Midnight Dispatch

12:35 am: I was seated on the toilet, pants at my ankles, doing bathroom things, when I looked down to see a cockroach crawling around in my shorts. Moving fast, I evacuated the room and shut the door, only to learn the hard way that the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor was more than cockroach-height. I grabbed the hardest, heaviest object I could find (in a cruel twist of irony, an ecology textbook) and chased the bug into the corner of the room. Heart racing, spirit pitched in mortal combat, I raised the book in preparation of the final blow – and with a crack of thunder, the power went out, plunging us both into darkness. By the time turned my phone light on, the roach was gone.