Originally Posted by Trollheart
So I know that my house used to be like all the others, a target for the roving ninjas of A Taste of Mumbai and its parent corporation, Blue Fish Industries. But then, one day, it all stopped. No more did I find menus extolling the virtues of Biryani, Chicken tikka or other stuff I would never dream of eating. I found – to my initial delight, though that did not last – that I could open my door in the morning and not see the ominous cardboard menu with its half-hook hanger swinging precariously from my doorknob like some climber who had lost his hold and was trying desperately not to fall. It was great for a while, but then some nagging voice inside me started asking why?
Why was my house the only one – and it was the only one; the Indian takeaway ninjas even continued to put their menus on old Mr. Bennett's house, and he's been dead now for six months and the house vacant – that the indefatigable agents of A Taste of Mumbai ignored, even avoided? After a while, I began to feel an outcast, left out, ignored, shunned. There was a time when I would have given anything to have seen one of those stupid, badly-printed menus hanging from my door, just once.
But my door remained menu-less, and still does.
My letterbox never rattles, my door bell never rings, no footsteps wend their weary way up my pathway to breathlessly inform me that Virgin are doing a great deal right now if I switch my TV and broadband, or to try to convince me to switch to prepay power. How I used to loathe these people, who badgered and annoyed me and always seemed to call at the most inconvenient moments. What wouldn't I give now to watch one smile his or her plastic smile and rattle off a list of benefits, screw up his or her face in surprise when I inform them that I'm an “old-fashioned sort, not prone to change”, and send them off, shaking their head? Well, now I wouldn't be so eager to see them off. I'd even invite them in, make them a cup of tea. I might even sign their form, make their day, earn them a few quid in commission. What, in the grand scheme of things, does it matter if I have Sky or Virgin, or get my electricity from this or that supplier? Just to have human companionship...
The mention of electricity supply brings my already staggering mind back to the recollection of the bills that never arrived, and the huge amounts of electricity being consumed, and for a moment I'm confused. I don't use that much electricity. I don't stay up late at night. So who is using this power?
And then I remember, as I believe I continue to forget, and remember, and will forget, and remember again; as I perhaps always have done, and always will do.
I remember when they came.
II. Cockroaches
This is not quite true. I don't remember when they came. I don't even know for certain if they ever did come, or if they have been here all along. Perhaps this is their house. Perhaps, if I am not in fact a spirit wandering these halls without realising it, I am the interloper, here for some strange reason I can't fathom. If so, then who actually lives here? A relative? A friend? Business colleague? But no: I do not know these people, though I know them very well. That is to say, I am aware of them. They are always here. They are always around me. Perhaps they always have been. I know they are here. I know they may always have been here. I know they probably always will be here. But I don't know who they are.
My fragmenting memory throws shards at me, like a drunken knife-thrower who knows he is about to lose his job, but some weird sense of ... I don't know, call it honour maybe? Dedication? Professionalism? Whatever it is, it compels him to see out his last night. Which, given his profession and his current state, is probably not wise. It's a pretty safe bet someone is going to get hurt, perhaps badly. My memory surely knows this too: bombard me with too many unrelated pieces of my past – if it is my past, I can never be certain: my brain may be playing tricks on me – and one may take my very reason out, reduce me to a gibbering simpleton.
Perhaps this has already happened. Perhaps I am, even now, sitting at a metal table in a featureless grey room, the table bolted to the floor to prevent my using it as a weapon, I myself shackled to the chair and locked into a jacket without sleeves, drooling and humming quietly to myself. Behind me, perhaps I have scrawled on the wall messages I believe terribly important, but that nobody will read, or even come close enough to decipher. The stench drives them back, but I just laugh. It is not a happy laugh.
If I am mad, then in a really strange way all of this makes sense, because it makes none in the real world. One of the memory grenades impacts upon or near me, showering me with jumbled images and sounds, and I see a man arriving at my door. He does not knock. He does not ring the bell. Somehow, he is inside. He has not spoken one single word. His eyes are hidden behind dark mirrored sunglasses, although it is a cold morning. A line from Poe flits through my tortured memory: “Distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December…”
Yes, that’s right. There can be no doubting it now. A hundred-and-seventy-year-old poem confirms it. The day everything changed, a thin sleet was in the air and I was feeling cold, and making vague plans for Christmas.
December. It was definitely December.
And the man was standing inside my house. I had not invited him in. He had not asked to be invited in. But by the same token, I have no recollection of having tried to stop him, to question him, to bar his entry. Somehow, it seems almost laughable that I would even think of having done such a thing. It hurts my head to think; it always brings on those headaches I so live in fearful anticipation of. A voice in my head, to which I try unsuccessfully not to listen, tells me that the man has always been there, and why should he not? It whispers seductively: some things are fixed. Day follows night. The sky is blue. This man is in your house. There is no need to ask why, it is enough to know that he is, that he should be, and he is. There is no conversation to be had. Here is some music...
And as naturally as the man arrived in my house, others came too. I have hazy visions of black vans, SUVs, people moving equipment into the house, the man directing them – or was it him? Suddenly, there are two, three, four, exactly like him. No, ten. Fifty. A hundred? How can a hundred men fit into one small house, I ask myself, and I am told Here is some music. I listen to the music. It's quite good. Ambient. I forget my reservations. There are a hundred men in my house. A thousand. I have lost count. Every single one of them is identical, and none of them have spoken a single word, neither to each other nor to me. I believe, with a quite earth-shattering faith, that they never will. I don't believe it's that they can't speak, I just feel that in some odd way I am beneath their notice, as if I were an insect, and who speaks to insects? By the same token, who requests from a cockroach permission to enter as they walk across the threshold? That's what I am to them: a cockroach.
And yet, to me, at times, the description better fits them. They have taken over my house. They all dress identically, in black. There is no way of ever even conceiving of getting rid of them, and every day more arrive, till the house seems like it will burst if it has to accommodate any more. It doesn't, though. How many hundreds of them are there now? How many thousands? They swarm all over my house, surging up the old rickety staircase in huge numbers like a black wave, swirling around the kitchen (though they never seem to eat) and constantly banging, hammering, kicking at the walls as if testing for something. There is barely room for me to carry out my daily activities, few as they are.
They have infested my house.
Cockroaches...
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