CR:

     The humans always said we’d be the ones to survive the apocalypse and they were right.   There’s no more pesticides, which is good, but we’re the only ones left, so there’s little to no food, so we have to use the CAN method, which humans thought were vulgar, but they’re dead, which means they didn’t know better. 

      So, the CAN method.  I’m a male CR, so I find a female CR and we mate. She gets pregnant, has little ones a quarter of which grow up and three quarters of which we eat.  This allows me and other females to eat, reproduce, and control the CR population, so it’s perfect.  The important part is to wait until the offspring are big enough to have enough meat, but not big enough to defend themselves.  It’s a tricky process.  CAN is short for CANNIBALISM.  

      Sometimes other CRs are hungry and eat some of my babies.  I’m sometimes hungry and eat some of theirs.   The DNA diversity creates a myriad of flavors.  Asian CRs taste like ginger, Italian CRs taste like garlic, American CRs taste like grease.  You get the picture.  It seems trite, but it’s true.  

    However, I am worried.   The Radiation Agent Purple (RAP) is screwing with the females food bank.  Before, we’d mate and she’d have between 10,000 and 50,000 young ones.   Different females produced different amounts, but, because of RAP, they seem to be having between 5,000 and 30,000. That means less food and less future generations.   Remember, humans evolved from us, so what’s bad for us, is bad for you.  

     I need food.  There are also more male offspring than female offspring, so I’d better make sure I eat the males first or else there’ll be no offspring; so there’ll be no food.  Some of them aren’t developed enough for me to know if they’re male or female yet.  Damn it.  

    Gotta eat to reproduce.   Gotta reproduce to eat.   Maybe if I move.  Maybe RAP hasn’t hit other parts of the world.  Maybe.  But it could be worse.  Is the food/life I know better than the food/life I don’t know?  I don’t know.  

      There are areas that have clans, too.  Clan of CRs fighting each other for their offspring and their females so they can make more babies/food.   It’s rumored the CRs with red dots on their heads can make 1,000,000 offspring, but it could be fake.   I’ve never seen one and I’ve had at least a million offspring.   Their rate of gestation makes them taste different, too.  I try to eat them at their peak.  

        So, I travel to another town.  It takes about a year, but their ecosystem is in my favor, since the ignorant foreigners are seeking other livestock to vampire and have never read Jonathan Swift’s, “A Modest Proposal”.  

      So, they’re wandering around like idiots for something that’s not  there.  This is why God made evolution, to kill the stupid.   I slay a quarter of them with my claws in one day and for this day I feel satiated.  It feels like I’ve accomplishing something important.   These CRs are no longer hungry and there is open space.  I’m a hero.   They don’t see that yet, but they will.  Then, I look for the females.  None of them have red dots, but they’ll still make offspring.  Wonder what they’ll taste like.  

*

      The weather is whacky since RAP.   There are fogs of lightening every few days.  The ground feels like morphed dirt and sand.   It’s hot and hard to grasp.  Trees, ivy, flowers, and other green growth are extinct.   Some CRs found oceans, but they’re filled with dead fish floating like buoys.  There’s no seaweeds or plant life.   Everything’s dead but CRs; Trillions and trillions of CRs.  

*

    Occasionally a CR will get lucky and find a place where humans left food.  Places not destroyed by RAP called Grocery Stores.   The packages where humans left food are impossible to open or contain poison.   Some just contain worthless things like “Slinky” or “Cabbage Patch Kids”.   I thought cabbage was edible, but the others say it isn’t.   I don’t know.  

     I’m small, but I gotta eat.  Right now it’s ok, but I’ll defecate and be hungry again in fifteen minutes.  Rumor has it that Jellyfish could eat their own legs and regrow them.  I wonder if CRs can do that. I should try that with the offspring before eating my own legs, but worse case scenario . . . 

    *

    Us CRs get thirsty, too.  We need clear, clean water just like humans did.  Humans used to have WCs (Water Closets), which had clean water, but since RAP, the WCs are dry.   The humans would void and defecate in the WCs, flush the WCs, and leave clean water for us to drink.  

      But the humans are gone now and nobody knows what water’s safe and what water’s poisoned with RAP.   So, at every water hole we draw antennas to see who’s going to drink first.  If they die, we move on, if they live, we keep drinking.   Once, a fellow CR became happy dizzy after drinking Russian Water. After two hours they had a headache, but then they were normal.   Weird.  

*

     But there are no more working WCs.  I left home.   I left home and I’m thirsty.  It’s better than hungry, though.   But, then I see it:   A well.   This is a bucket attached to a rope that goes down to water, but it’s not easy to get back up in the bucket and CRs can’t swim; at least I know I can’t.   Nobody I know can either, so I decide to go down the stone next to the bucket.  It takes three hours to get to the water, but it’s worth it.  I drink and I void.   Life is good.  

      Then, though, I start feeling weird; like the world is spinning.   I’m a quarter way up the well, but I’m losing grip on the well wall.  CRs can’t turn our heads, because we’re exoskeletons.  I climb up and feel disoriented.  Then, I’m at the cusp of consciousness and unconsciousness and I lose my grip and hit the water.   CRs can’t swim.   I think of the quarter of the children I didn’t eat and know they’ll follow in my footsteps.   CRs don’t have funerals or memorial services.  No one will remember me.  No one.  At least I didn’t die hungry.    

*

     Throughout this story, perhaps the reader figured out what CR stands for or perhaps not.   If not, reread this story:  CR stands for Cockroaches.