"Roach" by Benjamin Ray Allee

There was a roach on Gracie’s upturned back when she woke. 

Her eyes opened to slivers of afternoon light cutting onto the sheets from her bedroom’s blinds. On her right shoulder, at the bottom of the blade, it was there—what could have been a tuft of hair, but wasn’t.

She didn’t notice it at first. Her body was exhausted and she was busy looking at the light, noting how it made the sheets look like stratus clouds. 

It was a rare day off from the newsroom, respite from pointing at the big blue wall where the weather map would be, from smiling into the camera and telling all the people watching that it would be another 65-degree day.

A day off from spewing numbers at countless people who listened to her but never heard her. Who were never with her. 

Her body, drained by the routine, the hours, and the solitude, needed rest from those lonely morning drives. It felt stagnant, numb.

So she did not feel anything at the bottom of her shoulder blade, where the roach’s antennae bobbed like tree limbs in a soft breeze. It had wandered here from a hole in the baseboards of her closet, had spent the morning exploring an uneven hardwood floor in search of precious scents until it found one here on the bed.

Gracie pondered what another week might look like—pictured the inhuman hell of waking up at 2:30 a.m. to point at the big blue wall, to smile so hard that her cheeks felt upholstered, to stand so straight that her spine became merely a coat rack from which her limbs swung.

A small feeling on her shoulder—probably just the bedsheets settling.

Her thoughts wandered even further, to all the other indignities. She wondered whether she could stomach putting on those heels again, or that tight, all-too-flattering shirt. Whether she could justify pulling her hair back so tight that her follicles ached like they were full of lead by the end of the day. 

It took two years of fighting to get this job. Four months in, and now she couldn’t remember wanting it in the first place. Couldn’t remember most of herself, for that matter. Where had that gone?

Suddenly the sensation on her shoulder moved, quick and decisive, a few inches closer to her neck.

It was not a sheet. It was not a lock of unchecked hair. It was not a feather from a down pillow—it was a thing, undeniable, and Gracie felt the urge to jump up and swat it.

But she didn’t. She kept her eyes fixed on the stratified light, and let her pupils dilate as she looked even deeper into the uneven bars making a cream-colored cloudscape of her bedsheets. She stayed silent—did not squeal, did not shout, but, for some reason she did not know, waited. 

A few moments passed. Then, again, it moved. The roach scuttled over the bony ridge of her shoulder blade and onto the crest of her spine. Tiny, delicate legs tapped slowly upward, its antennae reaching the nape of her neck, following a precious scent.

She could feel it. And it was heavy, not just a fly or a mosquito but a larger, more awful thing. Yet her body was tired. And her mind was always preoccupied….Again, she stayed still as its feelers mingled with the hairs on her neck, testing the bottom of her scalp. 

Suddenly, a flash of disgust—what was she doing? What was on her back? Why hadn’t she done something? There was a lightning-like instinct to shoot upward and reach for her neck and scream—but then the roach continued its gentle, feather-light brushing of her thinnest, smallest hairs. And they no longer ached. They tickled.

Gracie exhaled. The disgust waned as she thought of the blue wall, thought how much better it felt to be here, in bed, at home. To have another living thing close by. Something with her.

After becoming somewhat tangled in the hairs at the bottom of Gracie’s scalp, the roach freed itself and followed the slope of her neck, the tines of its legs pulling at each strand like velcro as it passed.

The roach smelled here and there, finding the fragrance it desired, and crept softly, slowly, up her shoulder. Up her neck. Found the outline of her jaw, and silently traversed it.

Gracie could hear the thing, soft clicks below her earlobe. Then there was a dark, out-of-focus, many-legged mass at the lowest corner of her periphery. She was sure of what it was now, having seen them in the closet before.

But she felt no fear. She kept her open eyes focused on the light as best she could, felt the softness of the bed beneath her, caught her breath as what felt like a lover’s finger stroked the space between her cheek and chin.

The insect approached the corner of her mouth with trepidation, feeling micromovements along her skin, anticipating whether she would fling it off into some dark corner.

But instead, after a moment, Gracie’s mouth opened. And the scent of her within bade the insect welcome.

It took quiet steps over the softness of her lower lip. It crawled over the bottom teeth.

Its front legs contacted the wetness left on her tongue. Warm in the cavernous space, it could rest there for a while.

The fragrance was greater below—warmth further down. Something called to it. Willed it to come closer. The roach tunneled into the tightness of her throat, felt tension as she gagged for a moment, then went on.

The roach found the darkest place it could. And soon enough, Gracie’s mind forgot every shade of blue, finding only the brightly layered light cast upon her bed sheets as she thanked the little thing, in whispered, teary words, for finding all the parts of her she’d thought she’d lost.

Benjamin’s poetry has appeared in Ramifications Literary Magazine and Stillpoint Literary Magazine. In addition, he’s been awarded on the national and state levels for his scholarship in communication theory and his speechwriting. He studied communications, art, and journalism at Berry College and now lives with his wife in Athens, Georgia, where he works as a professional copywriter, is writing a novel or two, and blogs about art and culture when he has the inkling.