They Came in the Night!

A slapstick horror short story.

They came in the night. Great swarms of flying roaches. They hungered for eyeballs and eyeball related excretions.

It must’ve been sometime between two or three in the morning when little Barry woke us with his screaming. Shrill, torturous shrieks echoing from his room down the hall.

I groaned and rolled over, wrapping my pillow over my head. “Your turn,” I murmured.

“No, it’s not,” Mary grunted. “I went last time. Go and do your fatherly duty.”

I did not. Barry’s screams continued. Mary muttered something under her breath, which I didn’t quite catch, before rolling out of bed and stomping off.

I smiled to myself and snuggled deeper into my bedding. In the morning, I’d have to deal with a sleep deprived, angry wife. But for now, I had some undeserved rest to enjoy.

A moment later, Mary’s screams joined with Barry’s in a terrible midnight choir.

“Marcus!” she howled. “Marcus, come here! Quickly! There’s so many of them!”

I bolted upright, eyes wide, mind alert. I was out of bed and down the hall before my brain even registered what was happening. I barely even noticed the tiny shapes scuttling across the ceiling overhead.

I turned into Barry’s room and froze, stifling a muffled scream of my own.

Swarms of flying roaches, hundreds in number, each the length of a finger or otherwise longer, clad in chitinous carapace forged in the unlight of some sewer long-forgotten by man, with prehensile antennae and translucent webbed wings, hissing and buzzing, and descending in mass upon my son in his cot.

“Oh my god!” I cried.

Mary was already amongst them, batting at them with a fly-swat. “Marcus! Do something!”

I grabbed the broom from the corner and surged forward, primal, parental instinct overcoming disgust. They swarmed over my son’s face, over his eyes. Were they feeding? Did roaches eat eyeballs? No time to contemplate such horrors.

I waded into the depths of the roach cloud, swinging my broom in wide, sweeping strikes. They buzzed about me, flying clumsily, clambering over me, scratching me with prickly, spiny legs. So many.

One crawled into my eye, lapping at my eye juices with its rough, paddle-like mandibles. Then another, and another. I blinked and battered them away. They bit at my lids and pulled at my lashes.

I wrapped my arm across my eyes and, following the wails of my ten-month-old son, closed the last few paces blindly.

I groped through the insectoid cloud and closed my fingers over the cot’s railing. A tiny, trembling hand touched mine.

I risked opening my eyes, swatting roaches away from my screaming boy and sweeping them from the air. Then Mary was beside me, lifting Barry from his cot. The roaches closed in, nibbling at our eyes.

“Come o–Pft! Geh! Bleh!” I spat a roach onto the floor.

Then we ran with the roaches following close behind.

We stepped into the hall. Mary slammed the door. Only one roach managed to slip through. It hissed and flew at my face. I struck it down. It squirmed on the floor. I stamped it with my heel and it exploded, launching a line of roach innards across the carpet.

And then all was still with only the muffled hissing of the swarm trapped behind the door to break the silence. I blinked through blurred vision and watery eyes. My lids stung.

“What’s going on?” Mary asked. “Where did they all come from?” The skin around her eyes was raw and bloody.

Barry whimpered, clinging to her, chewed up eyelids jammed shut.

“I… I don’t know,” I said, trying to think. What had they been talking about in that podcast? Something about plagues of mutant super roaches from Texas? Cities evacuated. Lives destroyed. Eyeballs devoured. But this couldn’t be that.

I was a physiotherapist living in a middle-class suburban neighbourhood. I recycled my plastic and played fantasy football and ate delivery pizza every other Thursday. This sort of thing just didn’t happen to people like me, did it?

Something hissed overhead. I looked up and a dense mat of roaches descended.

“Run!” I shrieked before a roach kamikazed down my throat. I coughed and spluttered. Barry wailed. Mary ran, using her body to shield our son. I followed close behind, covering them with my broom.

We bolted through the front door into the cool night air. Clouds of roaches filled the moonlit sky. The neighbour’s lights were on. Yells of terror rang out from across the street. A manhole cover burst open and a procession of cat-sized roaches emerged, two…five…six of them.

“The car! We’ve got to get out of here.”

“What about the keys?”

I glanced back. The front door was dark with insectoid terrors. “Shit.”

Roaches closed in around us. The hissing was deafening. I held my broom in front of me, ready to mount some hopeless, final stand.

Then beyond the low fence, our neighbour, Old Jackson Nesbet, charged across his front lawn, roaring leaf blower in hand. He bellowed a battle cry as he blew back the abominations. He was making for the Toyota Corolla in his driveway, keys jingling in his other hand.

“Follow me!” I cried before charging for the fence line, swatting aside roaches as I went.

A roach, near the size of a large dog, scuttled towards Jackson. The old man blasted it with his leaf blower, but this sewerine monster was no pile of leaves.

I vaulted over the fence.

This mother of all roaches hissed, wings buzzing. It flew and latched on to Jackson’s face. Huge paddleesque mandibles scooped out his eyes with a wet, sickly squelching. He screamed and fell back, leaf blower spinning away.

I advanced, broom held spear-wise. The mother roach left off its feasting to face me.

The tiny ones converged on Jackson’s pulpy ex-eyes. He squirmed and he writhed and he screamed, and then he fell silent and still.

The mother roach flew at me. I smacked it, throwing it aside but snapped my broom in two. It landed on its back, legs scrambling wildly through the air.

Mary and I ran to Jackson. Roaches were all over him. I swung at them. They swarmed me, nibbling, buzzing, biting. Then the leaf blower roared and a howling wind struck me, blasting the roaches away. Mary stood wielding the leaf blower one handed with Barry wrapped in her other arm.

I knelt beside Jackson, and trying not to look at the ruin of his eye sockets, ripped the keys from his hand, then rose and turned and gasped.

Between us and Jackson’s Toyota, the mother roach awaited.

I pushed the keys towards Mary. She dropped the leaf blower and took them.

“Get Barry to the car,” I said.

“But what about–”

“Go!”

She hesitated.

With the splintered remains of the broom, I charged the mother roach. It buzzed and flew at me. I stabbed at it, but its armoured carapace deflected my blow. It rammed me, driving me back and down, mandibles grasping for my eyes. I fell with the roach on top of me, managing to keep my eyes safe, but dropping the broom handle.

Mary ran past us.

The mother roach and I struggled on the damp lawn. The roach hissed, spraying me with putrid spittle and bloody eye pulp. Prickly legs scrambled all over me.

A car door clicked, and an engine started.

I flailed for the broom handle with one hand, straining against its unbelievable strength with the other. Sandpapery, paddle-like mandibles scrapped against my face, abrading away great swaths of cheek skin. My hand closed on my broom handle. I roared. It hissed. I stabbed the wooden skewer into its mouth. It shuddered, mandibles flailing. I pushed it off and lurched to my feet and threw myself towards the car. The passenger door was already open. The engine was already running. Mary sat in the driver’s seat with Barry on her lap.

The mother roach rolled over and rushed after me. One end of the broom handle protruded from its mouth, the other from the back of its head.

I dived into the car and slammed the door shut.

Mary drove. The mother roach landed on the windscreen. The glass cracked and buckled. We screamed. Mary swerved onto the road, flinging the monster off to splat onto the footpath.

Then Mary floored it and we hurtled down the street, leaving the swarms of Texan super roaches far behind.

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Want to read more? The rest of my short fiction can be found here.

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Thank you for your time and attention, it truly is appreciated.