By Jan Vicente B. Pekas
In a house filled with teenagers, it is not unusual to find our home still lit up in the dead of night. Dark and silent it may be outside, bright lights and voices still linger around inside. The footsteps of someone going to the bathroom echo loudly. And laughter in the middle of the night should have been something to be scared about, instead, midnight laughter has become a common occurrence in our household. Sometimes, a contagious giggle would spread around and pull you from your sleep, enticing you to laugh along. Other times, an outright laughter would burst into your ears and force open your eyes. You can never know which surprising sound you’ll get when spending the night in our house.
But, it is not only the young people that walk around when the moon is up. They may not be as big as humans, but they certainly command the same attention. Cockroaches make sure that we do not feel lonely in the silence of nights. The bright colored walls in our house certainly do well in attracting our eyes, but more so when a cockroach runs across it.
During the course of the pandemic, I had experienced my own share of late nights. At first, I had only stayed late due to the hook wonderful shows had wrapped around me. Waking up the next morning to find out what happened next was out of the question. And sleeping after a cliff hanger wouldn’t let me get off that easy.
As time went by, school tasks and responsibilities had made me weary enough that I had no problem sleeping early. Compared to the early days of the pandemic, I had finally started to have a sleeping schedule of a normal person than that of the two college students living with us.
Fortunately, I started to get used to sleeping early. Until one night, when an itch in my ear made me get up and turn the lights on. Due to past experiences, I would always turn around to look whether a cockroach had grown too curious of my hair and decided to take a closer look. Sure enough, there was one lying around. At that time, sleepiness had left my body as I quickly sat up. A quick action would have taken care of the problem but its sheer size left me staring at it for some time.
In no time at all, the bug quickly hid as I tried opening the door for it. He/she did not want to leave. I had experienced a cockroach crawl across my face when sleeping before, and I did not want a repeat of it. I spent some time looking for it, unfortunately to no avail.
It had gotten late and I was forced to go to bed while watching my back. My fear quickly turned to contempt towards the slippery cockroach, and the night had not been a good one.
I had experienced going to bed with an empty stomach, and it was a terrible experience. But a stomach filled with hatred was even worse.
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