Victor walked into his bathroom and flipped on the light. He closed the door behind him even though he lived alone. On the side of the countertop was a small brown cockroach, its antennae lightly brushing the fake marble.
“You again,” Victor said.
This was the second time he’d seen the cockroach in his bathroom that week. It wasn’t getting any bigger. Probably because there’s no food in the bathroom, Victor thought.
“Why are you here?” Victor asked. “There’s nothing to eat around here. This isn’t a kitchen.” Victor had quit killing bugs in his apartment many years ago. He put them outside when he could. If it was too cold outside, he’d let them make their homes in his home.
The last time Victor encountered the cockroach it had escape behind his mirror. Not this time. He grabbed a wad of toilet paper and looked for something to use to catch the bug. An empty bottle of mouthwash was on the counter. He took off the cap and rinsed it thoroughly, ensuring no chemicals that might pose a threat to a cockroach were left as residues on the inside. But Victor knew most things didn’t pose a threat to cockroaches.
“Come to me,” Victor said, as he tried to use the toilet paper in his left hand to guide the cockroach into the mouthwash cap in his right.
But the cockroach was too fast, scrambling away from Victor’s hands, across the countertop, toward the wall. It ran under his shaving razor and hid by his floss.
“Please, not the floss,” Victor said. He didn’t want roach germs on anything he had to put in his mouth.
The roach scampered away again, this time toward Victor’s toothbrush. Again, Victor worried. The realization that the cockroach had probably smeared its cockroach germs all over Victor’s toothbrush before, under the dark of night, crept into Victor’s head. It was time for a new toothbrush. The cockroach reached the wall and made a run for the electrical outlet.
Victor noticed the cover to the outlet was loose, with a few millimeters of space between it and the wall that a small creature could crawl under.
“So, you live back there,” Victor said, pressing a hand down on the cover to the outlet, preventing the cockroach from crawling underneath. “You’re never going to eat if you’re looking for food in here. I’ll get you outside.”
The cockroach sat by the cover to the outlet. Its antennas frantically moved like it was looking for a passageway.
With his free hand, the hand with the mouthwash cap, Victor tried to capture the cockroach, but the quickness of the creature was reactivated and it ran across the wall. A couple tries later, Victor finally got the cap over the cockroach. He tried to slide the toilet paper between the cap and the wall, but being so frail and delicate, unlike paper, it was impossible. The cockroach climbed onto the tissue and looked for an escape route.
After a five minute battle of wits, Victor was able to get the cockroach back into the mouthwash cap, and covered it with the wad of toilet paper so it couldn’t escape. He left the bathroom and walked outside, turning on the porch light. It was dark out, but not cold. The cockroach would be fine out here. He laid the cap down and removed the toilet paper. The cockroach crawled out and ran away, slowly at first, then with great speed. Victor smiled and walked inside.
Victor’s mind was full of satisfaction at his good deed, and he forgot he had to use the bathroom. As he sat down in front of his computer he started to worry about the cockroach. In the great outdoors cockroaches aren’t safe from predators. He looked up information on cockroaches for the next two hours, and finally realized he might have a cockroach infestation. This worried Victor. It meant he’d just separated a cockroach from its family. He was too unfamiliar with cockroach physiology to tell if it was a male or female cockroach he’d put outside, but he was certain it was a parent. Probably scavenging for food for its family. There were perhaps hundreds of little baby cockroaches within Victor’s walls who were starving because their mother or father had been displaced. Victor had never had children of his own, but he could imagine the kind of grief a parent must feel being separated from their offspring. When thinking of the hundreds of babies the parent cockroach had been separated from, Victor’s heart sank. As he reflected on his own difficulty in meeting women and maintaining stable relationships, he wondered about cockroaches and how difficult it must be for them to find the right one, the one they knew they wanted to stick with. A cockroach’s lifespan was so short compared to his own, and Victor knew that must make it almost impossible to fall in love twice.
“What have I done?” he asked himself. He still had to pee, he realized. He returned to the bathroom. A small cockroach sat by the sink. It didn’t move, but its antennae waved slowly over the fake marble counter. “What have I done?” Victor repeated, this time in a whisper.
A piano softly played in Victor’s head and it all came crashing down. The cockroach was facing him, and although its face was the kind of face too complex for a human to decipher, Victor saw a worried sadness in the roach’s eyes. He didn’t know what was going through the roach’s mind, but he knew that his own heart was breaking at the sight before him. I’m sorry, he thought. You must be starving. You must be worried. He’s safe. Come, I’ll help you.
Victor tore toilet paper from the roll and removed a cap from another bottle of mouthwash from below the sink, rinsed it, and chased the cockroach over the counter for a few minutes until he was able to capture it. He carried it outside and let it free. Like the one before it, the cockroach ran away.
“Find him,” Victor said, an air of hope in his voice. He stood on the porch, staring into the dark of night. He turned off the porch light and walked inside. Again, he felt good.
It was hardly past 10 o’clock the next morning when Thomas, the gray-haired landlord, was called about loud noises coming from Victor’s apartment. A phone call he made to Victor went unanswered, so Thomas left the office and drove his golf cart across the apartment grounds to Victor’s front door. All night there’d been a racket coming from Victor’s apartment, he’d been told.
It wasn’t a particularly obnoxious noise, but when it had continued through the night, Victor’s neighbor had thought it odd. When he’d knocked on Victor’s door In the morning and no one answered, he’d called Thomas.
Now Thomas was knocking and no one was answering. The neighbor walked outside.
“Tried that already,” the neighbor said. “Noise stopped few minutes ago. Might wanna try goin’ on inside.”
Thomas said nothing, pulled out a key, and opened the door. As he walked inside, the neighbor started to follow.
“Stay outside,” Thomas said, shaking his head. He closed the door behind him.
“Victor!” Thomas yelled, walking through the kitchen. He noticed two folded pieces of paper on the kitchen counter, only because they were the only pieces of clutter that could be found. The apartment was clean and organized. “Victor!” he shouted again.
There was no answer, so Thomas continued moving through the apartment. The door to the bedroom was shut, which he knocked on and slowly opened.
The room was dark. Large blankets hung from the windows, and the light entering the room from the doorway was the only source of illumination.
“Victor,” Thomas said, this time with apprehension, as he stepped further into the room. The door creaked open, allowing more light into the room. And then the door to the closet, on the opposite end of the room, flew open. Victor stepped out.
“What are you doing?” Victor asked. It was still dark and Thomas could barely make out Victor’s face.
“Burt said there was weird noise coming from your apartment all night,” Thomas said. “Said you wouldn’t answer the door, so we were worried.”
“Who’s Burt?” Victor asked.
“Your neighbor. Guy lives next door.”
“Huh. Alright. What can I do for you?”
“Well, nothing, I guess. Just wanted to see if you were alive, is all.”
“Oh, I’m alive, Tom. I’ve never been this alive! Look at this!” Victor walked away from the closet and toward a lamp by the corner. He turned it on and a yellow light lit the room.
Thomas gasped and stepped back. The drywall was shredded, the ceiling was destroyed, and cockroaches swarmed over the floor and what was left of the walls. Words escaped his mouth but they were incoherent and unintentional.
“I found them in the walls,” Victor said with a smile. He pulled up the covers from his bed to reveal over a hundred fleeing cockroaches within his sheets, and he looked to Thomas. “Be careful where you step, please. They don’t care much for the light, but there’s just so many of them I don’t think they’ll stay clear of it.” He put the covers back and looked at the walls the way a man looks at a sculpture he’s spent a year creating. “Haven’t figured out how to get them outside, yet.”
“Vic, this isn’t OK! You found these in the wall? You’ve torn up apartment property. This isn’t your property! You don’t own this place.”
“I know. I can fix it. But please understand I didn’t do this for me. This is for them.” Victor indicated the swarm of cockroaches with his hands, like he was presenting a gallery of new art to needy eyes. “They’re hungry. Most of them are young. Too young to hunt. At least, they look young, right?”
“What on Earth are you talking about? Come here, you need to get out of here. You can’t live in this filth. I’m calling an exterminator.”
Victor’s smile disappeared and a frown took its place. “No you’re not,” he said, with cold annoyance. “They’ll be gone, soon. They’ll be safe. Give me time. I have my hands full. I’m inexperienced with cockroach herding. I’ve only been doing it for,” he looked at his watch, “Oh my. Is it really 10:30? I’ve only been a cockroach herder for about twelve hours, then. I’ve uncovered a civilization. Perhaps you should tell my neighbor – what’s his name, Burk? – to look in his walls. He might find his own infestation.”
“It’s Burt. Listen, Vic. I’m worried about you. This isn’t acceptable. You’ve destroyed apartment property and your place is overrun with pests. This is a health risk and it might mean other residences are infested.”
“I used to think like you, Tom,” Victor said. “Last night I thought cockroaches were filthy and disgusting. Maybe they’re covered in microorganisms that can make us sick, but maybe they’re just like us. Maybe they want to survive. You know what? Cockroaches are nature’s greatest survivors. But they still need to eat. This all started in my bathroom. I took a cover off an outlet, started cutting away at the wall, and after an hour I’d ripped out most of the bathroom wall. They just started pouring out like prisoners freed from their chains. It was horrifying, but when I thought about it, it was also beautiful. Where do you think these guys got food, Tom? Because I haven’t figured that out. If they’re looking in my apartment for food, they won’t find it unless they go to the kitchen.”
Thomas backed out of the bedroom and wiggled his arms and legs and back as chills rippled through his body at the horror of cockroaches covering Victor’s apartment. Victor followed him out.
“Can I get you a drink?” Victor asked.
Ignoring the question, Thomas asked, “What possessed you to do this?”
“Last night I freed some roaches into the wild. I thought nothing of it, though I did feel a little guilty since I’d separated them from their children. But, come here.”
Victor walked into the kitchen and Thomas followed.
Victor took a pitcher of water out of the fridge and a glass out of a cabinet. He poured the glass full of water and handed it to Thomas. “Look at this,” he said, picking up the two pieces of paper on the countertop. He unfolded them. “Not ten minutes after I freed those cockroaches I heard a scratching at my door. I go investigate and I find this.” He handed the first piece of paper to Thomas.
Thomas set the glass of water down on the counter, not feeling excited about putting anything in his body that came from Victor’s home, and grabbed the piece of paper. “There are more,” he read aloud the scribbling on the paper. He looked at Victor, his eyes questioning everything. “There are more? More of what?”
Another smile took form on Victor’s face. “More of them,” he said, obviously holding back excitement, while pointing to his bedroom.
“No,” Thomas said. “Who wrote this? What’s this got to do with…” he shuddered, “those bugs?”
“The cockroaches I freed. They wrote this.”
“My God, son, you’ve really lost your mind.” Thomas handed the paper back to Victor. “I’m going back to the office, and I’m calling an exterminator. The only reason I’m not calling the police is because for eight years you’ve been a perfect resident. You pay for the repairs to these walls and the ceiling, and I’ll pretend this never happened.”
“Wait,” Victor said, handing the second piece of paper to Thomas.
Thomas read it aloud. “In the wall. Above the light.” He shook his head and handed the paper back to Victor. “You can’t be serious. Someone’s playing a joke on you, or your sanity’s really fading.”
“I thought it might be a joke. Above the light, what could that mean? I wasn’t sure. I knew what it meant by the wall. The other roaches had to be in the wall. Sure enough, they were. I started breaking the wall away in the bathroom. It wasn’t until I was walking through my bedroom, back to the kitchen to get a drink, that I realized what “above the light” meant. The lamp in the corner of my room! It makes a funny shape of light on the ceiling. I smashed the ceiling there and found more cockroaches. They fell all over me, and I fell to the ground. But something else fell out. Come with me.” Victor walked back to his room.
“Buddy,” Thomas said, “I’m not going back in there. This is too much. If you don’t let the exterminator in, I’ll call the police.”
As Thomas reached for the door to leave the apartment, he was tapped on the shoulder. He spun around to see Victor holding a box.
“It’s in here,” Victor said. He opened the box and pulled out a clay tablet that looked more ancient than the world itself. He dropped the box on the floor. “Look at this. The carvings, here. They’re words, but not English. I don’t even understand the symbols. What do you make of it?”
“No idea, Vic. Really, this is just weird. I don’t care about some stones you found in the ceiling.”
“I can tell you what to make of it. Better yet, I can show you. Follow me.” Victor walked back into his room with the stone tablet. Something compelled Thomas to follow him, even as his better judgment told him not to. He walked into the bedroom.
“They go crazy when they see this,” Victor said. He set the clay tablet down in the center of the bedroom and stepped back, to stand next to Thomas.
The thousands of cockroaches that covered the walls, the floor, and what was left of the ceiling stopped in their tracks, and, in dreadful unison, ran with lightning speed toward the clay tablet. Thomas shuddered in repulsion, but couldn’t take his eyes from the sight before him. The cockroaches covered the tablet, and when there was no room left, the others surrounded it on the ground, creating a dense sea of cockroaches.
“Jesus…” Thomas whispered.
“Watch,” Victor said, with enthusiasm.
From below the swarm of cockroaches covering the tablet, it became clear the tablet was glowing. Light poured through cockroach legs and cockroach antennas, bright and intense. The heat of the tablet’s radiation filled the room, but the cockroaches remained glued to it in a perplexing calm.
Then a voice that sounded both infinitely distant, and yet, so close it might as well be internal, boomed over the stagnant silence of the room. It was deep and it was powerful, and its words were spoken with stoic actuality, sounding primordial and ominous, like no distinct voice, but a million voices in unison:
“We are the descendents of primeval gods. We share the royal blood of ancient deities, Apzu and Tiamat, begat of the offspring of Anshar and Kishar – Anu and Ki. Divided by Marduk, we exist on Earth and below it…”
The voice faded into obscurity, but the clay tablet continued to glow, and the roaches stayed attached. The room remained hot.
“The fuck?” Thomas managed to utter. He was visibly disturbed, clenching his fists up against his chest as if preparing for an altercation with an unseen entity.
“They’ll stay like this for a little while longer,” Victor said. “I can’t touch that thing while they’re on it. Somehow it doesn’t burn them.”
Thomas shook his head slowly, his eyes still glued to the mass of roaches on the floor.
“You know what this is, right?” Victor asked. “I finally realized what it is. This is the fifth tablet of the Enûma Eliš, the Babylonian creation myth. These roaches, these simple looking little insects, are an ancient race of Sumerian gods. They’re the Anunnaki, Tom. The great gods of the earth. This tablet has never been found by archaeologists. At least, not the whole thing. Only a part of it. This is most of the tablet. These bugs had it the whole time. I spent the evening speaking with the roaches after freeing them from the walls, and I’ve pieced together something rather interesting. This tablet has been in possession of the Anunnaki for thousands of years. The creation myth mentions their creation, and this tablet contains truths they never wanted the world to see. It was a truth known only to the Babylonians. Duplicate tablets never included the truths held in this, the original.”
With eyes that were growing ever more accepting of the bizarre things Victor was saying, by virtue of the strange things they were witnessing, Thomas looked at Victor and asked, “And what’s that?”
“Oh, just that these are the end times. For humanity. Lahamu and Lahmu are returning. The daughter and son of Apzu and Tiamat, the father and mother of Anshar and Kishar. They were the gatekeepers at Eridu of the Abzu temple. Creation of the universe began there. They’re coming back to end it.”
“Coming back from where?”
“Not sure. That’s just what I was told.”
Thomas swallowed nervously, and laughed a nervous laugh. “This is some elaborate set-up you’ve got here, Vic. Good special effects. Or… I know what it is. That water you gave me. You drugged it. Is that what happened?”
“You didn’t drink the water, remember? This is all pretty weird, I know. I had a hard time believing it myself. It might not even be true. I don’t know. I’m just hoping I can get these cockroaches outside like they want. But it’s impossible to move them when they’re on that tablet.”
Then, the primordial and ominous voice returned.
“They have returned. Lahamu and Lahmu have returned. The gatekeepers will bring the end.”
“What’s that mean?” Thomas asked, forcing a smile onto his face.
“Hmm. No idea. They’ve never said that before.”
Then a loud scratching came from outside the bedroom. Victor looked at Thomas with a worried glare.
“I know that sound.” Victor ran out of the room and Thomas followed.
The scratching was coming from the front door.
Victor opened the door slowly, and looked down. The two cockroaches from the night before were on his welcome mat. They didn’t move, but their antennas lightly brushed the ground in front of them.
Thomas and Victor looked at one another, then at the roaches.
“Lahamu and Lahmu, I presume?” asked Victor.
The cockroaches walked into the apartment. The door closed behind them.
And humanity ended that day. The Anunnaki would apply what they’d learned from their human creations to the next intelligent race they created. And those, too, would be destroyed after millions of years, when the Anunnaki would know enough to create something better.
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