by Wasif Zaman
Gimmick was tired and lost. He also would have been freezing and blind, but luckily, he had a cigar and a lighter.
He couldn’t explain his tense legs, or the rapid staccato rhythm of his heart. He supposed it was the forest; the way the trees looked. Trees were supposed to be protective, beautiful giants, but these trees looked like abominations, failed experiments in Mother Nature’s laboratory. It was something about the ground, too. The way it felt to walk over it. Every step Gimmick took, he felt cold, invisible, slimy claws grabbing hold of his weak ankles, begging him to stop, and sink through the ground…
Gimmick sniffed the air. He scanned the sky, and noticed a thin rope of smoke twining into the sky. A fireplace! Gimmick started to sprint as fast as his sagging flesh and decaying bones would let him. The claws he felt grabbing his feet seemed to recede back to the ground, as if scared by the possibility of warmth and shelter. Gimmick tossed his cigar without a second’s hesitation.
He finally arrived within ten feet of the fireplace. He heard children. Perhaps there were adults nearby. Would these folks mind if he stayed a while? Gimmick walked into full view of the fireplace, gasping for air. There were six children, three boys and three girls, all huddled around the fireplace. They were dressed in old-timey Puritanical clothing. There was one man dressed in a suit, his back turned to Gimmick, who seemed to be conducting the children in a song, baton in hand. The children chanted, innocently:
“Here we lie in the raging forest
Waiting for the Roach man
His skin’s as black as the shadows we raise
Where have you gone Roach man?
Here we sing in the raging forest
Waiting for the Roach man
We will serve you, help you, aide you
Where have you gone Roach man?
Here we cry in the raging forest
Waiting for the Roach man
He watches us when we are sleeping
Where have you gone Roach man?
Here we’ll die in the raging forest
And we’ll see the Roach man
He’ll raise his head and cough out roaches
When will you come Roach man?”
Gimmick shuddered as the children repeated the song.
Suddenly, the man in the suit dropped his baton. Keeping the rest of his body still, he turned his head…more…and more…and even more… The sounds were the worst, the cracking, snapping, popping sounds that assaulted Gimmick’s ears.
But Gimmick couldn’t stop watching.
The man’s eyes were hanging out of his sockets. They swung like two red-white pendulums, making a loud wet squishy sound when they collided. The man smiled, a revolting, toothy grin. Cockroaches came, in the masses, rushing out of his mouth like a filthy brown torrent of water. They tumbled to the ground, some landing on their backs, others on their spindly legs. The roaches kept on crawling, faster with all six spindly, hairy legs, out of his ears, the corners of his eyes, the damn nostrils…Gimmick had no control over his body. He stood there, shaking, with the claws back around his ankles, anchoring him to the ground. His heart was racing, blood pulsing through his arteries…was that blood? No, no blood was not rushing through his arteries now…something big, solid…No! There were roaches! Roaches in his body, crawling with their filthy legs and their ugly malformed heads…how did they get there!? Were they there all along!? He could feel the little legs, lightly tap dancing on his organs, light but toxic like a pitter patter of acid rain. There were so many, they all felt like one big monstrous thing, one thing with an infinite amount of legs. They burst through his arteries, digging into the meat inside him like moles, drilling into his bones, tearing holes in his skin. It was all he could hear, the movement of tiny legs, and the violent rustle of wings all of it like the loud crackling of cellophane. He could feel them, and–his heart! They had his heart! He could see it in his mind, the vile things, over his soft, old heart. Barely beating. Drowning in a black vat of roaches. He fell on his knees, coughing. He felt them, rushing up his esophagus, they tasted so horrible, so putrid and disgusting in his mouth, brushing past his uvula–he wanted to vomit so badly but he couldn’t because they would just block it all and force it back down his eyes rolled as he could feel them crawling out of the sockets pushing his eyeballs out he couldn’t breath they were in his nostrils and Oh God no his brain they were digging into his brain his body jerked violently as they ripped him up lights and images flashed up in his head or whatever was left of his head they continued past his teeth crawling out of his mouth, Oh God no looking at him with those beady inky pits they called eyes Oh God nononononononononononononoNONONONONONONON—
No.
No, no.
…
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes. He saw it all now. He saw everything he had ever wanted to see, and everything he had ever needed to see.
The roaches were not dirty, they were pure, they were clean.
They were baptism.
The skin and meat melt of his skeleton like candle wax, forming a steaming, bubbling puddle on the ground. The roaches in him, fashioned him a new body, a body for immortals.
The children walked up to him, and kissed his forehead.
Then, the Roach Man stuck his black tongue out, knelt down in front of him, and licked his face, in one slow, passionate movement, starting from the chin and ending at the forehead.
He could see now. He could see what he needed to do.
He began to sing.
