ever your fault and I don’t want to be like you. Even if you had the naga you would never be happy!’ I kept going, but the more I destroyed, the more seemed to appear, until I hurt so much I felt as if I was the one being stabbed in the shoulder and I didn’t know how long I could carry on. As doubts assailed me, a clear picture of the naga etched itself in my head.

Finding the animal in me, I growled and struck him in the middle of the face, where his third eye would have been. The clamp-like pressure around my legs released and the arms, like two retreating snakes, returned to their original shape. Faceless man collapsed on himself and I jumped on top of him, striking blindly with the broken glass. His face turned completely into Kenneth Tann’s face and his body transformed into a writhing mass of cockroaches, trying to regroup, some going up my arms and my legs. But one by one, they disappeared with jarring sounds, like a fork scraping against a plate, and it took all my willpower not to run away.

The lights came back on. I felt the pressure of the small rucksack on my back and I slid to the floor. Next to me was the biggest translucent cockroach that I had ever seen, spanning my two hands. Its head was severed from its twitching body. I kept my eyes on it, until I was one hundred percent sure it had stopped moving.

My body went limp and I breathed out slowly. As I looked away from the cockroach, the naga appeared in front of me.

‘You can give me back to Phuong now.’

I nodded sleepily, but I didn’t want it to go away just yet.

‘Don’t forget your own advice: “only assholes feel sorry for themselves”.’

‘Tell me more,’ I whispered.

The naga’s round bulging eyes locked onto mine and a soft sunlight enveloped me. My head filled with images of tall pine tree forests and Atlantic waves crashing on the golden sand.

‘Of course,’ I muttered, ‘it seems obvious now. Thank you.’

‘You did good.’ The naga became transparent.

‘Goodbye.’ I waved.

The door clicked opened and the vision disappeared. Ely looked in with giant eyes. I managed a weak smile.

‘What’s going on? Are you all right?’ He pointed at my hand.

I looked down. It was badly cut. In fact there was a lot of blood on the floor, spattered about like an Aboriginal dot painting.