Weekly Drabble #319: Roaches (Patreon)

This week's drabble prompt is 'scattering under the light' from Sam C, which put me in mind of insects that run away when you turn on a light, where they usually live and then I wondered 'you know what would be a little messed up?'

And that's how you get this week's return to Chicago. Enjoy!

~

Roaches:

“Do you want to hear how much I really miss the old Chicago?” Joanne asked, flipping her unlit cigarette through her fingers. She was getting better and fancier with it, like a sleight of hand magician.

“No,” McLeary answered. “Not really.”

“Hmmph.”

“You want to know why?”

“Because I say it every day?”

“Nope. I had a revelation, Jo. The old Chicago is why we’ve got the newChicago. All the bullshit that we’re nostalgic for now? It all led to this.” He looked down at the desk with the specimens that had led to him being called in, like he could do any fucking thing about it other than agree how insane and fucked-up it was. But he was the ‘resident expert’ somehow, so that’s what everyone did now when they discovered something new. They called him in and got him to nod and agree just how incredibly fucked it was.

Well, not quite. They also wanted him to tell them that it wasn’t the result, directly or indirectly, of Chicago’s most famous guest. He was getting better at discerning what came from Melinoë and what didn’t. He was nearly positive that this wasn’t the former. It was too... human, maybe? Was that the right term? Whatever the reason, it didn’t feel like her handiwork, but even wasn’t the right term, either. That implied a level of effort and intent. As that lunatic Kinsey had pointed out standing over the remains of four Patchwork Thugs, Melinoë didn’t have to intend a God-damn thing. Her presence, her thoughts, even her mood altered reality.

A god dreams and reality shifts.

This new violation of biological, physical and God’s laws wasn’t her. He was confident about that. He looked over at the medical examiner and a biologist they’d brought in from the University of Chicago. Neither of them were saying anything. The prof looked a little ill. The ME had more experience with Chi-town’s increasing insanity. That probably wasn’t a good thing. You stared at the sun and you went blind. You looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked back.

“Where did you say you got these again?” he asked, looking into the jar and the scurrying things within it.

“These ones came from West Garfield,” the ME said. “But people in Englewood have reported them, too.” A beat. “Have you seen anything like them?”

“Oh yeah,” McLeary grunted. “All the time. Every day. So common we figured you already knew and didn’t bother telling you about them.”

“I was just asking.”

The professor spoke next, the first thing he’d said in several minutes. “What do you... do you have any idea what they are?”

McLeary shrugged, glancing towards his partner. Her assignment to him had been formalized by the department yesterday. She’d been around him too long. Nobody else wanted her, but McLeary was glad to have the company. If nothing else, he could make sure she was okay. If she wasn’t, then he might be able to convince her to get out of Chicago before things got too bad. “Any thoughts?”

“I think that until now, every time I heard someone in Chicago use the term ‘roaches’, it was either someone complaining about the bugs in their house or some racist shit complaining about their neighbours. I really don’t like that those can overlap now.”

In the jar were a half-dozen large cockroaches, unhappy about the lab lights shining down on them, scurrying and climbing over one another as they sought darkness to slide into. Their bodies were insectlike, only their size making them different from the millions of other crawling vermin that hid in alleys and run-down apartments throughout the city. Their heads, thought... God above, what have You let happen here?

Their heads were human, tiny features tightened in urgency as they skittered and scratched at the smooth glass walls of their confinement. Despite Hatsuki’s comment, whoever or whatever had made them hadn’t favoured any particular demographic over the others. He could see Hispanic, Asian, black and white faces.

Joanne couldn’t look at them. McLeary couldn’t look away. “You ever read A Christmas Carol, Jo?”

“No, but I saw the Muppets special.”

“Close enough. You remember the scene with Jacob Marley? Weighed down in chains. Scared the Hell out of me when I was a kid, but the full weight of it never hit me until years after. The scary part wasn’t the ghost wrapped in chains, cursed to wander the Earth. It was what he said. We forge the chains in life that we wear in death, unable to help our fellow man as we might have in life, forced to witness suffering that we cannot stop because our chance for redemption has already come and gone.”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe,” the detective told his partner. “Maybe we’re all Marley now. We had decades to do something. The gangs, the drugs, the corruption. Decades of promises and pretty words that amounted to shit-all. Day after day, we squandered those opportunities and forged our own chains. The last link was made when some worthless, no-name gang-banger shot a young woman. Marley was bound with his punishment and now we’re bound to ours.”

“Jesus, McLeary.”

“Don’t expect me to put on a sandwich board and demand everyone repent quite yet, Joanne. Maybe it’s just the Catholic upbringing in me, but...” Timothy shook his head slowly. “It feels like God gave us a thousand chances and we pissed all of them away.” He unscrewed the lid of the jar and reached in, grabbing the first human-faced roach he could catch and lifted it out, holding it between his thumb and forefinger.

Its head was of a young black man with a crew-cut, six insect legs waving futilely in the air. Tiny dark brown and unmistakably human eyes stared at him. A small mouth opened and the creature let out a tinny little wail. McLeary couldn’t tell if it was anger, fear or despair.

He put the creature back in the jar with the others and turned off the desk lamps. Their rushing movement became less frenetic. “Link by link,” he said, screwing the top back on. “We forged the chains. Now we have to wear them and bear witness to all the horrors we could have stopped.”