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Shattered Silence

I sat in my small room and looked out into the distance, out through the tiny window, across the gently rolling waters of beautiful, though rather polluted, Lake Ontario.

I was calm and pleasant.

A cool breeze filtered in, through the small crack of a space in the window.

I smiled gently. I sighed.

Then the silence was broken. The calm and pleasant atmosphere was shattered. My hopes of a nice quiet life, not constrained by the chains of stress and suicidal feelings of guilt, were thrown upon the dirty wooden floor and stomped upon by a nasty heel.

I swung around in utter horror to stare in disbelief at what now stood before me.

"You!" It cried, its inhuman vocal cords playing gruesome tricks upon the English language. "At last I have found you. Now prepare to die."

Before my eyes stood a giant cockroach. It stood well over six feet tall. Black as the darkest deepest abyss. Its multiply eyes scanned the room in a combination of admiration and nervous suspicion. Its feet were covered by a old rotting pair of sneakers. Its hands were clenched with anger.

"Why do you want to kill me, what have I ever done to you?" I asked. Though I wished to be strong, I was not. The roles had been reversed. I was no longer the might man, stomping upon the helpless creatures. Now I was the helpless creature and the fetid stench if athletes foot only further emphasized my rather ironic fate.

"What have you done? You created me," said the insect with a rather tragic tone in his inhuman voice. "This creature of hatred and foul intent that now stands before you is but a reflection of your most vile dreams. Was I always this? Were my gloved fists always clenched in anger?"

I noticed that he wore no gloves, but in no way was going to interrupt his soliloquy.

He continued: "Dreams I once had are all but gone. Madness has overtaken me. No longer do I sit beneath the cool rocks and roam around with what seems no real purpose. No longer do I grace the fine restaurants with my presence. No longer. Now I am an outcast of the living. A feared devil, struggling in a world not of his own creation. A creature of hatred. It burns with in me and is reflected back upon me by the world which once I loved!"

I had had enough and decided to end this rather vague dialogue and tried to get him to approach the real reason for his so sudden arrival into my room.

"I don't see what this has to do with me," I said.

"Ah, shut up," he said and drove a long steel bar through my skull. Cockroaches are rather odd creatures.

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