Winged Valkyrie by Doxa Papachartofyli

Photo by Erik Karits: https://www.pexels.com/photo/cockroach-in-macro-photography-11022142/

Writing inspired by the following SWC prompts:

Eight-Legged Intruder
How does your character react to seeing the MASSIVE spider in the bath?

Winged Valkyrie 

by Doxa Papachartofyli

Sabine shut the door behind her, letting her bag land with a heavy thud on the floor, as she rolled her neck, delighting at the cracking melody it produced.
Another day she’d survived the fiery inferno of the Athenian summer. Well, half a day. She had decided an Austrian girl could only take so much and had taken her leave from the University.
She remembered her previous summer in Vienna, huffing and puffing her way through the U6, commenting how intolerable the heat was, wondering how people were expected to go out and work, when the temperature had risen to an unfathomable 350 degrees.
She laughed at her past self. It seemed that ignorance truly was bliss, she thought as she tried to peel her jean shorts off her legs, praying that she wouldn’t sun herself in the process.
A few minutes ago, she had hopped into a cab she flagged down near Syntagma Square, flailing her arms frantically, unable to discern anything due to the blinding white marble of the pavement, contemplating how it all made sense now that Greek people seemed to come out the womb with sunglasses plastered to their faces.
She had plopped down on the car seat, relishing the shiver of her sweat upon encountering the cool embrace of the AC. Her phone beeped and she blinked as she saw the number that glowed red in warning. Fifty-two. Was it the average age of a menopausal woman? Was it the number of cards in a deck? Nope. It was the external temperature. That, or she was finally having an aneurysm, courtesy of all the ouzo and retsina she had been drinking with the other students in her Erasmus exchange program.
She continued peeling off the rest of her damp clothes, thinking how she should have tipped the cab driver more for enduring her stench. Her roommate’s apartment was small but had two bedrooms, and it fitted them both well. They only shared one fan, so they took turns in the night, setting alarms every two hours and getting up to take temporary custody of the fan. There was timesharing of chalets in Aspen and there was that. The tzatziki’ equivalent of it. It didn’t matter now though, as Eleni wasn’t back home yet and wouldn’t be for another two hours. So Sabine would soak the surprisingly roomy – albeit repulsively stained with varying shades of yellow and brown – tub and have the fan blow the stale air of the room at her, over and over again. She ran the cold water and emptied a quarter of Eleni’s bubble bath soap in the tub, taking care not to bring the fan too close. She wanted a cool current, not an electrical one.
She sat down and sighed happily, and was about to rest her head on the rolled towel she had placed the back of the tub, when a soft whirring sound caught her attention. She looked to her side and saw a cockroach. But that was no ordinary cockroach. It was enormous and brown, with almost a maroon sheen over its wings. Because it had those: wings. The cockroach regarded her and shook its antennas at her, shaking her out of her stunned trance as well. Sabine shrieked and jumped out of the tub, soap studs clinging to her, protecting her modesty from the winged intruder.
It wasn’t the first time she had seen a cockroach of this kind. The cockroaches in Athens had been a revelation. Airborne whenever the mood struck them, they were gigantic enough to act as the winged horses the Valkyries rode into battle. They certainly seemed to possess the sentience needed to vote at the upcoming elections, or rent a car. Their majestic size was only rivalled by how revolting they were, hanging out in sewers and the likes, probably ruling over rats and terrorising stray cats. The first time she encountered a specimen of this insect-meets-horse hybrid, she had pointed at it horrified, asking Eleni if people knew that this thing had wings. Wings! Surely they should notify someone? Animal Control? An exorcist? Eleni had laughed and dragged her away, probably too petrified to admit these insects now ruled her country.
Sabine had only met dainty little cockroaches in Austria. Almost as elegant as Empress Sisi herself and most certainly more hygienic than the Greek beast which was now just sitting there, coldly calculating its next move. She looked around, frantically reaching for a weapon. No slippers, no books. No knives. Only the bottle of her roommate’s very expensive Hypnotic Poison by Dior perfume. Could she use that? Hesitating for a heartbeat, she grabbed the bottle and sprayed the monster that was now perched on the bathtub’s edge.
She sprayed and sprayed him. She was certain it was a ‘he’, for only a man could be so disgusting as to pry on a helpless woman like that. The fine mist of sandalwood and peppery tones of the perfume blew back in her face, propelled by the fan, as she emptied the entire bottle. Eleni would kill her, but surely it would be a more merciful death than if that infernal creature touched her. What fresh circle of Dante’s hell was this? This is how she ended? Suffocated to death by Christian Dior and a cockroach feasting on her corpse?
The cockroach looked at her, bored. Did he roll his antennas at her idiocy? It certainly seemed so, as he spread his wings and flew out the window, cleaned and thoroughly perfumed, leaving Sabine alone to contemplate her own fragile mortality. And the undernotes of smoked orange that would cling on her for the rest of eternity.
That’s it. Next year, she was applying for Erasmus in Finland.