*The following story is fictional

“Aaaaah!” Erin gasped.

Crawling across her pink, lace embroidered bedspread, a juicy cockroach was making its way to where Erin sat cross-legged in front of her laptop.

Ever since she was little, pests of any kind sent her running for the hills. Erin was alone in her house that night. Her parents were out of town on an anniversary getaway, and her sister was spending the night at a friend’s house.

More frightened by the idea of letting the insect roam free through the house, Erin mustered the resolve to slam the roach as hard as she could against the soles of her converse, despite the soft cushion material of her bed making the process a bit more difficult.

Slimy bluish-black guts plastered her now ruined bedspread, forcing her to withhold adding a pile of her own vomit to the unsightly scene.

Pulling herself together, she grabbed some OxiClean from one of the shelves above the washing machine and squirted it across the stain in an attempt to rid herself of the awful memory.

Satisfied, she went to return the OxiClean only to find another roach crawling in its place. This time she grabbed the fly swatter, but before she could kill it, another roach crawling on the wall to her right reached her peripheral vision. Both roaches were seeking lower ground, and she waited as they made their way down the hall.

“Something’s not right,” she thought. “I hardly ever see a roach in this house, and three in one evening is just absurd.”

She also noticed both of the roaches were moving towards hers sister’s closed bedroom.

Slowly she made her way to her sister’s door, just as the roaches slipped through the crack in the bottom. Trembling, she shut her eyes and clumsily grabbed the doorknob.

The door creaked open and what she laid her eyes on released a bloodcurdling scream from her lips so loud it could wake up the dead.

Hundreds of roaches were swarming around in her sister’s room.

In a mad rush she dialed her sister’s number, but every time she dialed there was no answer. This was not like her sister, who would usually answer Erin on a moment’s notice.

One thing was for sure, she could not stay in that house any longer. She ran out the front door into the cool night air, pitch black save for a few street lamps due to the new moon.

She wished she could call her parents, but the place they were staying at was off the grid with no cell reception.

Walking aimlessly, she realized she subconsciously had walked towards her sister’s bedroom window, which she noticed for the first time lay oddly ajar. Something crunched beneath her converse, and it wasn’t leaves.

Roaches began to crawl up her legs, sending more screams through the otherwise peaceful night.

Her neighbor rushed over with a flashlight, wondering what the commotion was all about.

The feeble beam of light was all he needed to illuminate the dead body lying a few feet away from where Erin now stood unable to move from the shock.

He recognized that body; it was Erin’s sister.