Cockroach vs Conscience

"Murder the damned thing!" My voice hammered at the walls of our flat like a drum at an execution.

The creature was a spawn of hell, a black scourge brooding against the cream-white fibreglass. People bathe in that. My crooked smile warped into a grimace. That cockroach has to die.

"I can't find the fly swat, or the spray," Douglas announced. His news spelled doom for us all. I turned to him and frowned, but my gaze was never far from the creature. Its monstrous antennae lashed and lurched in my peripherals.

"I found the spray." Thank God.

Josiah soaked the thing, which, minutes later, tumbled onto its back with a light pat. I've always hated that sound.

The ordeal laboured in silence; not a single word was spoken save a few eughs and hmms. And then Douglas decided he wasn't through with it.

"What are you doing?" I asked as he reached for the faucet. "It's already dying!"

"It's not dying fast enough!"

The rush of water muffled the critter's pleas for mercy. I couldn't watch, yet my eyes wouldn't stray; the same eyes that glared with fear now trembled with pity.

The dying critter lifted with the current, helpless and scared, and then stuck in the drain.

"Stop, you're drowning it!" In truth he was water-boarding it.

"It's a cockroach!"

"It's unnecessary!"

"You're unnecessary!"

He fitted the plug on - not an easy task with the thing you're trying to murder in the way.

"Masking your sins is no way to deal with them!"

He just laughed.

We returned to the scene minutes later to find our victim twitching helplessly. I think one of us must have freighted it to the bin. It was over two years ago; the memory becomes hazy where the emotions start to wane. Yeah, even I wonder how manly our seven-man flat must have been, or not been.

Those emotions were real, and they revive every time I think of the ordeal. When there isn't a swat in reach, when the horror takes but one second too long to die, my perception instantly transforms, injecting compounds of sympathy and guilt, convicting me. The horror becomes a helpless soul sacrificed for convenience.

I once drowned a moth - a large moth - because it was perched on my towel and I had just got out of the shower. Thank goodness for manoeuvrable shower heads, I thought. Curse it for this damnable conscience.