Bug Spray

I opened my eyes and groaned. Without even looking out of the window, I knew I wasn’t going to be going home today. Rain battered the metal roof of the small camper, and it looked like the roof sagged just a little bit more in the front with the weight of the gathering water. Please don’t let it collapse, I prayed, sitting up.
A quick lifting of the blinds confirmed my thoughts. The ground was a swampy mess, green all but hidden beneath a sea of mud and water. The surface of the puddles rippled jerkily as raindrops fell through the bare trees dotting the site. “Happy Spring,” I said aloud, and dropped the blinds back into their place.
I slid out of the sleeping bag and stretched, wiping the sweat off of my forehead. The little space heater on the table definitely did its job; the tiny camper didn’t hold heat very well, and outside was a chilly thirty degrees. The rain/sleet didn’t help the camper warm up any either, but the heater held its own, creating a bubble of intense heat around the front half of the camper at least. Coffee would have helped, I thought, sighing, but I had used the last of it for a watery brown disaster yesterday morning.
A loud vibration from the floor scared me half to death. I peered over the bed, and spotted the phone. Double checking for bugs, I picked it up. “Hey, dad.”
“Guess you’re staying another night?”
“Yeah, it’s a mess up here, you can almost hear the car sinking. The Ballards came over yesterday, or tried to, but they got stuck on the road right outside their trailer. Jeremiah walked over, to let me know they couldn’t get out to help me get out,” I grimaced. The kid was a nuisance and a half, but it was nice of him to walk all that way in the rain to keep me posted.
“Sorry, kid, I’d come get you if I could get off work,” dad beeped back on the two way, although what I heard was more like “Hide two if I could get work.” Reception isn’t real great here.
“I know dad, no biggie. I still have food, and the electric is working by some miracle, so it’s not that bad. This rain should let up soon and I’ll call to let you know when I’m coming home. Sound good?”
“Do you still have food?”
I took a deep breath. It’s only the bad connection, I thought, he probably didn’t hear me. It’s not his fault. “Yes, I still have enough food, don’t worry,” I repeated calmly, rolling my eyes.
“Alright, well, you call me if you need anything,” he said. “Roger, over and out.”
I shook my head and set the phone down. It was almost dead again, the battery sucked dry in the metal enclosure; I would have to go sit in the car to charge it again in awhile. Anything to get out of this camper.
Swinging my feet off the bed, I checked the floor carefully. You never knew what roaches or spiders were lurking down there, or above your head. I checked the ceiling and the walls as carefully as I had the floor and stood up. I hesitated. I had only planned to stay the weekend, and it was already Tuesday. All that was left was a packet of chicken Ramen noodles.
I was starving, but decided to save the noodles until later that night, for dinner. But maybe it would be better to at least get them out of the storage cupboard now, in the daylight, I thought. Yesterday morning there had been a bug of some sort hiding in the corner, twitching its antennae as my hand reached for the package, little black body scurrying toward the noodles as the light glittered on its midnight black body. I shuddered. If there were any bugs in there, I wanted light to see them, instead of ending up with one clinging to my hand, crawling up my arm, maliciously hiding in my clothing and avoiding my frantic slaps at myself to get it out. Hiding in my hair, clinging to my scalp unnoticed until I brushed my hair and ending up on my arm again, or waiting until I was asleep to crawl out of my hair, across my forehead, down my closed eyelids, into my open mouth…I could feel the tiny little legs already, and scratched myself all over, while still looking around for more little black bodies. Or brown; the spiders were worse than the roaches.
Slowly I walked over to the cupboard, cursing the light above the cupboard door. It had never worked, and made peering into the cabinet harder. I had put up the blinds on the nearest window last night, and what little sunlight there was trickled in. Reaching my hand up to the knob, I prayed anxiously that there were no insects inside.
Quickly, I flung the door open and stepped back half a step. I paused, waiting to see if anything was going to crawl out one of the sides. Nothing did. Not seeing anything on the front part of the shelves, I moved closer, eyes darting back and forth along the shelves, including the lower one. I didn’t want anything to jump at me from down there, creep across my shirt, up to my neck…
Don’t think about it! I told myself firmly. I focused on the packet of noodles, reached into the cabinet slowly, and screamed. I yanked my hand out, slammed the door, and threw myself backwards, heart pounding. There had been a roach on the door. Or something that looked like a roach anyway. How often had I been scared by a screw, a blob of mud, or simply my own petrified imagination? But I didn’t want to check to see which it was this time. It must have been a roach, had to have been.
My stomach growled, and hunger stabbed at my stomach. I hadn’t eaten yesterday either, or the day before, because of the damn bugs. Each time I convinced myself to try to get that last thing of noodles, I panicked when I saw the bug and slammed the door. I hated myself for it. I was not one of those people who screamed when they saw a fly, a bee, an inchworm, the kind of people afraid to get their hands dirty. I wasn’t! I could handle anything. Anything except spiders and roaches.
Checking myself six times before I was almost satisfied that the force of the door slamming had not forced the roaches legs from the door and caused it to fly onto me, I ran back and leaped into the bed. Curling up inside my sleeping bag, I cried, and screamed, and reassured myself that the bug was not on me. But that didn’t stop my hands from checking.1

By the time day three of not eating rolled around, I was exhausted. I slept as much as I could, to avoid moving around in the camper, deciding it was best to forget about the noodles.
Though the rain had stopped last night, I still couldn’t manage to get the car out. I had some pretty nice ruts though. I tried putting branches in the ruts like dad said, to give the tires some traction, but all that produced was a lot of smoke and deeper ruts. I needed a truck, but the only people nearby were the Ballards, and they were stuck too. I hoped they would be able to get out today, though I doubted it, remembering their hellacious hill of a driveway.
Hunger was now a dull ache in the pit of my stomach. I walked by the cabinet every time I had to go outside to charge my phone, but I never found the courage to open it again. Just walking by the damn thing made tears of frustration pour down my cheeks. I hated being this weak.
I sat wrapped in my sleeping bag on my bed, staring at the cabinet. “This is ridiculous,” I said aloud. “You’re acting like a baby. If you’re hungry, just go eat! So what if a roach gets on you, it’s just a bug; it’s not going to kill you.” Just thinking about the noodles made my stomach twist and tears spring to my eyes. “I can do this.”
Standing up, I refused to look at the floor, the ceiling, the walls. I just clenched my fists and kept walking, struggling not to think of bugs or roaches or anything but how incredible the noodles would taste. I stopped at the door.
Slowly, I opened the door. No roach on the door, nothing on the shelves. Nothing but the noodles and a few cobwebs half hidden in the shadows. Taking a deep breath, I snatched the noodles out of the cupboard, and slammed the door.
“I did it,” I whispered, slumping against the wall in relief, clutching the noodles so tightly I hoped the bag didn’t explode, not after everything I went through to get them. I smiled, and was reaching for the water jug when I felt a faint tickle on my hand.
I froze, not wanting to look at my hand. But, of course, I couldn’t help it. At the sight of a brown spider with a body the size of my thumb nail I started to shake. I could feel my skin go clammy and a cold, terrified sweat rose through my pores. The spider didn’t move, seemingly content to sit on my hand and glare at me through its hundreds of little eyes. I could feel each of the spider’s eight legs perched on my skin. Eight hairy, gnarly legs, ready to leap if my hand began to twitch any more than it was.
My other hand fumbled past the water jug and onto the roll of paper towels. I grabbed them, and slowly brought them near the spider. Taking a deep breath, I brought the roll down hard on the spider, holding it in place while I swept my hand around to the counter. I set my spider-hand down and leaned on the paper towel roll atop it with all my strength. The struggling legs scraped across my skin frantically, then stilled. A few minutes later, I peeled the paper off of my hand. The spider was dead. Hastily, I cleaned the remains off of my hand and tossed the soiled roll into the plastic bag I used for trash.
Still shaking, I managed to make the noodles without spilling too many, and was raising the last forkful to my mouth when a horn honked outside. The Ballards had gotten out after all. I flew outside, barefoot, sinking in mud above my ankles, and laughed.
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