The Roaches Have No King

by Daniel Evan Weiss

  LIKE THE PRINCIPALS of a wake, Oliver and Elizabeth lay on their backs, parallel, the blanket over their chests as smooth as if the bed had been made with them in it. I watched for some time, but neither of them budged. Elizabeth might have been trying to win on congeniality, but there was only one criterion in this contest. I had already marked her down for playing dead with Ira in the preliminaries.

  I slipped under the blanket beside her shoulder and walked down the sheet next to her arm. I had never tasted her perfume so thick and moist. It was lovely. But tonight perfume would not be important. I continued a long way over the slick satin, repeatedly slipping and spraining my joints, as I looked for some biological landmark. The first flesh I found was her wrist. But her nightgown seemed to continue into black eternity. I didn't want to go that far. Did Oliver ever feel that way? Though I was tempted to declare Ruth winner by default, I had to go on; I couldn't live with the doubt.

  Knowing the hand of a supine woman is at vulva level, I was doubly irritated walking down the outside of the gown, as I would have to walk just as for again up the inside. And as far as I had already come, I still hadn't picked up the faintest whiff of pheromone. Maybe this wasn't the most inspired idea after all.

  It must have been an hour later when I got to the hem, suspended primly between her ankles. The first mark in her favor; the tension offered me a clear path up her leg. The foliage there had been felled to the skin, and this part of the trip was very quick. I passed her knees, and continued easily over her upper thighs.

  But if I was where I thought I was, I should have been awash in vapors. Under the blanket I could not see anything. I wondered if I had taken a wrong turn.

  Just then I ploughed into something slick and springy. It was the same fabric as the nightgown. The bounce seemed to be the work of a cushion of hair. Which meant that I had just walked into a matching pair of panties.

  How could Elizabeth do this to herself, incubate her vaginal parasites with dense satin? She must have had iron control to keep herself from scratching; or maybe she was a magician, expert at misdirecting people's attention while she dug in.

  I wished she would go at it now. I circled her thighs and crossed her waist, but elastic bound the panties tightly to her. And still I hadn't gotten a pheromonal hit.

  I had gone a long way today, and I had a very long way to go. Couldn't I be, just for the moment, the Cyrano of insects, the mosquito, and shove my proboscis through the weave to sample the goods from here? I started raking my rugged mouthparts angrily against the fibers of her panties. To my surprise, they broke and unraveled quite easily.

  I carefully pulled back the flap I had cut, expecting a blast of hot funk. But all was calm. I poked my head inside. The blonde hair was sparse and straight and fell neatly, with a part, as if it had been combed. A stinky sweet powder precipitated onto my back; the more I tried to wipe it off, the more I collected.

  A summary of my depressing examination will suffice: her labia majora were cool and dry. The footing around her clitoris was firm, and the clitoris itself was tiny, no larger than my head. I pulled and twisted it, and provoked not the slightest reaction. Disappointed by her odor, her texture, her talc, and her response to a skilled lover, I gave her more than a fair chance to prove herself a sexual animal: I stuck my head into her vagina. The arid walls chafed me. My antennae finally detected some vague sexual presence, roughly the strength of a Blattella female dead a week three blocks downwind. Oh, there were powerful tastes in there. One was vinegar. The other was a poor chemical imitation of strawberry. Elizabeth had poured herself a TV pussy, which is probably exactly what her tin-can husband liked.

  Back out on her mound, I saw a straight airspace extending all the way to her feet. If only I was one of those lucky insects who flew. But Blattella wings are cosmetic and ritual, used only during foreplay and copulation.

  Hours later I finally left that antiseptic bed. What a waste! I was angry and depleted. I went for another belt of Concord Grape to soothe me, and later realized that I also needed it as a scientific control, to be sure Contestant Number Two got a fair shake.

  I SURVEYED the Fishblatt bed from the tip of Ira's big toe, which stuck out from under the covers. It was unusually dark in the room. It took me a minute to realize it was because the clock-radio was out; Oliver had refused to fix our short circuit. Unlike their tidy neighbors, Ira and Ruth slept like victims of a bomb blast. Blankets and sheets which this afternoon had been impeccably anchored with hospital corners were now loose, strewn over their contorted bodies.

  The toe twitched and I jumped. "Not in this house!" said Ira, twisting violently. A moment later Ruth groaned softly and rolled away, her flannel nightgown rising slowly around her chubby thighs; somehow I was sure it had no matching panties. However, because she seemed to respond to him even asleep, the interval between Ira's indignations was all the time I would have for my expedition.

  I mounted Ruth's shin, figuring the bone would offer the fastest route up. I was wrong. Ruth was not a shaver, and her foliage grew thick. Advantage: Elizabeth. Hundreds of sturdy shanks tapered to sharp points. There would be no shortcut here, just tough careful slogging. Where were my elephants, my litter-bearers to carry me through the forest?

  Soon the hairs were so long that my legs wouldn't even reach flesh. I had an inspiration: I would Tarzan-swing up to her knee. Halfway up the first hair I reached for the next one, but before I could grab it the first one gave way. I landed on my back, and her spears gouged my tender spiracles.

  I learned the rhythm of the curly hair. I moved quickly and smoothly, minimizing the risk that a sleepy hand would lay me forever to rest in the brush. Even so, the distance I traveled from Ruth's ankle to her knee was many times the distance as the fly flies.

  From a clearing in the knee I looked back with pride at the wilderness I had crossed, but with trepidation that soon I would have to cross it again.

  I looked north. I was right. Unlike Elizabeth, enlightened Ruth wore no panties (Candida said panties were agents provocateurs of itch), and so it sat there before me, the Hairy Grail, alluring as the jungle's hidden treasures, frightening as the jungle's vipers and cannibals. The first hormonal warning shot struck. The organ had looked so furry and friendly from the toe, like a cuddly toy; now I wasn't so sure I wanted to play. I remembered Junior in the bookshelf, when we were nymphs, deriding the sages who had derived "pudendum " from the Latin pudere, meaning "to be ashamed." "It's not totally ridiculous," he said. "But get close to one, if you can bear it, and you'll know why it derives from the English 'P.U.'"

  I pushed myself forward. The forest thinned as I passed the knee, but a new peril appeared. Trenches, pits, sinking deeper as I traveled on. Surely this had been the site of a terrible artillery duel. The footing was treacherous, and the vestiges of gas made me afraid the shelling would resume at any moment.

  I jumped into a crater. I could see some rare good news—the foliage up above had been shot completely away. If I could avoid the ditches it would be a clean run, almost all the way home. I caught my breath. Then I went over the top.

  I jumped into the next crater. Why go at all? Why didn't I just stay here until the end of the battle?

  But I couldn't. If my Jewish Valkyrie rolled over she'd crush me between her thighs: the Liebestod, the love death.

  It was no-man's-land, and I was running as no man had. Her muff dominated my view, and the beacon scent grew sharper almost by the step. It was not a pleasant odor, complex, musty, tinged with urine. At ten paces its character changed; the same elements were all there, but the balance of the blend had tipped. My discomfort gave way to pleasure, the way a tight genital chamber that chafes against your member can suddenly become heavenly. Was I being lured by an illusion into the wire? I wondered if the Manischewitz had been fermented to the specifications of the Jewish genitals.

  I pushed on. The tops of her thighs had rubbed each other smooth. But then came the bush itself, a military masterpiece that looked
completely out of place on the soft, chubby flesh. It was an impenetrably dense breastwork of tough coiled hairs, spikes bristling in every direction. If I got caught in it, I could be mashed during morning fornication— a repellent thought—or Ivoried to the shower floor and flushed with steaming water down the drain to the great unknown. And even if I made it past her outer defense, what awaited me? The inner surfaces of this organ had a glimmering, treacherous look, like flypaper, or maybe quicksand.

  But damn it! I'd tried everything else. I wasn't going to stand here, a few inches away, as my last chances for glory and a decent life vanished. I charged straight into the bush. It was a terrible mistake. Within two steps I put out twelve of my eyes, and my legs were all snared. I dangled like a POW on the wire. Ruth's pelvis started to shift. But she settled back. It was a warning, perhaps my last one.

  I backed out carefully, leaving painful chunks of chitin on the wire, signing her guest register with blood. I retreated to the top of the thigh.

  I didn't know what to do now. I saw no way in. As I preened, a nervous habit, I tasted Ruth's musk, which must have stuck to me in the bush.

  Immediately I felt a stirring in my wing muscles, the very ones that never moved except in response to a female's chemical magic. This was all wrong. It's not that Ruth wasn't from the right side of the tracks; she wasn't even from the right side of the animal kingdom. For God's sake, she had a spinal column! But a moment later my wings opened.

  It was impossible. It was embarrassing. But I figured: if my wings could spread—and since I had no option—why not try to use them? What did I have to lose, a few more eyes? I retreated down Ruth's thigh and picked out the runway with the fewest potholes. I came running back. The faster I went the stupider I felt, these two huge plates bouncing wildly on my back, catching the air randomly, awkwardly, twisting me side to side.

  Two steps from her bush I made my leap. It wasn't a thing of grace, no eagle's soar. No, I'd call it a desperate lurch that got me about one leg's length above her spikes before I came plunging down. The back of my abdomen scraped and burned against the wire. But my front legs landed in labial soil. I pulled myself onto it. I made it. I hit vulva.

  Now I was certain she had felt me. Quickly to work. I started up the mountainous outer lip. It was bouncy and moist. I jumped. The flesh gave under me softly, but not obsequiously. Advantage: Ruth.

  I hiked north along Labium, which had the dark pigmentation of her Mediterranean ancestors. Her aroma: a complex woman, I would describe her as honest but not self- righteous; earthy but not vulgar; spicy but not ostentatious. Balanced. Impressive. Elizabeth was not in her class.

  I walked to the apex. A shimmering layer of ooze surrounded a black hole whose depth challenged my imagination. I reached out, but recoiled from the heat.

  Again, from habit, I preened. Again her taste surprised me. This fluid was fresher and even more potent than the stuff in the bush. But I was a zealot for absolute truth. These fluids had been oxidizing for hours and I insisted on sampling Ruth's hottest jazz.

  With two legs planted on the outer lip, I moved my middle legs to the peat bog between so I could grab her nib, a dicier maneuver than it had been on the dry flesh next door. "Nib" didn't do the organ justice—it was a huge irregular pyramid, hooked at the end, shaped something like a nose, like Ruth's nose, in fact, only with more wrinkles and without nostrils. It was impossible for me to get my legs around it. For scale, imagine Ruth rappelling down Mount Rushmore and onto Thomas Jefferson's schnoz.

  I hooked on the spikes of my forelegs. When I pulled they slipped off, and if I hadn't made a lunge for a curl lying inside her labium, I would have tumbled into the abyss. That would have meant a horrible end for me. But then I might have risen! Catholics all over the world would have to wear little golden vulvas on neck chains, and carry big ones during ceremonies. But I wasn't cut from martyr cloth.

  I tried the spikes closer to the apex of the clit, where the slime was thinner, and carefully shifted my balance. I pulled and my grip held. I started to rock back and forth, tugging what I could of the organ. I was careful not to over-excite her—I didn't want her moaning to wake Ira, who might then wake her.

  After several minutes of skilled manipulation, I dipped my antennae into her fluid. The same oxidized dross.

  Just like Elizabeth after all. What did I have to do to get her to secrete? Foreplay? No wonder some Africans used to cut vulvas completely off.

  I tried not to dwell on the fact that I had worked on Ruth long enough to satisfy twenty of my own kind. I tried hard to remember that this was research, not biological slumming. But putting my mouth to a human genital, how could I keep perversion from my mind? Come on Manischewitz! Make me want it!

  I worked my tongue against her mountainous clit, walking over it and down the other side, and then back and forth to where I started. And back and forth and back and forth and on and on until I became dizzy and nauseated and my legs ached and my tongue felt like a cactus. Yet when I checked her chemicals there was still no change.

  By God, I've filled a lot of smiling females in my time, a sight sexier than her, with gleaming carapaces and great succulent glands. The impudence! I should have been the one on my back receiving ministrations.

  I stretched forward and chomped down on the tip of her clit with my mandibles. The dormant nib suddenly came to life. And then, like an earthquake, the whole area started to shift. The labia stretched and undulated. Planted on different levels, my legs threatened to pull apart. But Ruth soon settled back "Oh, baby." She meant me.

  I dipped my antennae once again, and sure enough, here was fresh lava. It was impressive stuff. Ruth's worry about the texture and shape of her thighs blinded her to the vast power between them.

  Emboldened, I stepped onto the steaming inner lips. The great hole, big enough to accommodate half my family side by side, yawned just below me. There had been coitus here tonight, which meant that my plan to antagonize her and Ira had failed; he didn't perform when he was upset, and not that often when he wasn't. Ruth was proving more formidable than I had ever suspected.

  What exactly was her magic? Legs braced on her flaps—as if I had any chance of holding them open during a sexual quake—I invoked for the one time in my life the Blattella god and stuck my head in.

  I was transported. Was she really human? She seemed more like the universal, primordial animal. Chemicals I never knew existed exploded through my body. I was helpless, out of control, spinning and speeding, though I was not sure I was moving at all.

  Her soft flesh closed gently around my head. Blood pounded through the walls of her vagina, just as it had through my own mother's vestibulum before my birth. I hadn't thought of mom in eons.

  I pulled my head out into the cold night air, bowing a thousand pardons to humanity, which I had so often maligned—not because of the sapiens part; oysters are better thinkers—but because of the greatness in that vagina.

  As the secretions dried and crusted on me, my walking became labored. The view from the labium was sobering; the defensive works were just as formidable from the inside as they had been from the thighs, with no room for a runway. Stealing and bushwhacking, I had to get out before she rolled over; there was no reason for her to protect me now.

  I was out of tricks; the retreat would be a struggle. I shat to drop some weight. Then I licked from my body the white crusting, which would slow me going through the wire.

  It shouldn't have come as such a surprise that the white powder, which was just dried hormones, again ignited my body. My back rippled with power.

  With the next flex, I dipped my antennae back into Ruth's slop. My muscles tensed. They were going to move; I was sure now. I sucked in one last dose of pheromones. That was it. My wings popped apart and started beating like a dragonfly's.

  I lifted straight up, pulling my legs from the ooze with ease. I was airborne, a fucking flying cockroach. I was really soaring this time. My mind reeled with the possibilities—I could catch f
alling crumbs in midair, or strafe waterbugs, or shatter Ira's glasses as I broke the sound barrier. I flew above the depths of the bush, then quickly passed over the no-man's-land of the thighs, the knee plateau, and the jungle of the shin. This was exhilarating! I swore I would never crawl again.

  I passed Ira's toe, where it all started, and soon I was over the end of the bed. I zoomed through the bedroom doorway, strictly by luck, and down the hall. I flew a great circle through the living room, watering the plants, and patting the white queen's bottom with a wing.

  A moment later, narrowly missing a reburial in the pages of the Bible, I met the wall. I slid down the plaster to the floor. Slumped against the baseboard like a bum against a lamppost, I could think of only one thing: Ruth Grubstein. Ruth, Ruth, Ruth. The sound dominated my mind as if I were a pimply adolescent human in the grip of first love. But I didn't care. In fact I was proud. Ruth. If I'd had the energy I would have carved hearts all over the apartment: N+RG FOREVER.

  DAWN FORCED ME to think of safety. When I got up, my head still spun from the collision. My wing muscles ached from their singular exertion. But this did not explain the odd list to my gait.

  Then it came to me. The missing weight was my spermatophore. My excitation had been so wild that I had ejaculated into my beautiful Ruth without realizing it.

  I was thrilled. A perfect consummation to our new love.

  But I soon started to worry how our little one would come out. A boy four feet three inches tall with a chitinous head covered by black curly hair, fairy wings drooping uselessly down his back, fronted by a Blattella phallus? A girl, soft-fleshed like Ruth except for her chitin-plated breasts, a six-legged Brunnhilde? The possibilities were too grim. Poor Ruth. She would be ecstatic as she swelled. Then everything would go wrong. Ira would throw her out of the apartment. She would become the darling of the National Enquirer and perhaps the science section of the The New York Times.