Finalist in the 2023 WOW! Women on Writing Personal Essay contest

One of the chief advantages of living in Southern California is the lack of wildlife. No, not the bobcats and coyote kind—that we have in abundance—but the buzzing, creeping kind that make my skin crawl.

In a four-letter word: bugs.

I’ve long believed insects, with their exoskeletons and extra eyes, are actually aliens from outer space, sent to this planet to propagate, invade our picnics, and in all instances, give me the willies.

Which made what I was seeing that night all the more terrifying. I’d been left alone and “unsupervised,” I like to joke, while my husband was away on a business trip. By the third night I was eating dinner in front of the TV and staying up way past my usual 9 p.m. bedtime. Cherry pie at 10 p.m. Wild times.

Ginger’s alert came around 10:30 p.m., a throaty trilling sound cats make when they spot a fellow member of the animal kingdom. I found her pacing in our front foyer staring up at the ceiling. I looked up, too, shifting position to better match her line of sight. That’s when I saw it. Or should I say them. Two long, hair-thin strands hanging down from the inner edge of a recessed ceiling light. And they were waving at me.

I froze, unable to do anything but stare as more of the mystery creature slid down and into view. That’s when I had my first inkling of the horror of it all. I scooped Ginger up, tucked her in the bedroom with her sister, Mary Ann, then ran back just in time to see the dangling alien’s head do a nearly 360-degree scan of its surroundings.

Help. I needed help. I grabbed my phone and called my next-door neighbor, only to hear Vivian’s outgoing message tell me to leave a message, she’d get back to me as soon as possible.

I said a bad word, then another, as I saw the thing start to scoot back up into its ceiling hidey-hole. No, no, no, that could not happen, because, swear-to-God, if it got into the ceiling crawl space above, free to randomly pop out like some crazed Stephen King clown, me and my two cats would have to move into a hotel that very night, that very minute.

But it didn’t slither back. Instead, it slid further down to reveal more of its brown glistening body, and I saw the biggest roach I had ever seen in my entire bug-fearing life.

I also saw with fated clarity my chance.

I raced to the kitchen and grabbed the ant spray from underneath the sink, the one I knew shot out its poison in a laser-like stream, good. I ran back, aimed my weapon up, and fired. Direct hit!

Which was only good in theory.

In reality the strike only served to release the beast from its perch on the light, dropping it to the floor like an invading commando, its hideously long antennae waving at me like two tiny swords. Somehow it managed to right itself and start to scurry away. 

NOOO! I blasted it again, this time not letting up on the spray, not giving in, all the while screaming my head off and yelling “Die! Die! Die!”—which, please know, is very unlike me—until it rolled onto its back, and with a final flailing of its gazillion legs went still.

For several erratic heartbeats I held my position, breathing heavy and pointing the spray can like a gun, ready to plunge the trigger again should the thing come back to life like monsters and psychotic mistresses tend to do. But the alien invader stayed dead.

And then, a distant, mechanical female voice said, “If you’re satisfied with your message, press one. To re-record your message, press two.”

What? Confused, I looked over in the direction of the sound. Ohmygod, my phone! 

It, too, lay on its back on the counter, “Vivian” lit up across its face. I must’ve dropped it there when I ran to get the ant spray—dropped it and never hung up. Which meant that when Viv picked up the recorded message in the morning, she’d hear nothing but my desperate screams with a few expletives thrown in for good measure.

Okay, yes, that was unfortunate, but I couldn’t think about that when a bigger problem was lying dead in my foyer. I raced to the garage, retrieved a broom, then hurried back to stand unsteadily regarding the carnage, assessing my options.

The front door, just inches away, was my best bet. Except I could see that the path it would take swinging open would collide with the body, pushing it further into the house. Not an option.

I ended up using the broom as a literal 10-foot pole and—trying not to gag—nudge the deceased a little further to the left. Then I reached over, flung open the front door and swept the intruder out to the welcome mat, then onto the driveway, and finally, with a last mighty swing for the bleachers, onto the grass.

I ran back inside, locked the deadbolt, and leaned back against the door. Finally catching my breath, I tried to reach my neighbor Vivian again despite the late hour. Still no answer. I left a second message to assure her I was alive and well, just a little home-alone excitement with a bug, and to please disregard the first voice mail, “thanks!”

The next day she called back. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” I said. “You got my second message, right?”

“Yes—but only after I’d heard the first one. I tell you, my heart nearly stopped.”

“Ha, yours nearly stopped. Sorry about that, but it was really big, like one of those water bugs they have in Hawaii or Florida.” An uneasy thought. “Hey, you guys haven’t seen anything like that over there, have you?”

“No, nothing like that but the other day we did have a lizard caught between our sliding glass door and the screen. It wasn’t injured or anything, just stuck.”

Oh, right, a little lizard, I thought, no comparison. Until she texted me a picture, and then, Holy smokes, Batman, that thing was huge! At least five hand lengths from head to tail. It was placidly clinging to their living room slider’s mesh screen, facing the backyard, exposing its bright yellow-striped, reptilian skin to the camera.

I stared at my phone and gasped. Alien.