Cockroach Girl

The floor underneath Barry shuddered and swayed as they took a tight corner. The clattering whoosh of the dark tunnel drowned out the tired silence of the other commuters. Barry’s sweaty hand threatened to slide loose from its cold metal pole, so he adjusted his grip and tried not to think about what had made it so sticky.

Multiple people had relieved themselves in this car over the course of the day. The sickly sweet mixture of vomit and tangy excrement churned his stomach, threatening to dislodge the chopped salad he’d had for lunch that afternoon.

Barry felt the gray-haired woman next to him shift away from his lifted arm in disgust. He enjoyed the small reprieve of the starchy fabric peeling away from the wetness of his underarm, where it had been chaffing all day. There was nothing to be done, he thought bitterly, unless she wanted him falling into her lap. He could smell the baby powder wafting up from her hair and the crusty perfume from a bottle that should have been thrown out years ago. Barry threatened to go flaccid at the idea of her wrinkled, fat body jiggling under her itchy wool cardigan. She should be so lucky, he thought with a sneer.

Barry turned his attention back to the more desirable object of his affection: the girl at the other end of the car. He felt hot blood rush toward the front of his groin, making it bulge against his tight polyester dress pants so hard he could feel the metal zipper of his fly dig into him.

Barry couldn’t take his eyes off her proper legs pushed together in an effort to take up as little space as possible and attract as little attention as possible. Her tight, office-appropriate skirt hugged her hips and thighs, exposing bare legs. Freshly-shaven. He could tell from here.

She squirmed under his gaze.

Barry adjusted his pants even though no one on the bus was looking at him. He liked feeling like a potential threat.

Barry knew he wasn’t trash like the vermin around him. They all followed the rules. They went to work in their maze-like offices. They ate paste from tubes that barely resembled food.

Humans were supposed to be apex predators, but the people who pressed in around him, jostled by the winding track, were so distant from their glorious biological potential, so detached from the instincts sharpened by thousands of generations of violence, that they had allowed their senses to dull irreparably from disuse, content to compete for scraps like the insects they were.

But not Barry. He was in touch with his higher animal self. He used his God-given senses every day. And today, they were homing in on a target worthy of his attention. A girl he could tell would be a challenge. A girl who would force him to prove his manhood.

A girl unlike the rest of them.

This girl had her attention not on her phone, but on a book open in her lap.

Barry craved the opportunity to see the title she was so engrossed in. He made a mental note to get closer to her when she got up for her stop. He also felt a surge of jealousy towards that book. He wanted to be the one who was in her lap, pulling her head back by the hair, taking what was his—the train jostled again as it went through another turn.

The girl shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She knew he was watching her, yet she refused to meet his gaze. Barry found himself starting to get angry at her insolence. He deserved her attention.

As if in response to his escalating need, the girl brought her hand up to her skirt. Barry’s attention became rapt and utterly focused. The hairs on his arm stood up in arousal as he watched her, not daring to move, wondering if this was real.

The girl reached underneath her tight little skirt and squirmed around. She had to be putting on a show, otherwise why would she do this?

Barry glanced around, checking to see if anyone else was watching, but no one seemed to notice. The girl reached her hand all the way up between her legs, her expression unchanging, her eyes never leaving her book. Barry was now stroking himself outside his pants. He didn’t care if anyone saw him. She was making him do this, the filthy little—the girl removed her hand from between her legs and pulled her arm out from under her skirt.

She was holding something in the flat palm of her hand. Barry squinted and peered closer to see what it was. He stepped back in shock and confusion. Sitting in the girl’s hand, antennae twitching, was a thick, four-inch long, glittering cockroach. Its hard-shelled body, spiny legs, and beady head were unmistakable.

The girl let it fall to the floor of the train, all without removing her eyes from her book. The cockroach skittered towards Barry. He let out an involuntary yelp that caused some passengers to finally look up and notice him.

A businessman unceremoniously stepped on the cockroach, smushing its guts into an unrecognizable blob.

The girl never looked up from her book.

Barry wasn’t a bad guy. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, but he needed answers. So, when the girl got off at her stop, he followed her.

They emerged from the underground station onto a dark street. There was no moon out that night, and the glow of the streetlamps were obscured by overgrown trees.

The girl walked ahead of him; handbag slung over her shoulder.

When they were finally far enough from the main road where no one could see or hear them, he picked up his pace to catch up with her. Barry’s footsteps crunched the leaves and twigs on the sidewalk, so his approach was anything but silent. He could see her tense up.

Barry grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around to look at him. He took a step back in surprise. There was no fear in the girl’s eyes. It unsettled him. They usually looked more scared.

He pressed on anyway.

“What was that back there?” Barry asked.

“What was what?”

“That… thing. Did you pull a cockroach out from between your…”

Barry gestured helplessly at his own crotch. He couldn’t believe what he was asking.

“I think you should leave me alone.”

The girl turned around to continue walking, but Barry wasn’t done with her. He grabbed her arm.

“I think you should answer my question.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” the girl said, looking him dead in the eye.

This disturbed Barry more than he cared to admit. They usually struggled to avoid his gaze. He was in uncharted territory, but he couldn’t turn back now. His cock twitched hungrily. Maybe this could be fun, Barry tried to convince himself. He could break her. That would make this feel more earned, more challenging. He had been starting to get bored with his targets. Centuries of comfort and complacency had left the modern woman weak and pathetic.  

“I’m not done with you yet,” he told her. Barry pushed the girl up against the retaining wall next to the sidewalk. This was usually when they screamed.

But the girl didn’t scream. She pushed him back.

“Get off of me!” she said forcefully.

But Barry would not. He could not. He had come so far. He needed to know. He wasn’t just here to satisfy his own primal needs, no. Not this time. He needed to know what she had down there. What she was hiding from him. How she was able to produce—

The girl kneed him in the groin, but Barry was not an amateur at this. He expertly leaned back to avoid a direct hit while still keeping his forearm against her chest, pinning her up against the wall. He pushed her knee to the side.

“Hold still,” Barry told her through gritted teeth. He was starting to get angry. “This will all be over soon.”

At last, he managed to reach up under her skirt and pull her underwear to the side. She had stopped struggling. He was grateful. Once they were convinced that there was no way out of this, they always ended up enjoying it. They would never admit it, but he could tell that they did.

The girl was looking at him again. Calmly.

“Don’t do that,” Barry told her.

“Don’t do what?”

“Look at me like that.”

The girl laughed.

“You can’t control me,” she told him. “You’re a dead man.”

Barry slapped her across the face. It was his turn to laugh. It was a humorless, forced laugh, mostly designed to disguise his fear.

“You don’t know who I am,” he told her, more to convince himself than her. “You don’t know my name. They’ll never find me.”

Barry put his fingers in the space between her legs, relaxing into his victory. She was smooth, freshly-shaven, just as he had predicted.

But there was something else in there he could feel as he unzipped his pants and got himself out and ready. Something… plasticky. A NuvaRing, perhaps? Or—he didn’t have much time to guess. The thing crawled straight out of the girl’s vagina and on to his hand. Barry recoiled and flung it to the ground with a yell.

“AHH! What the fuck???”

“Does that answer your question?” said the girl.

“Crazy bitch!” Barry’s head was spinning. He had no idea how she did this magic trick, and he had no desire to stick around and find out. He grabbed his dick to put it back into his pants, but the girl grabbed on to him harder.

“Hang on,” she said. “I’m not done with you yet.” She parted her knees invitingly. The girl once again pulled her lacy underwear to the side, fully exposing herself.

Barry watched in horror as a beady little head and spiny legs clawed their way out of her, the antennae releasing themselves from her depths with a little bounce. It eagerly ran down the inside of her thigh, down her leg, all the way to the ground.

It was followed by another and another and another.

Some of them scampered down her thighs to the ground, then over to Barry’s shoes, then up his pant leg. He tried to pull away, but she had his hard dick in her hand with a vice grip and would not let him go.

Why did it stay hard while he was so afraid? Why wouldn’t his body listen to him? Barry didn’t want this.

Other cockroaches climbed out of her and crawled up her thigh, over the edge of her skirt, up her chest and on to her shoulder, down her arm, all the way to his exposed flesh. They swarmed all over his body.

Barry screamed.

They made their way up his neck to his face, their delicate, spiny legs tingling his skin, causing Barry to jerk in violent fear and revulsion. He shut his mouth tight and continued to scream with it closed. No matter. The insects pushed in between, prying his lips open.

Barry finally succeeded in yanking his penis out of her hands. He didn’t care if it broke or if she peeled all of the skin off of it. He just needed to get out of there.

But the cockroaches kept coming. The swarm grew bigger and bigger, finding their way underneath his clothes, into every orifice available to them. They overpowered him. Barry couldn't hold them out any longer. He covered his ears, but that left his eyes and nose and rectum exposed.

Barry stumbled to his feet and fell to the ground. He choked on them. He could feel them with every sense of his body and brain, wriggling their way inside of him, unwelcome, filthy, suffocating. Time slowed for Barry. He knew only fear and blinding pain.

The girl watched, impassive, as Barry lay twitching on the ground.

During those final minutes of consciousness, Barry was freed from any stress, repression, self-loathing, or desire.

It took seven minutes for him to die. After Barry’s body grew still, the girl picked her purse up off the ground where it had fallen. She hung it back on her shoulder and continued up the sidewalk on her way home.

She left her babies behind to nibble at his corpse. Eventually they got bored. The cockroaches scampered off into the night to scavenge for bits of food hoisted into the dumpsters behind the dimly light bars and tightly locked apartment buildings. Their grotesque image kept them safe. Fear kept them hidden. Disgust allowed them to move freely, unbothered in the shadows of the city.

Like the girl, they were survivors.