Spray Glitter At Your Fears And Still Be Afraid

I didn't want to panic or freak out today when I saw the thing in my periphery move quickly across my bathroom floor and toward the cabinet where I keep my towels.

I mean, maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. Perhaps it was a sweet, innocent little mouse staring in its own narrative in which it hoped I gave it a cookie. I'm clumsy, I could have dropped something that was rolling away without noticing...

Of course it wasn't any of those things!

My imagination had been rushing to excuse away the hideous truth! It wasn't any number of things I could have told myself it was. 

It was a fucking giant, horrible palmetto bug trying to wedge it's awful bug body and all of it's disgusting fucking limbs behind my cabinet door. A realization that immediately caused me to both panic and freak out.

I hate palmetto bugs. I. Hate. Them.

I firmly believe my fear for palmetto bugs is so deeply rooted it was instilled in me while I was in the womb. My mother tells a story about being hugely pregnant and home alone and reaching into a cabinet only to be latched onto by a monstrous palmetto bug. You cannot convince me her scream of terror did not resonate with fetal me. My mom probably would have given birth right then and there, had I not been so afraid of the bug myself that I opted to stay in the oven a little while longer. Like, until the coast was clear and it was actually time for me to be born. 

Naturally, when I saw the creepy hind legs of this insect demon poking out from behind the cabinet door, I was frozen with fear. I was vulnerable and without a weapon. Even with a weapon, the idea of smashing palmettos causes me to cringe and gag. I couldn't possibly bring myself close enough to kill it, but I also couldn't possibly live with a palmetto having free range of my bathroom. (Insert chilling image of shaking out a towel only to rediscover said palmetto.)

Oh hell no! I'd burn the whole place down before I let that happen!

Well, not really because I couldn't guarantee I'd be able to get my cats out in time, but you get the idea. 

This bug had to be stopped. 

I had to be the one to stop it. 

I kept my eyes on the legs while I reached for the first thing I could find: Silver glitter hairspray from two Halloweens ago. 

I slowly opened the cabinet door. 

There it was. 

That repulsive mother fucker. 

I squeezed down on the spray nozzle for that aerosol can as hard as I could, glitterizing my floor and everything surrounding the damn thing. It moved and so I shifted my arm and continued spraying until I felt sick from the fumes. 

Only when I was choking from the chemicals did I stop to examine the carnage. 

And wouldn't you know, the bug wasn't there. 

It was gone. Glittery, surely. But not writhing with regret for having crossed my path; not on its back waiting to die. 

I don't know where it went.  

For obvious reasons, I didn't want to stick my head in the cabinet where it was hiding. 

I didn't have time to stop and search for it. I had to go to work. 

Now I'm home from work and I have some time to secure my cats, I think it might be time to try some matches...