Dr. Stuart Knott is a PhD graduate and writer of horror fiction. A lifelong fan of videogames, comic books, and horror, action, and science-fiction films, his writing aims to infuse the mundane nature of everyday life with dark comedy and macabre events.
Read more from Dr. Stuart Knott right HERE.
ROACH CABINET
by
Dr. Stuart Knott
For as long as anyone could remember, the cockroaches had been a scourge of the city. The damn things cropped up everywhere; in the trash, the gutters, even scuttering around in sushi bars and the marketplace. At first, they had only been a problem for the lower-classes; or, at least, many had simply laughed them off as a problem for the less fortunate. But, in time, even the social elite came to see what a problem the rancid little bugs were. Entire administrations had been brought down by social outcry at their inability to curb the problem, and Mayor Zachary Hollister wasn’t about to to let that happen to him!
His appointment to office had come as a landslide victory. It had taken a lot of greased handshakes, kickbacks, and an arduous press tour but he’d taken the big seat as expected, as his backers intended, but even he knew that he was simply another puppet to be controlled, firmly under mobster Charles “Cheek” Siegel’s thumb. So, when the solution to the ongoing cockroach problem was presented to him, Mayor Hollister was overwhelmed by the chemical formulas and scientific terminology. He had adjusted his rimless glasses, read the document cover to cover, but all he could see was a jumble of letters and numbers he couldn’t hope to understand, so he simply asked for a summary.
In a freshly cleaned meeting room where, even now, roaches were skittering behind the walls, making nests or chewing on dirt or whatever the disgusting little creeps did, Mayor Hollister sat with the same dumbfounded expression as the rest of his cabinet as a team of scientists laid it all out for them. A pathogen would be introduced into the water supply; slowly, over the course of several weeks. Though nonlethal to the voters citizens, the cockroach population would be put down within six months, and Mayor Hollister would be heralded as a savior.
That was the plan, anyway, and it went off without a hitch. Mayor Hollister breathed a sigh of relief; even surly “Cheek” seemed pleased. The media sang his praises.
But…then people started getting sick. Boils, lesions, a whooping cough that brought up chunks of bloody tissue and even teeth. Many collapsed into feverish fits, chewing off their own tongues and ripping the skin from their fingers as they desperately clawed for help. The emergency wards filled up and hospital staff were stretched to the limit, even more so when doctors and nurses also fell ill (many of them literally collapsing while on the job, their eyes leaking blood), no matter what precautions they took. The infection rate skyrocketed, and the death toll was so great that Mayor Hollister soon found himself signing off a bill to dig a series of death pits and construct large funeral pyres to contain the infection.
For now, he and his closest advisors – and the stone-faced “Cheek” Siegel – were safe in their glass towers. Isolated, protected by face masks and imported bottled and canned goods, Mayor Hollister appeared the picture of health and fortitude whenever he made public broadcasts urging people to stay home, stay safe, and hunker down even as families tossed the bloated, festering bodies of their nearest and dearest into the streets.
And then…the cockroaches changed. At first, they grew noticeably bigger, almost to the size of a small mouse. Then, they became more vicious and brazen, scurrying up toilet pipes and from sewer grates to attack small dogs and nip at your heels.
Naturally, this did little to help with the infection rate, but soon that didn’t matter.
Not when those mewling, grotesque variations appeared. Slick, oily, their antenna quivering menacingly, their legs like tiny pinpricks on the skin, they favoured buzzing into the faces of their victims. They would settle on the tongue, force their way down the throat, burrow into the ears or even the eyes of their prey and lay putrid eggs that hatched parasitic nymphs throughout the bloodstream, which would burst through any orifice they could find, squealing and gnashing, more mutant than insect.
It was only after Mayor Hollister found his beloved Marjorie laying disemboweled on the bathroom floor, her shredded stomach writhing as screeching roaches festered in her corpse, that he began to wish he’d read the document more thoroughly.
A large, glistening cockroach dashed up the inside of his pant leg; Mayor Hollister felt its slimy body scurrying up his skin and, disgusted, horrified, he tried to squash it and yelped with surprise as fangs bit into his palm, tearing through his pants. Mayor Hollister withdrew his hand and desperately tried to shake the bug off, but the cockroach clung on and nibbled furiously. He shrieked as he felt it tunnel its way under his skin and force itself into him, gnawing at flesh and muscle and spraying a geyser of blood into his screaming face.
“Cheek” was sat in the mayor’s office, comfortable in a large leather recliner, his gruff features hidden behind a facemask. He raised a bushy eyebrow when he heard Mayor Hollister scream but only looked up from his newspaper (the headline read, “Quarantine Imminent – Thousands Evacuate!”) when the sweaty, panting form of the mayor startled him. The mayor stood awkwardly; “Cheek” saw that he was oddly hunched over, his head lolling to the side, his eyes rolled back so only the whites were showing.
“Cheek” was about to fold up the newspaper and pull out the roll of quarters he so often had to ball his fist around whenever the pompous blowhard needed to be taught a lesson when the mayor suddenly jerking ungainly towards him.
“Cheek” had just enough time to let out a startled cry as Mayor Hollister’s gnarled hands clutched his neck and pinned him to the soft rug of the office. The major loomed over him, bloody saliva and burst pellets of dark brown eggs spilling from his mouth, the dark eyes and twitching antenna of a cockroach lodged at the back of his throat…