The Golden Cockroach, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Free Story
The Golden Cockroach
Free Story
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Other Titles
About the Author
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Copyright (Epub)
The Golden Cockroach
By J.B. Reynolds
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“In January, I went to a tennis camp at the Noosa Meadows Country Club. Lleyton Hewitt was doing a special coaching clinic. I didn’t want to go but like, Dad insisted. He said if I didn’t do some more work on my backhand then I’d never make the national team. He’s never understood me. I was like, oh my God! I don’t even want to make the fucking team! I mean I know I’m good and all, but it’s just like, HELLO! I’m eighteen years old! I’m not ready for that kind of pressure. I just want to like, party, you know? Meet some nice ladies, like yourself Nina, and get down and party. Come to think of it, I know a like, really pumping club we could go to after this if you want. I’m friends with the bouncer there so I could get you in no worries.”
This was the third time Nina had been out with Jamie, and she was disgusted with herself. He was a complete moron. She should have known better after the first two times, but he was rich and good looking and drove an Audi TT. Nina liked the car. She could have liked it more, but he wouldn’t let her drive it. It was front wheel drive and powered by a four-cylinder, 1.8 litre turbocharged engine, producing one-eighty BHP. It was a beautiful machine—sleek, fast, and agile—but rather too refined for her tastes.
She had dated this guy called Chad, a couple of months before Jamie, and he’d owned a four wheel drive Skyline GT-R with a six-cylinder, 2.6 litre twin-turbo engine. It produced about three-twenty BHP and Chad had let her drive it a couple of times. One night, he and his friends had wanted to watch some stupid action movie, and she’d asked Chad if she could take his car down to the video store to get it for them. She’d driven it round the block a couple of times on the way back and had it up to one-sixty on Waterworks Road, which she thought wasn’t bad. She loved how angry and virile and violent it felt. It was the superior car of the two, but Chad had wrapped it round a telephone pole a couple of weeks later. He was lucky—nothing more than a few bruises and a minor case of whiplash—but she’d dumped him anyway. Now she was beginning to wonder whether her strategy of choosing boyfriends by the cars they drove was such a good idea after all. She’d been doing it for a year now and had been for rides in some beautiful cars, but had yet to meet a guy who wasn’t a complete arsehole.
“They had a dance party at the Reef Hotel one night with this DJ, Nik Fish—he’d come up from Melbourne. Well, as I’m sure you know, Noosa isn’t like, the best place for nightclubbing, but this guy was good. They had a smoke machine and a strobe and stuff; it was pretty well set up. Nik Fish, he was going hard, and everyone in the joint was like, up and dancing. The whole place was pumping. I dunno… it was like he was throwing energy around the room or something. It was mostly hard trance and house and stuff like that. Like, I’m more of a drum and bass man myself, but it was still pretty cool.”
He may have driven a nice car, but he was a cheapskate. This restaurant was the pits—completely lacking in atmosphere. They were the only people dining, and the honeyed harmonies of a Westlife CD were wafting through the tinny, ceiling-mounted speakers. Other Chinese restaurants she had been to always played that weird, high-pitched, Chinese pop music. She wasn’t a fan, but it was better than Westlife, and all part of the Chinese dining experience. This place had nothing. Just a couple of pictures of goldfish on the wall. She’d even had to ask for chopsticks when they’d brought out her chow mein.
He’d taken her to a wonderful Indonesian restaurant in The Valley the first night they went out, but she hadn’t slept with him. The next time they’d gone to a bar in Paddington and he’d got her drunk, but she hadn’t slept with him then either. He wasn’t even trying this time. They were just around the corner from his parents’ place. In Morningside, for God’s sake! Suburban, Chinese restaurant hell. The Golden Dragon. Chinese restaurants were always called The Golden Dragon. The Golden Dragon or The Golden Palace or The Golden Something.
“I went to the toilets and this guy came right up to me and asked if I wanted to buy some pingas. I said ‘hell yeah’, and he pulled this little plastic bag out of his pocket and it was full of them. So right there and then I bought like, five or six pills. I took a couple that night and they were really, really good. It was madness. Like, I was just dancing and moving and talking shit to all these people I’d never met before, all night long. I stumbled out the door at whatever hour of the morning it was and took a cab back to the club and went straight to bed. I missed the morning session and someone came looking for me and found me in my room and tried to wake me up but I was out to it. I woke up at like, three that afternoon. My roommate was sitting on the edge of his bed and said they wanted to see me in the office. Turns out he’d dobbed me in for going out all night and they’d searched my room and found the pingas in my jeans. They were shit scared about it because some kid had OD’d the year before. They sent me home that evening. They called Dad of course and he was like, so pissed off. He didn’t speak to me for a month afterwards.”
Jamie ate his sweet and sour chicken with a fork. He said he didn’t know how to use chopsticks and wasn’t interested in trying. He’d talked the whole meal with his mouth half-full with chicken and rice and Nina had just stared at him, repulsed, but at the same time strangely fascinated. He may have been rich, but he had no class whatsoever. She supposed that a hundred years ago, being rich, you could’ve been expected to have some class. Maybe even fifty years ago. Not so anymore. She watched him take his fork and stab a poor, defenceless piece of chicken and shove it in his mouth, then talk about himself while chewing. With each word he spoke, she got to see the pulpy, vulgar mess rolling about inside his mouth, and all the while he remained oblivious to her disgust. She watched him attack his plate again and again, like a robot—an eating machine. The steady rhythm of his movements and his stupefying anecdotes were on the point of lulling her to sleep when she saw something move amongst the orange goo of his meal. Was that what she thought it was? It was! A bloody great cockroach, supine and drowning in thick sweet and sour sauce, legs raised and struggling in the middle of his plate. She was about to say something, but when she looked up at Jamie he had his mouth wide open and stuffed with masticated chicken and she just couldn’t bring herself to. He was engaged in telling his story and wasn’t paying any attention to his dish.
She nodded her head and said, “Really? How very interesting.” She kept one eye on his plate as he continued to eat and tell her what he’d done for Christmas, and sure enough, a couple more mouthfuls and he plunged his fork right through the meaty cockroach and raised it, skewered and dripping sauce, up to his mouth.
“We’ve got this great beach house like, right on the Noosa River. I’d been there all week with some of the guys from school and the place was a complete mess. Mum and Dad were coming up Christmas morning and we’d been up all Christmas Eve on a drinking binge. There was like, beer cans and pizza crusts everywhere, and Evan—I think I’ve told you about Evan before—well, he puked all over the leather couch.”
He chewed and swallowed the entire filthy creature without skipping a beat. Nina could have sworn she heard the exoskeleton crunch as he bit through it. She watched him pinch finger and thumb and remove a single, spiky black leg from his teeth. He held it, protruding from between his nails, and a puzzled frown creased his handsome brow.
“What the hell’s this?” he exclaimed.
“That, my dear Jamie, is a cockroach leg.”
“But I picked it out of my teeth!”
Nina nodded. “Uh huh. You just ate a cockroach. And a big one too.”
“And you knew? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I wanted to see if you would eat it.”
“Oh my God! You bitch! I can’t believe… oh jeez... I think I’m gonna be sick.” Jamie went very pale and cupped his hand over his mouth. “I’m serious! I’m gonna puke! Get me a bucket!”
The waitress had poked her head out of the kitchen to see what the fuss was about and Nina waved her over. “Can we have a bucket please?”
“Bucket? What you want bucket for?”
“To be sick in.” Nina pointed to her mouth and mimed being sick. Then she pointed to Jamie. “He wants to throw up in a bucket.”
“Why? Food no good?”
Nina shrugged. Jamie hunched forward over his plate, groaned, and retched. A thin trickle of bile ran between his cupped fingers and down his chin and he gestured wildly at the waitress.
“I think he really wants a bucket,” said Nina.
The waitress dashed off into the kitchen and returned with a red plastic bucket and the chef. She handed it to Jamie and he retched again and plunged his head into it, disgorging the contents of his stomach while the waitress and chef looked on. It was quite a display. His whole body pitched and convulsed and long, guttural groans tore themselves loose from the depths of his insides. Nina was impressed. She wondered if he hadn’t thrown up some vital internal organs with his meal. When he was f
The chef and waitress followed him out, but Nina sat and observed the scene through the windows of the restaurant. Jamie leaned over a short hedge and heaved another thin stream of bile into the bright green foliage. When he was done with that, he clambered into his Audi, slammed the door, and drove off with a screech of rubber.
The chef and waitress returned and asked Nina if she was okay. She insisted that she was.
“He don’t like sweet and sour chicken?” asked the chef.
“I guess not,” Nina replied.
“Chow mein okay though, yes?”
“Oh yeah. The chow mein was just fine thanks. But I think I’ll be going now.”
They offered to give her the meals free of charge. She insisted on paying for them. They accepted payment for her meal but refused any money for Jamie’s.
“No, we couldn’t,” said the chef. “It would bring very bad luck.”
Nina shrugged. Who was she to argue? The Chinese knew a lot more about luck than she did. She thanked them again and stepped outside into the cool April night. She walked up to the taxi rank and caught a cab home. She smiled all the way and was still smiling when she turned the key in the lock to her house. She could hear her parents upstairs, preparing for bed. She went into the kitchen and made herself a hot chocolate. She sipped it, contented, leaning against the kitchen bench. From the corner of her eye, she saw a cockroach scuttle out from beneath the bench and past her foot. She thought twice before stepping on it.
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Other Titles
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Coming Soon
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J.B. Reynolds
J.B. Reynolds lives in rural Northland, New Zealand, where he raises children and chickens. He writes humorous short fiction in which tragedy meets comedy and character reigns supreme. His first short story was published while he was a university student, and in between that and a return to serious writing in 2016, he has worked as a graphic designer, landscaper, ski and snowboard technician, film critic, librarian, apple picker, and baker of muffins and teacakes.
Nowadays, when not writing, he’s a husband, father, and high school teacher (not necessarily in that order). He enjoys sailing, cycling, and playing music, really loud, when his wife and kids aren’t at home. He has a big garden where he likes to get his fingernails dirty, and he loves to eat the things that grow in it.
Find out more at
jbreynolds.net
To my wife, Leanne, for all her love and support.
Acknowledgements
A big thank you to my cousin, Mac Jones, who inspired me to begin my journey in the world of indie publishing.
The Golden Cockroach is published by Tsubaki Press
www.tsubakipress.com
info@tsubakipress.com
Copyright © J.B. Reynolds 2016
All rights reserved
jbreynolds.net
Cover design by J.B. Reynolds
Cover and pirate images © Fotosearch.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0-473-37489-1 (Epub)
J.B. Reynolds, The Golden Cockroach
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