Cockroach City
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 453
Ian and Tom waited for Marty outside the small bottle-shop down the road from the City Botanical gardens. Marty looked older than the two, who were actually seventeen while Marty was only sixteen.

“Did you get it?” Ian asked Marty when he walked out of the store.

Marty held up a brown paper bag the size of a small bottle of Southern Comfort.

“You little ripper!” Tom said, almost shouting with excitement.

“Here’s a stogie for you to, mate,” Marty said, passing cigars to his two friends.

They walked briskly down the road to their favorite drinking spot, the park bench near the pond in the gardens. For the last few months they regularly went to the park to have a few drinks before they went to the Video Game Parlor near the Myer Centre.

Marty lit his stogie, tossed his Zippo to Ian, and then opened the bottle of booze. He didn’t smoke regularly, but often had the urge when he drank, which was only Friday nights now that he was in grade twelve at high school.

The three friends passed the Southern Comfort around until the bottle was empty.

“Hey, do you reckon our Rocket Fuel would be okay?” Ian said.

“That shit wasn’t okay when Tom made it in the first place,” Marty said. “What was in it again?”

“A bit of Chivas Regal, some Bundie Rum and a shot of Southern Comfort.” Tom said.

“Let’s go have a look anyway,” Ian said.

They walked to the bamboo plants on the opposite side of the pond.

“Do you even remember where you buried it?” Gerard said.

Tom looked around, then saw the mark he made at the base of one of the trunks.

“Here it is,” he said, digging out the jam jar with a flat rock.

“What’s that?” Ian said, pointing to a large dark object at the back of the bamboo.

“What’s what?” Gerard said, flicking the lid open on his lighter.

In the flickering light of the Zippo a cockroach the size of a German Sheppard puppy darted at them. Then another appeared, and another, until the ground could not be seen from the mass of scaly brown insects.

“Fucking hell!” Gerard screamed, falling to the ground under the weight of twenty insects.

Ian kicked at them, while Tom swung a broken piece wildly of bamboo to help clear them from their fallen friend.

“Help!” Gerard yelled.

The bamboo rustled violently and a stream of thousand more cockroaches raced out at them. Within minutes, the three teenagers were stripped to the bone by the Blattidae’s crushing mandibulates.