Pros and Cons of Being A Cockroach 4.

Along the way of life, friends you made when you were young grew up and get older like you, but they don't necessarily go on the same path you choose. Friends got happily married, Anne once was on that road too but never stayed for as long. Friends have their husbands and beautiful children, busy taking care of their husbands and children, busy traveling with them, busy sharing life with them or with some other rich friends, and it never was Anne.

And boyfriends, lovers, especially the one she loved the most, visited her the least. "Maybe, I was never the love of his life like he was mine, but only a friend with benefit. We never reached to see a movie together, and we never made it too far from my apartment. He was always too busy, working, and taking care of some people he truly cared about. And money was never enough for him. He was always looking for a better social status and more success. But what is success? Living a life so secure and so dull without love and passion?"

"And ex-husband? Well, let's not even go there. It's just another humiliating and heartbreaking story. We've moved on, and remember how hard it was to get yourself together, so, don't go there!"- She tells herself.

Roach is living the time of his life. He never thought that he can make someone happy, just by being there. He pays full attention to everything his lady says. He can't believe how a person can bear a life full of loss and solitude. He is now, more than ever, so sure that his choice is right. He feels a kind of satisfaction that he never experienced before that he can paint someone's life with sharing his regular life as a cockroach.

He goes back to his true identity every day after the Sun rises. It's a dangerous however free life. He can roam around as he wants and visit many places where no humans can reach, like those corners behind the kitchen cabinets, inside the toaster, or the holes where the gas pipeline gets through. He can do so many things that no men can, such as, crawling along the inside walls of the sewers, feeling the most subtle trembling of the earth, or sniffing every single scent in the city. However, a life under the broad daylight still doesn't fit fully the need of a cockroach.

Sometimes when he got tired, or when there are too many people on the streets, in the food stands and restaurants and it gets too dangerous, he returns to Anne's apartment where he can always get a good rest. He can watch Anne sleeping sweet and sound, he feels safe and consoled too. On top of that, he feels responsible for his lady now. He tells himself: "I can't afford to risk my life now. If anything bad happens to me, and I am not able to come back and tell her what has happened to me, and I even got nobody to notify Anne for me that I got hurt or killed. She'll be worried sick, and she'll be devastated and be alone again. I can't let that happen."

Just on the thought of her crying over not seeing him and knowing nothing about him, Roach feels that he's about to have a heart attack. So he goes out less and less, and till one day he stops going out. He stays in both when he is a human at night and a cockroach in the day, just to be by her side. There he is, even though he is a cockroach during the day, he still feels like a human inside.

But Roach can't help getting curious about the world behind this door. "What does it feel like walking in human's world without being despised and without everybody wanting you dead because I'm human?" Roach longs to know it too much.

It's been nice to have a company, especially one like Roach, so considerate, so consoling, so warm, and so charming, but Anne, can't help wondering: "What is this anyway?"

"I know, I know, I'm free every day after he leaves for his cockroach life. I can have my life too, and we do have fantastic conversations and connections, I laugh with him like I never laughed with anyone else before. And we can cry together when we feel sad, and we argue so freely without fearing of being hated or abandoned. Oh and I do love him, so much."

But it also has become a ball and chain. She feels loved and lost at the same time.

"Who is he? What is he?"- Anne feels so powerless. Because Roach is so real but yet so surreal. What should she hold on to? And who the hell in the world has a relationship like this? With a man that is also a cockroach?

"What will happen afterwards?"

"Where do we go from here?"

Neither of these two can remember how many sunsets and how many dawns they have seen together. How many days have passed? Since when they stopped counting? Roach even found a grey hair one day when he looks at himself in the mirror. Since when have they stopped talking like they were used to? Since when have they even stopped looking at each other? They do still sit down at the kitchen table or get cozy on the couch, but it's the silence that occupies the house.

One is reading, and the other writing, everything seems fine. Roach pours tea for Anne, and she says thank you. And then.

Silence.

They both sense an awkwardness and restlessness in the air. Maybe it's time.

It's funny enough that they seem tired of this life but they still got the connection. This night, they lift up their heads, looking at each other and open their mouths at the exact same time.

"I…"

"I…"

They burst into laughter and tears.

"I think I might know what you wanna say. So tell me."- Roach trying to be a real gentleman.

"It's time, Roach."- Anne says so while shaking her head.

"And I know you feel it too." - Anne keeps going, she feels responsible to be reasonable and understanding because she is the real human here.

"This love we have and the company we give each other has become a prison for you, and for me."