“Those roaches better watch out. I’ll eat them.”
Keith Richards on his post-apocalyptic survival strategy.
My Queen Street apartment teemed with roaches. Whenever a light was switched on, they scattered like sprinters at a starting gun, scuttling into walls where their bodies rustled together, lush as Amazonian leaves.
Eventually, light was no longer life or death. They multiplied. Wattage ricocheted off their fecal-colored armor. I was told that they would climb lampshades if they nested.
“Instant death,” guaranteed the local shopkeeper, proffering cockroach chalk. “Well, not instant,” he backpedaled, “But certain. Draw lines around your house. Will kill them.”
“Painfully?” I wondered.
He shrugged: “What you care what cockroach feel?”
Home, I drew snares in poison chalk. Soon, dead and twitching roaches, crackly as dry leaves, layered my living room like a plague of locusts—
Or Keith’s Last Supper.