Coach, the Cockroach

My body didn't want to answer my brain anymore.

The fact that I couldn't think nor sleep was making me very distressed. My swollen floppy legs were failing on me — they weren't moving. My mouth was dry (I desperately needed to drink some water, any kind of water. I would even drink pee). My mind was confused and anxious. My head was aching a lot, and my concentration difficulties were finally really annoying and disturbing me.

I never thought that I'd die in that way and in that place. He was going after me; he was chasing me. I'd die because of a misconception, the mistake of believing that every creature of that gross species was dead.

I was running in the dark, running through the destruction with the delusion of hope. Houses were burning; faceless bodies covered the flooded streets; car alarms were firing; painful animals screamed. It was a huge mess, the chaos that was caused by something unknown and dangerous. 

A sound. I started to listen to a sound. Where was this sound coming, and what was it? What was this "BOOM"? Was I delirious?

Breathless, I stopped and turned. 

Approximately 1km from where I was, lights were shining. The sound (that now clearly was the song 'Come and Get Your Love' of Redbone) was loud, and there were what seemed to be fireworks. WTF? How were these people alive? Why didn't they run away? Should I go there or it was just a trap?

These thoughts so absorbed me that I barely noticed when a sticky, stinky, hairy, giant thing was pressed against my face, and a black bag was put in my head.

He had got me. 

Where was I going? Where was he taking me? Would he kill me? Why was he chasing me? And who was he??

My senses have never been very accurate, but I was sure of what I was hearing. Bats, voices, someone singing 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing' (what seemed very appropriated given the circumstances of the almost end of the world), the clash of bowls, cricketing, claps, the echo...

I had got into a pub. Wait, what was that? Did I feel my feet...wet? There was water in there? On the ground?  

I've never felt happier; I knew where I was. It was the BATCAVE BAR & OFFICE, and it was just around 547 steps (I counted when I was bored) from my old place. 

Hahaha. I did it. I survived.

The sounds ceased, and, quickly, I got out of the darkness and found myself in the middle of a stage with a blinding yellow light on my face.

I thought that my heart had stopped for a moment. I swear that I felt my breath briefly stop. I paralyzed.

Cockroaches. Cockroaches were in that place. They were everywhere. Giants and monstrous cockroaches surrounded the pub. The laughs, the voices, the claps, it was never human. It was cockroaches, cockroaches that were staring at me with that gross face and small eyes.

"Hey, man!" someone said from the dark part of the bar. "I know that you're probably wondering 'Whaaaat is happening?', so let me explain." The shadow pointed to the DJ and snapped his fingers. "Sound it out, Geralda."

The song 'Macarena' started to play, and a cockroach with a red hat and sunglasses jumped out of the darkness. The brown-ish cockroach started to dance, and a bunch of other cockroaches joined him.

This shocked me. I felt my mouth slowly opening. I've never thought that I'd see a dancing cockroach in a red hat that was able to talk. Since when were these insects so evolved? 

I knew that the world had been destroyed, but I didn't know what had destroyed it. I thought that were aliens or birds or dolphins or sharks or robots or anything else but cockroaches. Any other thing could do it, but needed to be that disgusting flying insect?

The dance ended with a black-red cockroach with a "FRANK SAYS RELAX" shirt doing a backflip. Impressive. Applauses and whistles came from the audience.

The cockroach with the red hat took the microphone and pointed at me. "I'm Coach, the Cockroach, and this is The Cockroachiees Show." The other cockroaches applauded more.

"Ryan Jordanson. It took a long time to find you. But I got to say, congratulations. You're the last human on the Earth!" He laughed. "The last breathing human. How exciting!" he was getting closer to me. "That's why I will tell our story, a gruesome story. But do you have something to say before?"

"Why are you wearing a red hat?" He lowered his sunglasses a little bit, which made me see his black, circular eyes. "Doesn't match with your skin tone." His mouth contracted weirdly and scarily. "Funny. You're funny.", he said sarcastically. 

"Jackson! Bring me a shot of elephant tequila with snakes essence, please." Jackson, the smaller cockroach among the others, went to the bar. 

"50 years. It took 50 years for our species to be this big. Do you know how we did it?" Jackson arrived with his fluorescent red drink, and his thin giant middle "hands" grabbed the cup. "We started eating other cockroaches... It was unfortunate to kill others, but it was for a significant cause." Coach, the Cockroach, was more giant than I thought he was, and his smell was awful, like sewage smell. But he looked sad for killing other cockroaches. 

"We wanted to kill you, humans, like you used to kill us." He finished his drink and threw the glass on the ground. "Trample you till death, poison you with the worst poison ever, and leave you on the floor struggling to death," he sighed. "You don't even imagine how it is to find out that your friend died, but he can't have a 'Ckroacheral' because some disgusting human threw him in the water vesselbolic or at the food store." 

Water vesselbolic? Food store? What??!

"Hmmm," I slowly raised my hand. "What do you mean??" Coach seemed furious. "Sorry. I forgot that you are dumb." The other cockroaches that were there laughed. "You know that thing that is on the restrooms and has water inside, and mundanes sit typically there, and then they flush?" I gave a quick laugh, "The toilet?" He ignored my comment and followed up with the explanations. "And that magic place where you, ignorant sluts, throw food away." 

Why was he looking so serious? This whole situation could just be a joke. OMG. Is this humanized cockroach talking for real?? But why am I so scared? 

The cockroach continued his beautiful and magnificent speech on how they planned to end with the human race. He explained that humans are dumb, stupid, idiots, careless, liars, etc. If the other species wanted to survive, something like an alien invasion should happen. In his words, "You know what Thanos wanted to do with the world and the whole 'decimate half of the Universe' stuff?" I gave him a thumbs up. "So, we wanted the same thing with a little difference." 

"Just cockroaches live? Got it," I said, and he smiled at me with that gross mouth that made me feel nauseated. 

"But you see, right? What did we make?" He was satisfied. "I was nothing. Just a little cockroach that would die in your humans' hands. And now... I'm a comedian: Coach, The Cockroach." He was so excited, "I have my own show! It's huge!" Everyone applauded.

"You think that we are mean and evil and disgusting and useless, but it's you that don't have utility. Humans like you are useless." Cheers. "Okay," I said.

Coach started to make jokes because, as he said, he was a comedian. But I knew the tricks. It was some Seinfeld's bits "I had glasses at 10, braces at 12. I said to my parents: 'Let's not stop now...how about a hearing aid?'" The cockroach didn't know how to do the act, and, for some reason, he was slapping other cockroaches at the end of each sentence. Why?!

"Ryan Jordanson," someone called my name. I looked around the bar, trying to discover who it was. "Ryan Jordanson," a shadow was coming towards my direction. The figure had human features, or at least I thought that had.

My name continued to be called and at every "Ryan Jordanson," the before seemed less angry. 

Suddenly, I felt something cross me. I got back to the dark.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

"Ryan?!" I woke up with a sparkle next to me. I wasn't feeling my face nor my body. I saw a figure standing in front of me, but I didn't recognize it.

"Mr. Jordanson?!" The firm and thick voice, the way that the shade was moving. I knew once again where I was, and the cockroaches' place seemed much better.

Slowly I looked at the shade in the eyes. "What did you learn in this class today, Jordanson??" Mr. Martin asked. He was doing a sign with his hand that I needed to go to the direction, so I stood up, and before I had left the class, I said, "That cockroaches know how to the dance."