they came to die

i'm having a roach problem in my squalid little apartment but there's not much i can do about it, because i'm having a problem with dead roaches, not live ones. i have yet to see a healthy roach skittering across the floor -- you know, you walk into the room and turn on the light and they all run for cover. not in my apartment -- i only see dead and dying roaches. roaches caught in the throes of death, upended on their backs, thrashing about helplessly in a desperate attempt to go home or wherever it is that roaches live.

really, isn't the whole point of roach poison to kill them? something else, something more mysterious is killing the roaches. it saves me from going to the trouble, but i'd much rather them die somewhere other than the floor of my apartment. it makes me wonder if there is radon gas seeping up from the ground, insidiously poisoning us all, or perhaps all the THC wafting through the house at night has a toxic effect on the little insects' systems.

whatever the reason for their demise, i've got to hand it to the little bastards -- they have a remarkably strong will to live. first i'll see them walking a bit crooked... sort of like an elderly human, tottering along in fits and starts, unable to move in a striaght line. they fight it for as long as they can, but once they flip over on their backs, the outcome is inevitable. but even then, a roach may spend days lying on its back, periodically twitching its legs and antennae in a bizzare cockroach redemption ritual. it never works, though, and the convulsions decrease in frequency until one day... nothing. the black void of death.