"Heads up."
She caught it with one hand. Mattie looked at the can of peas she was holding and felt her stomach turn in protest. She was tired of peas, tired of eating food that came encased in a sheet of tin. It's only been three days, but she could shank someone for a banana. Never did she think such a thought would cross her mind.
She opened the can and walked into the living room. Scooting over, Carol made room on the iffy couch for her roommate. Moving into an apartment together was much harder than either of them thought, but they were toughing it out, eating peas out of a can every night and trying not to complain. They ate quietly, the scraping of spoons inside cans and the rickety spinning of an ancient ceiling fan the only sounds in the dim apartment. Outside the living room window, they saw the uncomfortable red blinking of the motel next door's neon vacancy sign, a stark reminder that the neighbourhood they found themselves in was not the classiest place.
That sign was probably Mattie's least favourite thing about the apartment and also her room. She couldn't sleep in her empty cube of a bedroom with the eerie red glow from outside. Every morning at three o' clock she'd wake up feeling like someone with a knife was looming over her. The TV's bright, undersaturated light helped balance it out, so she opted for sleeping in the living room.
Carol scooped the last spoonful of peas into her mouth and then tossed the can across the room where it bounced off the trashcan and landed four feet away on the floor, a little pea juice splattered everywhere in the process. Mattie shot her a sideways glance and Carol didn't miss it.
"Don't worry," said Carol. "I'll clean it up."
And she did so promptly. There wasn't much else in the apartment to occupy her attention anyway. She grabbed a gross rag off the sink and threw the can in the trash on her way to clean up the spillage. As she knelt down to wipe up the pea juice, she heard the faintest rustling noise. Moving the trashcan, at least four abnormally large cockroaches came scurrying out from behind it. She yelped and sprang back, knocking into the counter behind her. The counter was flimsy enough that the impact knocked an open bottle of generic soda over, pouring its fizzy contents out over Carol and the roaches.
Carol watched the roaches freak out. The contact with the soda made them convulse and sputter, but in seconds they were motionless. Dead. Carol breathed a sigh of relief and wiped soda out of her eyes. Soon everything would be sticky and Mattie would have an aneurysm.
She pulled herself up and grabbed the dirty rag to rinse it in the sink. The water came out in erratic spurts. Once she closed the faucet, she heard an awful hissing sound behind her.
The cockroaches were smoking and sizzling, their tiny armoured bodies shaking violently. She watched, horrified, as their hard outer shells split open. It emitted a small gust of moisture and then something peeled out of the husks. Longer thicker legs replaced the old, and a head with bigger eyes and mandibles poked out. Their exoskeletons cracked and stretched to fit their new form, splitting down the sides and ripping open in other places. And antennae. They had longer antennae.
Suddenly there were four giant bugs in the tiny kitchen with Carol. Bugs so big they could fit her head inside their mouths. Mattie heard an enraged cry from the kitchen and went running only to find Carol wielding a broom and attacking giant roaches.
"What the..."
Before she could finish her question, Carol was backing into her and pushing her backwards out of the kitchen. The roaches followed their movements, their awkwardly large heads turning every which way.
"Get something to fight with," said Carol to Mattie as soon as they were back in the living room.
Mattie swung around and scanned their almost bare living room. There was nothing but boxes upon boxes of things they haven't unpacked yet. Panicking, she ran to the nearest stack of boxes and ripped the top one open. Her nails ripped at the packing tape, her hands shaking. Inside there was nothing but Carol's collection of hardback mystery novels.
"Did you find something?" asked Carol as she glanced back at Mattie. When she saw her holding one of her comic books, she lowered her broom and gave her a hard stare. "Not my comics."
"I'm still looking!"
The roaches hissed and made strange clicking noises as they entered the living room. Immediately upon spotting, them they advanced on the two girls like predators.
Carol raised her broom again, poking it at them like a lion tamer in a circus. Mattie rifled through another box and pulled out the first thing she got a hold of, which was a brass candlestick of Carol's. She ran up next to Carol and held the candlestick over her head, ready to swing it down on top of a roach. Carol looked at her flustered roommate's choice of weapon and groaned. There was no way in hell she was going to survive with just a lousy decoration to protect herself. At least it would be good for bludgeoning.
They faced off against the roaches together, staring the hellishly large bugs down as they stalked them. Carol was just waiting for one to make a move while Mattie kept hoping it was all a dream, possibly the aftereffects of the horrible acid trip she had the previous Tuesday. Sadly, this was not the weirdest thing she'd seen, but it was definitely in her top ten list of most disconcerting experiences.
The one to the left leapt for them. Carol brought the broomstick down on its head, pinning it to the floor. She twisted the stick and pushed it deeper, making a gooey sounding noise as she smashed the roach's brain. A hipster's rendition of Blue Suede Shoes was playing on the TV in the background. It would have made Carol gag if she wasn't otherwise occupied. Pinned under her broom, the roach squeaked and hissed, peddling back to get away. It yanked itself away from Carol and ripped its head clear off its body.
"Oh my God," Mattie shrieked, her voice rising higher than it's ever gone.
Carol shook the roach's head off the end of the broom and watched the other three as they stared at their headless comrade. Its body still squirming as it ran into a wall. Suddenly the other's heads shot up and they hissed at the girls.
"Oh God, you just made them angry," Mattie squeaked and hid behind Carol.
The bugs launched themselves at them, but the girls ducked and slipped around them, tripping over themselves trying to get away. Mattie's room was the closest, so they ducked inside and shut themselves in, but the roaches were there banging and scratching on the door within seconds. Were roaches normally so aggressive?
Both girls sat with their backs pressed into the door. Mattie whimpered but tried to hide it.
"I hate this neighbourhood, I hate this neighbourhood, I hate this neighbourhood..." she chanted to no one in particular in her state of panic.
Carol scanned the bare room. There was nothing they could prop against the door to keep it shut. They would just have to sit there until the roaches got tired or decided to leave. Either could take forever, but what other choice did they have?
"It could have been worse," Carol said, trying to calm Mattie down.
Mattie shot her an incredulous look. "Worse?" she asked, stunned. "I honestly did not expect our lives to be in mortal peril in the first week."
"We're not in mortal peril. Just, like, marginal peril. Nothing we can't handle."
"Oh really," Mattie said sarcastically. "Am I the only one who saw the stray dog gnawing on a homeless guy's leg across the street on our first day?"
"I thought the dog belonged to him!" Carol insisted. "He looked affectionate."
"That's what you're calling affection now? This neighbourhood has changed you, Carol."
Ignoring her friend's comment, Carol wracked her brain for ideas. There was no way they could take the bugs in Mattie's room. It was too small and the monsters would overpower them in seconds. If they could somehow lure them back into the living room without getting caught in the process, they might have a chance.
"I'm going to open the door," said Carol, making Mattie's eyes grow twice their original size in her skull.
"Are you fucking insane?" she spluttered.
"We're going to trick them," said Carol, trying to reassure her frazzled friend. "Stay behind the door."
Just before the roaches could bang into the door again, Carol opened it and the roaches came barreling into the room. They completely missed the girls who stayed hidden behind the door before spotting them. All four bodies ran back into the living room where Carol and Mattie would have to think fast if they were getting out of this tassel unscathed.
One of the roaches chased Carol into the small kitchen while the other went after Mattie who tried putting as much distance between it and herself by running to the opposite end of the living room. It was halfway to her when it flew a foot back in the direction it came from. Its antennae got caught in the blades of the ceiling fan, tangled in the inside edge of one of them. It hissed and struggled, but it wasn't going anywhere. Seeing her window of opportunity, Mattie ran for the string that controlled the speed and pulled on it twice, dodges swipes from the monster roach as she did so.
The fan picked up speed quickly. Soon enough it was spinning so fast that the roach was nothing but an ominous brown blur in the middle of the room. For once in her life, Mattie was grateful that the fan was so temperamental. In the rapid spinning, the roach's antennae loosened from its knot and the roach went flying through the only window they had in the living room. Mattie sighed in relief at being rid of her attacker before she remembered that Carol was still stuck in the kitchen with the other one.
She went running to find Carol looming over the twitching, headless body of a dead roach, her foot repeatedly connecting the side of its body with an awful crunching sound as she howled angrily. Her breathing was loud and heavy between every kick and she wouldn't stop, not even when the cockroach stopped twitching. It was like she'd lost her mind to her own fury.
"Carol," said Mattie carefully as she approached her friend.
Carol's head shot up, her eyes wide and crazed as globules of colourless roach blood dripped down the side of her face. She looked absolutely menacing, but when Mattie said her name again in a softer tone, she seemed to come back. Mattie came to stand next to her and together they collapsed on the filthy kitchen floor with the dead roach at her feet.
Carol leant her head on Mattie's shoulder and they both made a concerted effort to steady their breathing.
"How did those things get in here?" asked Mattie.
"They were already under the trashcan," answered Carol. "I accidentally mutated them."
"You accidentally mutated them? How the hell did you do that?"
"I spilt soda on them."
Mattie's eyebrows furrowed. "What soda?"
Carol pointed at the can that was still lying on the floor. "That can of Crystal Fizz over there."
Mattie got up and walked over to the can. She took the roll of kitchen towel off the counter and wrapped it around her hand twice before picking up the empty can and throwing it away.
"We're never buying Crystal Fizz again. Got that?"
"Got it."
Just then the cockroach corpse on the floor twitched and both girls screamed before Carol gave it another kick to silence it. And so concluded their second Monday night spent in the new apartment, with two dead roaches inside and another headless one terrorising the neighbours on the street outside.