insectigeist.
by Rewired,
10/1/05.
"You know," he began in his hoarse voice, "I don't know how to tell you this, but there's nothing for me to do here. Your house is clean."
The bill of his dust-laden cap hid his face in a shadow so that you could just barely make out his eyes behind those thick-rimmed glasses. The light began at his dark black moustache and goatee. He wore a tan, one-piece jumpsuit, well-worn and stained, and a utility belt hung just below his hellacious gut. Everything about him just gave me the fucking willies, I just couldn't ever hope to explain it. His hands were in his pockets, and he just stood there before me, shrugging his wide shoulders. As if body language could fill the uncomfortable and dead silence of the house.
"This is the fifth time I've called." I said it in an uneasy voice, somewhere on the borders of intense anger and the deepest form of desperation.
"I know," he said, nodding sympathetically, "I know."
There was more silence, as I couldn't think of anything to say. I put my own hands in my pockets now, looking at the ground and trying to hold in the frustration I could feel building in me, just begging to be given an excuse to boil over. Instead, I just shook my head, sighing between clenched teeth, trying to find it in me to laugh this off. Release the tension here. Because really, I knew it, all this was stupid. This whole situation was ridiculous.
"What exactly have you called us to exterminate?" He said, asking the worst question possible in the kindest manner I had the capacity to imagine. "Are roaches your problem? Is it ants? Bees?"
I looked up at him, biting the side of my mouth, blood boiling at the memory. At the long, enduring series of memories. And with it, that overwhelming sense of futility coming back to me in a rush. Then I just coughed it up.
"A fly," I told him.
"Flies?"
I lifted my finger, and it waved a bit as I shook my head in a rythm just a bit slower. It may have looked as if I were chastising him, but I wasn't. I was trying to signal something, trying to use non-verbal communication because it was somehow less embarassing. Then the words just flowed, enlightening him with the incredibly pathetic truth.
"No, one," I managed to muster. "One. Lone. Fly."
He didn't move, and I looked away from him and back to the ground after I'd said it. I knew what he was thinking, what he had to be thinking, what anyone in their right mind should be thinking, or at least I thought so. Because, hell, if I were in his position right now, I'd certainly be thinking this, that I was crazy. That I was a fucking loon.
I had to fill the empty silence with something, and I decided to just verbalize my own internal attempts at self-diagnosis, because its the only thing I really had to offer as material.
"Isn't there some psychological condition where people have delusions, even hallucinations of being attacked by bugs?"
"Yeah," he said, in a voice that revealed that he was surprised, even a bit impressed, that I'd ever heard of it. "Parasitosis."
That was it, that was the word I was looking for, and I looked back up at him, quite surprised myself that he knew what I was talking about. "Where have you heard of it?"
"I'm an exterminator," he said, puffing his chest out and raising his chin so he looked down me in a downward manner. Which was needless, as he was just under seven feet tall. "And I happened to be a damned good one."
I wondered. You know, about the relevancy.
"So, what? You mean to say that they teach you this kind of stuff in," I stopped, hoping he'd pick up where I left off, give me the right word, but he didn't, so I was left with the irrevocably insipid, "exterminator school?"
"No," he said. "But I know my bugs. That's why I chose my profession. I know bug up and down, in and out."
Holy hell, what imagery.
Leaning there on my couch, he evidently stopped to think for a moment, as he just took to staring out into nowhere. Considering him to be, on first impression, a loose cannon and all, its not as if I thought this contemplation of his was going to be leading to anything good at all. Still, I wasn't about to disturb the process. Its kind of like being locked in a room with an oversized ape with a gun, with him looking down the barrel of it as he holds it in his hands, his thumb getting ever closer to applying pressure on the trigger. It could turn out that he eventually shoots you anyway, but any sudden, altrustic acts on your behalf might accelerate you towards that fate. And standing and watching, you might end up with justification for considering yourself, in your prejudgmental attitude and seemingly-uncalled for arrogance, the more evolved one.
Or something like that.
But then the ape pointed at me and smiled.
"Let me tell you a story," he said, bringing his gloved hand to his chin. I nodded in approval, as it was evident he was going to go on anyway. "When I was a small child, I at first thought it was kind of normal, you know? I was never let out of the house much, and any kids I saw came over to our house with their mothers. It wasn't until kindergarten that I noticed that other kids had this thing that I didn't have."
I was waiting for him to mention some concealed body part, but he just stopped there for a moment, letting his words hang. He got up from where he'd been leaning on the couch and went into my kitchen, and I watched him carefully, cautiously. His movement was making me really paranoid now. I was wondering not only what he was doing but where he was going with this story.
"And what was this thing that you didn't have, exactly?"
"A dad," he said, as he opened my fridge, pointing into it only seconds later. "Mind if I have a beer?"
I shrugged, and he not only took one, but threw me one as well. Before I even caught it, it seemed, he had cracked his open and took a slug. And as he did so, he made his way back to where he'd been leaning on the couch, and he continued with his story.
"Well one day, right after I'd started kindergarten, my mother was making dinner one night. It was spaghetti. She always made great spaghetti, goddess rest her soul."
He took another swig and wiped the foam from his hairy upper lip with the back of his dirty sleeve.
"She had me sit down on one of those tall wooden stools," he said, "and she just looked at me. I could tell, even being a kid, that what was on her mind was incredibly important, you know? Its like i knew instictively, from the bottom of my soul that this was a pivotal moment. That whatever she was about to say, it was something that had been weighing on her mind for a long time. And it was something she was still reluctant to tell me, even as she proceeded to do so. What she said was that she did, indeed, have something very important to tell me. And she said that though I wouldn't understand just then, I would somewhere down the road."
I opened my beer, and just before taking a sip, said, "And what did she tell you?"
"What she told me," he hesitated, then echoed, "What she told me was that my father was a giant praying mantis that used to come into her bedroom at night and stare at her. And he used to tell her things, but she'd never tell me what."
I still had the beer to my lips, frozen in mid-sip.
"Considering this creature wise, it just made sense. I mean, to ancient man, the praying mantis was thought to have great wisdom and possess supernatural powers," he said. "The word mantis, it even derives from the Greek word meaning `prophet'."
My eyes staring to the ground, my entire body stuck in this suspended animation, I finally managed to clear my throat. "Yeah, I mean, it definitely would have religious associations due to the whole appearance of it praying and all. And the fact that they're so still and spooky. Buggy little holy men, they are."
"And they're expert fighters, expert strategists," he said. "For instance, about 400 years ago in Lao mountain in China, a monk named Wong Long observed a fight between a cicada and a praying mantis. He watched as the mantis waited motionless and patient for its prey to move within a certain proximity to itself. He then watched in amazement as the praying claws of the mantis suddenly whipped out and snared the cicada, paralyzing it just before it devoured the thing."
As he said this, he replicated the motions, and I could just watch him. All I could do was just wonder. Like wondering what kind of crazy man I'd just let in the door. Like wondering how one earns a name like Wong Long, and if it was a Chinese way of saying, `I'm hung like a horse'. Like wondering, again, just where this story of his was going.
"Wong Long, he was so fucking impressed he brought the mantis home and gave it new insect enemies," he went on, growing with intensity, his face getting more animated. "He studied the fighting style of the mantis, and then duplicated it himself, incorporating it into his own method of combat. In time, it came to be known as Praying Mantis Kung Fu."
I just stared, and he seemed to calm down a bit and regain his composure.
"Needless to say," he said, now more calmly, "ma did a lot of drugs in her day. I mean, seeing a big praying mantis talk to you and, you know, do whatever else to you in your bedroom? That must've taken a lot of acid, DMT, whatever."
It seemed as though it was the first time he may have ever doubted the authenticity of his mothers story. I wanted to tell him, this is what alcoholics call a moment of clarity.
"And I don't know," he said, shrugging, "maybe she did fuck a giant bug. If I were an oversized male praying mantis, I wouldn't fuck my own kind. Its dangerous."
"Yeah," I swallowed. "Don't the females bite off the male's head after copulation?"
"Yeah," he said. "I mean, I've got no problem giving a girl head and all, you know? But that's just fucking ridiculous."
I just sort of looked at him.
"Just kidding, man," he laughed. "In actuality, that whole head-biting thing, its just a myth. That's a myth, and all that bullshit about killing them being illegal, that's an urban legend, too."
Like I don't have enough meaningless nuggets of information floating around in my waste of a cranium already.
"So if you don't mind my asking," I broke in, trying desperately to not only change the subject to something else, anything else, but maybe get back on track, "how does that pertain to my fly issue?"
"Oh, not at all, I just never told anyone that before and I wanted to get it off my chest."
Okay.
He lay his beer down on the coffee table before standing up to face me. "Your problem is a weird one," he told me, indicating he had at least some weak grasp on the obvious, "but in comparison to my mother's, its really not so weird. So what I need you to do is explain it to me. Describe this bug and your encounters with it."
I looked at him and started slowly. "Well, I'm in my room typing on my computer and I hear it buzzing all around me. I go to swat it with a book or magazine and, of course, it zips away."
"Hrm."
"Or sometimes I think I've hit it, but have just lost its smooshed body in the room somewhere, and since I don't hear it buzzing again for awhile, I assume its dead," I tell him. "But then I hear it again. Or I'm lying in bed and I hear it buzzing and I spend the next hour running around my room trying to kill it, corner it, something, to no avail. Sometimes, like this morning, I wake up because its repeatedly dive-bombing my forehead or flying straight into my ear. Then its just gone."
"The immortal pest," he says.
I nodded. "Seemingly, yes."
"I've encountered this before," he said, getting all professional now. "This is not unusual at all."
"Really?"
"Yes," he replied, "and you know, I pondered it and pondered it for so long without any explanation presenting itself and then one day, BAM," and with this he hits his forehead with the palm of his hands, "it just hits me. Like lightning, you know?"
"Yeah," I said, "like lightning."
Like the electro-shock therapy you're in desperate need of.
"I mean, you never hear of them. Ever," he says, his spread-out hands, palms facing down, flying out from his chest like he was trying to clear a path in a violent fashion. "And its crazy, you know, because for as far back as human history goes, it seems, you hear of ancestral spirits, of ghosts that haunt graveyards and schools and bars. You hear of human ghosts, and even canine ghosts. But never the lost souls of bugs. Poltergeists and glowing red-eyed demon dogs, but never demon dragonflies or an... insectigeist."
"Huh?"
"Think about it," he was getting really dramatic-sounding now. "Its just arrogance us human beings have, assuming we're the only ones who live beyond the flesh. Why would it be just us? what makes us so special? We're just hairless apes with egos."
"Some of us."
"What?"
"Nothing," I said, "Just thinking out loud. Go on, please."
"Anyway, there's got to be insect spirits, too. The natives, our ancestoral hunter-gatherers, those wise old animists, they knew. That's what the totems were all about. But we've been blinded to it. Bugs. Even in death, they haunt us. Irritate the piss out of us. The fly that cannot be swatted. The fly that can veer in and out of astral vortices. Ask yourself my friend, ask yourself in all seriousness -- do you really need an exterminator? Or do you need an exorcist? An insecticist?"
Oh man.
He was pointing at me, and I was hoping this pause wasn't for the purpose of allowing me the time and space to answer, to tell him how right he was or something. I was hoping this was where he would burst into laughter and reveal he was mocking me. That all this was a put on and this wasn't serious. That I didn't have to run to my jacket pocket a foot away, beside where he leaned on the couch, and get out my mace.
I took a deep breath. "Maybe I can just handle this myself," I shrugged.
"All right," he said, "so here's what you do. You're gonna wanna make some garlic bread. Its great with spaghetti, but it also keeps away evil spirits and vampires. Might want to try onions, too, the Egyptians came up with that one. Make a bonfire, that was a Druid idea. The colors red and white might also help. That's why brides wear white, you know, to keep away evil spirits, and they sometimes held horseshoes, too. And lanterns, lanterns might help as well. Oh, and anything that makes noise -- gongs, drums, bells and firecrackers."
"Maybe I'll just keep a can of RAID at my bedside," I told him. "Onions and garlic, enough of that will keep away anybody. And nobody likes a noise violation."
He was undeterred.
"Oh, and walk around your house backwards in a counterclockwise direction three times before sunset. Carve demonic faces on hallowed-out squash, or turnips or something, and light a candle inside them, too. And keep a small lemon in your hand at all times. It may be a good time to get some tortoises, you might want to think about that -- its a thing a sangoma, an African shaman, would do. The Chinese will wear hats and chooses decorated with tiger imagery as a means of spiritual protection."
"I'll just get a bug zapper," I said. "Really. That'll do the trick. You can go now."
"Corylus avellana -- Hazel, that is -- its also thought to protect one from vile ghosts. Throw water out your window at midnight, too. And deck your halls with boughs of holly. And those masters of Feng Shui in Hong Kong recommend putting statues of the Four Heavenly Kings, protector guardians of the Dharma in Chinese Buddhism, in your bedroom facing the main door. Put Rowan twigs over the door and under the bed. Get gargoyles and -- "
That's when I grabbed the can of mace and sprayed him in the face, screaming, "JUST LEAVE!" He put his hands up to his face, but it was already in his eyes, he was already going backwards, and I just kept spraying, spraying, spraying him out the door. The guy just wouldn't shut up. Kept screaming he was just trying to help me. That I should stop it, it burns.
I locked and bolted the door once he was out, screaming now with his arms to his face and crying like a baby. How he got home, I don't know, maybe he had a partner in the van. All I know is that he left and I didn't have to call the police. So the first thing I did after he left was cal the exterminator company and told them the guy they'd sent me was a whack job, and thanks for nothing. I'd handle it myself.
So that night, its late evening, early morning, and I'm about to turn out the lights. I feel a presence in my room. A fly on the wall. An exterminator at the window, maybe. I'm not about to show myself how paranoid I am and check, but still, I have this sinking sensation like I'm being watched. I'm thinking of lemons in my hands and garlic and onions on my breath, I'm thinking of grabbing my other can of mace, i'm thinking of grabbing the revolver in my sock drawer, but I shake my head. I say fuck it, I'm not submitting to this crazy bullshit.
So I turned off the light.
In bed, I pulled the covers up to my chin like I was five years old again. Wishing for a lullaby where the good human triumphs over the evil villian fly. And I'm staring at the ceiling, just hoping that for once I wouldn't hear that fucking annoying buzzing noise. Counting sheep, but they turn into tortoises and turnips with glowing demon faces. Wondering if I could maybe fall asleep if I do a few laps around the house, maybe backwards, maybe in a counter-clockwise fashion. And I'm thinking, no, no, no. I'm not giving in. This is so frigging ridiculous. So pathetic.
Then I hear it. A distinct buzzing.
My face twists up into a scowl, and I see the little spot moving in and out of the light cast into the ceiling and the far wall of my bedroom. And I watch it and I try to will it away as it zips around and around, buzzing, buzzing. And i'm about to leap off my bed and chase the thing around my dark room.
But then it happened.
Two huge claws whip out of the darkness near my closet and snatch it, and I quickly hear this faint chewing, like you might hear when someone's eating a single M&M in a really quiet room.
Looking to the foot of my bed, that's where I see the giant Praying Mantis step into the light, its beady eyes bearing right into me. And we both just stare a moment, and I think I see something threatening there in its eyes.
I swallow, trying to push down the lump growing and throbbing in my throat. And I just know I've got to say something, I can't just let the silence hang. But I mean, what do you say to a seven-foot-tall, evil-eyed, grasshopper-looking thing?
"I appreciate that," I finally manage to say to it, "I really do. But remember, I know now that its not illegal to kill you."
That was done well. Straight and to the point. There's the ticket. That's the way to go.
"You pepper-sprayed my son, you asshole," it said in a hoarse voice.
Then, without so much as a dinner and a movie, the bastard chomped off my fucking head.
by Rewired,
10/1/05.
"You know," he began in his hoarse voice, "I don't know how to tell you this, but there's nothing for me to do here. Your house is clean."
The bill of his dust-laden cap hid his face in a shadow so that you could just barely make out his eyes behind those thick-rimmed glasses. The light began at his dark black moustache and goatee. He wore a tan, one-piece jumpsuit, well-worn and stained, and a utility belt hung just below his hellacious gut. Everything about him just gave me the fucking willies, I just couldn't ever hope to explain it. His hands were in his pockets, and he just stood there before me, shrugging his wide shoulders. As if body language could fill the uncomfortable and dead silence of the house.
"This is the fifth time I've called." I said it in an uneasy voice, somewhere on the borders of intense anger and the deepest form of desperation.
"I know," he said, nodding sympathetically, "I know."
There was more silence, as I couldn't think of anything to say. I put my own hands in my pockets now, looking at the ground and trying to hold in the frustration I could feel building in me, just begging to be given an excuse to boil over. Instead, I just shook my head, sighing between clenched teeth, trying to find it in me to laugh this off. Release the tension here. Because really, I knew it, all this was stupid. This whole situation was ridiculous.
"What exactly have you called us to exterminate?" He said, asking the worst question possible in the kindest manner I had the capacity to imagine. "Are roaches your problem? Is it ants? Bees?"
I looked up at him, biting the side of my mouth, blood boiling at the memory. At the long, enduring series of memories. And with it, that overwhelming sense of futility coming back to me in a rush. Then I just coughed it up.
"A fly," I told him.
"Flies?"
I lifted my finger, and it waved a bit as I shook my head in a rythm just a bit slower. It may have looked as if I were chastising him, but I wasn't. I was trying to signal something, trying to use non-verbal communication because it was somehow less embarassing. Then the words just flowed, enlightening him with the incredibly pathetic truth.
"No, one," I managed to muster. "One. Lone. Fly."
He didn't move, and I looked away from him and back to the ground after I'd said it. I knew what he was thinking, what he had to be thinking, what anyone in their right mind should be thinking, or at least I thought so. Because, hell, if I were in his position right now, I'd certainly be thinking this, that I was crazy. That I was a fucking loon.
I had to fill the empty silence with something, and I decided to just verbalize my own internal attempts at self-diagnosis, because its the only thing I really had to offer as material.
"Isn't there some psychological condition where people have delusions, even hallucinations of being attacked by bugs?"
"Yeah," he said, in a voice that revealed that he was surprised, even a bit impressed, that I'd ever heard of it. "Parasitosis."
That was it, that was the word I was looking for, and I looked back up at him, quite surprised myself that he knew what I was talking about. "Where have you heard of it?"
"I'm an exterminator," he said, puffing his chest out and raising his chin so he looked down me in a downward manner. Which was needless, as he was just under seven feet tall. "And I happened to be a damned good one."
I wondered. You know, about the relevancy.
"So, what? You mean to say that they teach you this kind of stuff in," I stopped, hoping he'd pick up where I left off, give me the right word, but he didn't, so I was left with the irrevocably insipid, "exterminator school?"
"No," he said. "But I know my bugs. That's why I chose my profession. I know bug up and down, in and out."
Holy hell, what imagery.
Leaning there on my couch, he evidently stopped to think for a moment, as he just took to staring out into nowhere. Considering him to be, on first impression, a loose cannon and all, its not as if I thought this contemplation of his was going to be leading to anything good at all. Still, I wasn't about to disturb the process. Its kind of like being locked in a room with an oversized ape with a gun, with him looking down the barrel of it as he holds it in his hands, his thumb getting ever closer to applying pressure on the trigger. It could turn out that he eventually shoots you anyway, but any sudden, altrustic acts on your behalf might accelerate you towards that fate. And standing and watching, you might end up with justification for considering yourself, in your prejudgmental attitude and seemingly-uncalled for arrogance, the more evolved one.
Or something like that.
But then the ape pointed at me and smiled.
"Let me tell you a story," he said, bringing his gloved hand to his chin. I nodded in approval, as it was evident he was going to go on anyway. "When I was a small child, I at first thought it was kind of normal, you know? I was never let out of the house much, and any kids I saw came over to our house with their mothers. It wasn't until kindergarten that I noticed that other kids had this thing that I didn't have."
I was waiting for him to mention some concealed body part, but he just stopped there for a moment, letting his words hang. He got up from where he'd been leaning on the couch and went into my kitchen, and I watched him carefully, cautiously. His movement was making me really paranoid now. I was wondering not only what he was doing but where he was going with this story.
"And what was this thing that you didn't have, exactly?"
"A dad," he said, as he opened my fridge, pointing into it only seconds later. "Mind if I have a beer?"
I shrugged, and he not only took one, but threw me one as well. Before I even caught it, it seemed, he had cracked his open and took a slug. And as he did so, he made his way back to where he'd been leaning on the couch, and he continued with his story.
"Well one day, right after I'd started kindergarten, my mother was making dinner one night. It was spaghetti. She always made great spaghetti, goddess rest her soul."
He took another swig and wiped the foam from his hairy upper lip with the back of his dirty sleeve.
"She had me sit down on one of those tall wooden stools," he said, "and she just looked at me. I could tell, even being a kid, that what was on her mind was incredibly important, you know? Its like i knew instictively, from the bottom of my soul that this was a pivotal moment. That whatever she was about to say, it was something that had been weighing on her mind for a long time. And it was something she was still reluctant to tell me, even as she proceeded to do so. What she said was that she did, indeed, have something very important to tell me. And she said that though I wouldn't understand just then, I would somewhere down the road."
I opened my beer, and just before taking a sip, said, "And what did she tell you?"
"What she told me," he hesitated, then echoed, "What she told me was that my father was a giant praying mantis that used to come into her bedroom at night and stare at her. And he used to tell her things, but she'd never tell me what."
I still had the beer to my lips, frozen in mid-sip.
"Considering this creature wise, it just made sense. I mean, to ancient man, the praying mantis was thought to have great wisdom and possess supernatural powers," he said. "The word mantis, it even derives from the Greek word meaning `prophet'."
My eyes staring to the ground, my entire body stuck in this suspended animation, I finally managed to clear my throat. "Yeah, I mean, it definitely would have religious associations due to the whole appearance of it praying and all. And the fact that they're so still and spooky. Buggy little holy men, they are."
"And they're expert fighters, expert strategists," he said. "For instance, about 400 years ago in Lao mountain in China, a monk named Wong Long observed a fight between a cicada and a praying mantis. He watched as the mantis waited motionless and patient for its prey to move within a certain proximity to itself. He then watched in amazement as the praying claws of the mantis suddenly whipped out and snared the cicada, paralyzing it just before it devoured the thing."
As he said this, he replicated the motions, and I could just watch him. All I could do was just wonder. Like wondering what kind of crazy man I'd just let in the door. Like wondering how one earns a name like Wong Long, and if it was a Chinese way of saying, `I'm hung like a horse'. Like wondering, again, just where this story of his was going.
"Wong Long, he was so fucking impressed he brought the mantis home and gave it new insect enemies," he went on, growing with intensity, his face getting more animated. "He studied the fighting style of the mantis, and then duplicated it himself, incorporating it into his own method of combat. In time, it came to be known as Praying Mantis Kung Fu."
I just stared, and he seemed to calm down a bit and regain his composure.
"Needless to say," he said, now more calmly, "ma did a lot of drugs in her day. I mean, seeing a big praying mantis talk to you and, you know, do whatever else to you in your bedroom? That must've taken a lot of acid, DMT, whatever."
It seemed as though it was the first time he may have ever doubted the authenticity of his mothers story. I wanted to tell him, this is what alcoholics call a moment of clarity.
"And I don't know," he said, shrugging, "maybe she did fuck a giant bug. If I were an oversized male praying mantis, I wouldn't fuck my own kind. Its dangerous."
"Yeah," I swallowed. "Don't the females bite off the male's head after copulation?"
"Yeah," he said. "I mean, I've got no problem giving a girl head and all, you know? But that's just fucking ridiculous."
I just sort of looked at him.
"Just kidding, man," he laughed. "In actuality, that whole head-biting thing, its just a myth. That's a myth, and all that bullshit about killing them being illegal, that's an urban legend, too."
Like I don't have enough meaningless nuggets of information floating around in my waste of a cranium already.
"So if you don't mind my asking," I broke in, trying desperately to not only change the subject to something else, anything else, but maybe get back on track, "how does that pertain to my fly issue?"
"Oh, not at all, I just never told anyone that before and I wanted to get it off my chest."
Okay.
He lay his beer down on the coffee table before standing up to face me. "Your problem is a weird one," he told me, indicating he had at least some weak grasp on the obvious, "but in comparison to my mother's, its really not so weird. So what I need you to do is explain it to me. Describe this bug and your encounters with it."
I looked at him and started slowly. "Well, I'm in my room typing on my computer and I hear it buzzing all around me. I go to swat it with a book or magazine and, of course, it zips away."
"Hrm."
"Or sometimes I think I've hit it, but have just lost its smooshed body in the room somewhere, and since I don't hear it buzzing again for awhile, I assume its dead," I tell him. "But then I hear it again. Or I'm lying in bed and I hear it buzzing and I spend the next hour running around my room trying to kill it, corner it, something, to no avail. Sometimes, like this morning, I wake up because its repeatedly dive-bombing my forehead or flying straight into my ear. Then its just gone."
"The immortal pest," he says.
I nodded. "Seemingly, yes."
"I've encountered this before," he said, getting all professional now. "This is not unusual at all."
"Really?"
"Yes," he replied, "and you know, I pondered it and pondered it for so long without any explanation presenting itself and then one day, BAM," and with this he hits his forehead with the palm of his hands, "it just hits me. Like lightning, you know?"
"Yeah," I said, "like lightning."
Like the electro-shock therapy you're in desperate need of.
"I mean, you never hear of them. Ever," he says, his spread-out hands, palms facing down, flying out from his chest like he was trying to clear a path in a violent fashion. "And its crazy, you know, because for as far back as human history goes, it seems, you hear of ancestral spirits, of ghosts that haunt graveyards and schools and bars. You hear of human ghosts, and even canine ghosts. But never the lost souls of bugs. Poltergeists and glowing red-eyed demon dogs, but never demon dragonflies or an... insectigeist."
"Huh?"
"Think about it," he was getting really dramatic-sounding now. "Its just arrogance us human beings have, assuming we're the only ones who live beyond the flesh. Why would it be just us? what makes us so special? We're just hairless apes with egos."
"Some of us."
"What?"
"Nothing," I said, "Just thinking out loud. Go on, please."
"Anyway, there's got to be insect spirits, too. The natives, our ancestoral hunter-gatherers, those wise old animists, they knew. That's what the totems were all about. But we've been blinded to it. Bugs. Even in death, they haunt us. Irritate the piss out of us. The fly that cannot be swatted. The fly that can veer in and out of astral vortices. Ask yourself my friend, ask yourself in all seriousness -- do you really need an exterminator? Or do you need an exorcist? An insecticist?"
Oh man.
He was pointing at me, and I was hoping this pause wasn't for the purpose of allowing me the time and space to answer, to tell him how right he was or something. I was hoping this was where he would burst into laughter and reveal he was mocking me. That all this was a put on and this wasn't serious. That I didn't have to run to my jacket pocket a foot away, beside where he leaned on the couch, and get out my mace.
I took a deep breath. "Maybe I can just handle this myself," I shrugged.
"All right," he said, "so here's what you do. You're gonna wanna make some garlic bread. Its great with spaghetti, but it also keeps away evil spirits and vampires. Might want to try onions, too, the Egyptians came up with that one. Make a bonfire, that was a Druid idea. The colors red and white might also help. That's why brides wear white, you know, to keep away evil spirits, and they sometimes held horseshoes, too. And lanterns, lanterns might help as well. Oh, and anything that makes noise -- gongs, drums, bells and firecrackers."
"Maybe I'll just keep a can of RAID at my bedside," I told him. "Onions and garlic, enough of that will keep away anybody. And nobody likes a noise violation."
He was undeterred.
"Oh, and walk around your house backwards in a counterclockwise direction three times before sunset. Carve demonic faces on hallowed-out squash, or turnips or something, and light a candle inside them, too. And keep a small lemon in your hand at all times. It may be a good time to get some tortoises, you might want to think about that -- its a thing a sangoma, an African shaman, would do. The Chinese will wear hats and chooses decorated with tiger imagery as a means of spiritual protection."
"I'll just get a bug zapper," I said. "Really. That'll do the trick. You can go now."
"Corylus avellana -- Hazel, that is -- its also thought to protect one from vile ghosts. Throw water out your window at midnight, too. And deck your halls with boughs of holly. And those masters of Feng Shui in Hong Kong recommend putting statues of the Four Heavenly Kings, protector guardians of the Dharma in Chinese Buddhism, in your bedroom facing the main door. Put Rowan twigs over the door and under the bed. Get gargoyles and -- "
That's when I grabbed the can of mace and sprayed him in the face, screaming, "JUST LEAVE!" He put his hands up to his face, but it was already in his eyes, he was already going backwards, and I just kept spraying, spraying, spraying him out the door. The guy just wouldn't shut up. Kept screaming he was just trying to help me. That I should stop it, it burns.
I locked and bolted the door once he was out, screaming now with his arms to his face and crying like a baby. How he got home, I don't know, maybe he had a partner in the van. All I know is that he left and I didn't have to call the police. So the first thing I did after he left was cal the exterminator company and told them the guy they'd sent me was a whack job, and thanks for nothing. I'd handle it myself.
So that night, its late evening, early morning, and I'm about to turn out the lights. I feel a presence in my room. A fly on the wall. An exterminator at the window, maybe. I'm not about to show myself how paranoid I am and check, but still, I have this sinking sensation like I'm being watched. I'm thinking of lemons in my hands and garlic and onions on my breath, I'm thinking of grabbing my other can of mace, i'm thinking of grabbing the revolver in my sock drawer, but I shake my head. I say fuck it, I'm not submitting to this crazy bullshit.
So I turned off the light.
In bed, I pulled the covers up to my chin like I was five years old again. Wishing for a lullaby where the good human triumphs over the evil villian fly. And I'm staring at the ceiling, just hoping that for once I wouldn't hear that fucking annoying buzzing noise. Counting sheep, but they turn into tortoises and turnips with glowing demon faces. Wondering if I could maybe fall asleep if I do a few laps around the house, maybe backwards, maybe in a counter-clockwise fashion. And I'm thinking, no, no, no. I'm not giving in. This is so frigging ridiculous. So pathetic.
Then I hear it. A distinct buzzing.
My face twists up into a scowl, and I see the little spot moving in and out of the light cast into the ceiling and the far wall of my bedroom. And I watch it and I try to will it away as it zips around and around, buzzing, buzzing. And i'm about to leap off my bed and chase the thing around my dark room.
But then it happened.
Two huge claws whip out of the darkness near my closet and snatch it, and I quickly hear this faint chewing, like you might hear when someone's eating a single M&M in a really quiet room.
Looking to the foot of my bed, that's where I see the giant Praying Mantis step into the light, its beady eyes bearing right into me. And we both just stare a moment, and I think I see something threatening there in its eyes.
I swallow, trying to push down the lump growing and throbbing in my throat. And I just know I've got to say something, I can't just let the silence hang. But I mean, what do you say to a seven-foot-tall, evil-eyed, grasshopper-looking thing?
"I appreciate that," I finally manage to say to it, "I really do. But remember, I know now that its not illegal to kill you."
That was done well. Straight and to the point. There's the ticket. That's the way to go.
"You pepper-sprayed my son, you asshole," it said in a hoarse voice.
Then, without so much as a dinner and a movie, the bastard chomped off my fucking head.
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