Chapter One - The Cockroach

Chapter One

It all started with a crunch.

The tired winds cast a subtle breeze across the empty,

 summer's night sky as a starved and sullen moon held

 its begrudging gaze against an unsuspecting truck stop in Northern Quebec;

 the sickly sweet aroma of stripper's perfumes and spilled

 liquor lingered in the air as the stars gazed down lustfully in a subtle era-tried patience,

 chanting the praises of a time long past forgotten.

There he sat, bemused and broken, held up in a dingy bathroom stall

 in a dingey bathroom city; palms-a-grind; dirty white powder locked

in his grasp. 

**CRUNCH..CRUNCH..CRUNCH..TAP TAP TAP... THUUUUUNK..**

 Echoed throughout the chilled, audible darkness; a greasy snort followed suit. 

Another thump tore through the electric silence; a drugged-out gasp

 took up its cause in flawless succession. 

He lifted his weary head to scout for prying eyes; no one - yet.

He scratched against his thick, black hair which dutifully cascaded

 back into place; head held aloft a river of passing miseries, 

he stumbled to his tired feet,

churning out a drunken bubble of grunts and curses as he committed

 every faculty at his disposal to the troubled endeavor of managing to stand upright. 

Eventually, in truth, nearly immediately after he had managed to stand,

the figure merely crashed backwards atop his warm perch of porcelain filth,

 and for a moment as brief as it was timeless,

consciousness took its leave of absence.

"Does it even have a name?"

 Vagrant shadows hissed from both nowhere and everywhere; all at once and never.

"Where is its name," came another sinister chant gone howl.

 "WE WANT ITS NAME!!"

"We don't want a COCKROACH!"

 A rancid, meatless arm lunged at his petrified throat,

 ripping the air from his lungs.

As he faded back into reality, all he could hear was a faint snarl,

 but concise nonetheless,

 "Bring us a HALO." 

The man darted upright, nearly cracking

 his head against the stall door;

 a frigid chill held firm in his throat.

He posted a stale cigarette between his

 dry and cracked lips as he flicked left-hand thumb

 against his index finger. 

Holding an imaginary flame against the cigarette's edge,

 he inhaled a thin breath of empty air...

 and exhaled a heavy cloud of smoke.

"The world," 

he thought to himself as he sucked in another drag from his cigarette,

 "is a sad f*****g place, filled with w***e's, degenerates and cocksuckers that want nothing

 more than than to see you drown in the murky filth of life with the rest of them."

Finally mustering the composure to get back on his feet, he stumbled his way out of them fetid bathroom stall and into less-than-fresh air.

"I'm not normal,"

 he picked up,throwing the bathroom door ajar,

 "but I've never f*****g claimed to be. I'll never be normal."

"Normality - ," 

he went on as he walked into the nearby strip club, La Belle Face, and exchanged begrudged looks with the establishment's regular filth.

 "Normality is populated by f**k-ups and degenerates; posers and takers." 

Still smoking his cigarette, he pressed his way towards the bar; an aire of silence followed in his wake, a plethora of stares held firm.

"But who am I in all of this," 

he resumed as he took up a barside seat,

 "why in the f**k did I have to be made?"

 The short and raven-haired, tattooed vixen of a barmaid casually slid a wordless beverage over his way; he raised the glass

 and nodded a shallow grin of gratitude back her way.

"It seems like the world would just keep on turning without one more, self-absorbed, jack-a*s planting their feet in the ground day after day." 

A sizeable biker approached behind him and tapped at the man's anticipating shoulder. 

"So," 

he concluded without words, turning around to survey the hand's owner, 

"why me?"

Retracting his cigarette and presenting it as a weapon, he gave the biker his full attention.

"Problem?" 

He jested with a careless smirk forming across his face.

"Do I look like some kinda f****n' joke?" 

The biker pushed at the same shoulder which he had at tapped before, dim lights refracting off his sweaty, bald scalp.

 "You got some f****n' nerve showin' your mug in here buddy."

"A pun,"

 replied the tired figure,

 "and here I was,"

 he paused for dramatic effect, taking in one last draw of smoke as he made deadly eye contact with the tall, 

husky biker. 

"Thinking that you guys were all brainless s**t-tards, f**k-ups and degenerates."

He casually exhaled a thick puff of smoke in the biker's face.

"That's gonna cost you f****t," 

he steamed ruthlessly, 

"you're gonna f*****g die here tonight, do you hear me... you f*****g COCKROACH?!"

"I'd appreciate if you don't use that word around me," 

he sipped casually at his beer and finished the sentence,

 "it might not work out too well for you."

"What, F****T?!" 

The biker laughed; the bar erupted in a hushed anticipation; muffled chuckles wafted delicately through the air.

"No," 

he replied, now deadly serious. 

"The other one."

"Cockroach?" 

He chuckled in a slight aire of confusion.

"Precisely,"

 the figure warned.

 "Now get the f**k out of my face, you dirty f*****g sack of bald-s**t; while I still let you."

Infuriated, the biker lunged at his calm throat, ready to tear it clean, or dirty, from his shoulders.

"Aint so smug now tough guy," 

he spat about an inch from his face,

 "...COCKROACH..." sputtering rancid hillbilly saliva. 

Without a word, the seemingly helpess figure fixed his expression from a fool's grin to a tried grimace. 

"My name," 

he offered the biker,

 "is Crowley; Ryan Crowley."

 

He slowly locked his left hand about the firm grip set around his neck.

The biker's face went from tough guy to endangered fawn as Ryan quietly pried himself free, finger by finger, snapping each one in the process

 as the biker reeled in pain; uttering incomprehensible curses and breaking into an uncontrollable stupor.

"And I think that it'd be in your best interests to use it,"

 he whispered casually into the biker's ear before throwing him across the bar and through the back wall as if he weighed absolutely nothing. 

"Doing otherwise may end with you getting fucked up - and not in the good way."

"Now," 

he finished,

 "does anybody else have a problem to settle before I get back to my beer?"

Everybody stared down at their respective tables; some held their breath.

"Good," 

he turned back to face the barmaid with the smile of an obese child on Christmas morning.

 "One more please."

"Why," 

he asked himself, 

"did nature have to follow through?"

"I persist," 

Ryan went on in a tantrum of depression, 

"because I know nothing else."

"I wake up and a frigid chill echoes across my spine; always one more day." 

He thought to himself, 

"I fall asleep and that same chill comes full-circle;

 one more f*****g day."

"That's all my life is," 

he motioned for another pint, 

"a sullen resignation to 'one more f*****g day'."

Ryan fussed with his coaster, trying to observe it from all possible angles; the barmaid fixed an attracted stare his way.

"It feels like I'm just a stagnant reminder to everyone that life is truly and absolutely void of merit, joy or purpose;

 I am nothing more than a sad truth, and its frigid burn chills me

right through to the empty core of my pathetic existence."

One more, he motioned to the barmaid.

"I lie and steal to pass the time, praying that I find purpose; 

praying that, somebody who doesn't have to, actually gives half a f**k about my miserable life."

He sipped at his beer.

"Why do I care?"

He chugged down whatever was left and let the barmaid know to bring him another.

"I am nothing more," 

he contemplated, 

"than a vile f*****g COCKROACH;

 slowly skittering its way to the inevitable and putrid end that it deserves."

Ryan gripped his fresh beer and proceeded to down it like the last four.

"Fitting, isn't it? 

He asked himself sarcastically;

 even pondering for a moment whether sarcasm was even warranted against one's own self, but came up un-resolved.

"A cockroach can outlast an atomic bomb, and the surrounding entrails of warped flesh locked within."

He finished off his beer and barely managed to rise from his bar-side post without knocking over all the nearby chairs and causing a scene.

"Sthorrey guythzs," he muttered drunkenly.

"I am a cockroach," 

his only sober thoughts picked up,

 "in the twilight of an atomic bomb; watching as the hot scorch of death eats away at everything around it."

Making his way over to the door, Ryan detoured to a vintage techni-color jukebox that hadn't played in years and ran his hand atop the machine;

 The Eagles', 'Desperado,' began to play.

"I," 

he concluded,

 "am a COCKROACH."

As he stepped out the door, flicking his thumb against his index finger once more and brought the empty flame up towards his face;

 he lit another cigarette.

 Taking one, long and drawn out drag off his cigarette, he murmured to himself,

 "I have always been, and will always be..." 

He exhaled slowly before walking off into the frigid distance, 

"a COCKROACH." 

Author's Note

First draft, let me know what you think!