My Nightmare

For me, irony has always existed as a vehicle for laughter in awkward situations, anticipated unwanted outcomes or to lessen the severity of blows to the ego. In other words, irony is my own little call from the heavens saying ‘take a step back, tilt your head sideways and somewhere in this mess hides laughter opportunity.' Yeah, well, ha, ha, ha. 

For those of you who have read earlier entries of my blog, there’s one entitled “Roachin Around,” where I illustrate my frustration of continually having to crush the hordes of cockroaches that somehow found their way into my apartment. I made light of the fact that people refuse to kill cockroaches because they would rather allow this disgusting insect to procreate throughout their human living quarters than step down from whatever furniture article they’re using as safety step and kill the stupid bastard. Long story short, shoe in hand, I continued to smush these crunchy critters because all others refused. Because of all the roaches I murdered in cold blood, I mentioned (word-for-word) “I figure I have some karma coming from the roach gods considering I’m the one with all the ancestral blood on my hands.” 

Well fuck you irony and your pet roach too.

In the midst of my legal drug induced slumber, in a far off dreamland, I sense a creature crawling on my face, so I bat it off, reflexively combining the insect encounter into my dream's storyline. A little while later, again I sense insect legs caressing the corner of my mouth, actually this time I feel tiny legs scurrying about my face and realize insect tap dancing is not a component of my dream. I frantically flick off this nuisance, picturing a moth or large fly zooming back up ceiling to await another air raid. Moths and flies bother me, but not in the HOLY SHIT IT’S A GIANT MOTH sense, but more in the sense that I expect these winged pests to persistently invade my personal space. Still hazy from my coma, I flick on the light to search for this creature before it can again probe my face with its little bug feelers. That’s when I spot it—a nickel-sized cockroach--crawling on my white sheets. The white sheets I just washed. (So clearly, this time my lack of hygiene and poor disinfecting habits need no be blamed) Shrieking, I swiftly smash the crunchy asshole with a hardcover novel and run to my mom’s room where I burst through the door shouting, ‘you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.’

I explain to her using the most sensible method of half-asleep jargon I can conjure up and minimal stuttering. Then a light bulb explodes in my head when I realize that not only do I have the blood of 30 cockroach predecessors on my hands, I also have dried toothpaste adhered corner of my mouth, where I felt a zit forming. Some brainiac told me once that applying toothpaste kills the bacteria in a zit the way it would kill bacteria in your mouth, drying out the pimple in the process. I mean it makes sense to someone without 15 years of medical school. Yet, even with more common sense than the average bear, I obviously failed to foresee that a little dab of toothpaste in the corner of my mouth would also attract the king beast of the insect family like honey to a bee.

Do me a favor, close your eyes and imagine being startled out of sleep by an effing roach crawling near your mouth. I’m pretty sure that was featured ninety-nine times on Fear Factor and each time wound up with the contestant blubbering his or her way into a post show mental institution. 

By no means did this ironic situation have a comical silver lining. Other than providing my readers with some sick enjoyment in my interactive night trip to the national museum of shitty animals that serve no purpose on this earth. And here’s the kicker: after frantically escaping into my mom’s room post roach smash, I return to dispose of the devil creature, only to find the little fucker attempting to limp to safety nearing the edge of my bed. I mean Jesus Christ roaches aren’t supposed to have nine lives. I smash it again, this time taking care to ensure that each of his appendages detaches from its body. Not only am I convinced that this roach was personally sent to avenge the lives of his roach brothers I murdered, I also believe that RoboRoach somehow sprouted new appendages like the terminator and is currently swimming from the depths of the drain pipes in which I flushed him to continue his mission to completely send me off my rocker. I feel like Will Smith in Men in Black… I didn’t sign up for interstellar cockroaches thank you very much.