The Cockroach
Myfanwy Tilley
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Also by this author:
Psyche’s Garden
Sons of Adam
The License
Party Animals
Copyright 2015 Myfanwy Tilley
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The Cockroach
“Ms Longwood?” the receptionist barked from her desk. I hesitated a few moments, wondering if I couldn’t resolve this small issue by myself. Half-a-dozen irritable faces looked around the waiting room wondering why this ‘Ms Longwood’ - me - didn’t answer the call. The doctors were an hour behind schedule, it was forty degrees Celsius outside, and the air-con was pushing warm, sweat-laden air around the room: everyone was impatient for their turn to see the doctor.
“Ms Longwood?” the receptionist repeated. This time she looked directly at me, her eyes narrowed. I smiled weakly and gave a brief wave of my hand. Why did she look at me like that? Did she know? When I made my appointment, I’d said only that I was concerned an insect had climbed into an orifice. I only told her that much in order to make her understand that I needed to see a doctor as a matter of urgency. I didn’t say which orifice. For all she knew, I could have been talking about my ear, or my nose – not that that would have been any less humiliating.
I rose gingerly from my seat, feeling the resentment of the other patients still awaiting their call-up. If only they knew, they wouldn’t begrudge me my turn.
“I’m sorry, Ms Longwood, Dr Fritsch is sick today. We’ve placed you with Dr MacLean.” The receptionist smiled. She was scrutinizing me more closely than was reasonable, I thought.
“Dr MacLean’s a man,” I said, instantly alarmed.
“Dr MacLean is a very… experienced doctor.” Why did she pause like that?
“I’d prefer a woman doctor; even if I have to wait longer.”
The receptionist sniffed petulantly and peered down at her computer screen. “Dr James could see you in fifteen minutes,” she said, her fingers thumping the keyboard. “She’s just finished her residency, but she’s a very good doctor.”
“Isn’t there a more experienced woman doctor available?” I insisted. A door to my left opened and Dr Fritsch breezed through the reception area.
“See you tomorrow, Janet. Thanks for sorting that out for me,” Dr Fritsch sang, looking a picture of health.
“No worries. Have a good time in Melbourne,” Janet sang back, she was all smiles until she turned to face me again. “Does that suit you, Ms Longwood?”
I felt a stirring below; a tickling. I inhaled sharply and squeezed my thighs together as tightly as I could. God, not now! “Yup,” I peeped and walked stiffly to my seat. I sat down, closed my eyes and slowly exhaled. Think, I ordered myself in an effort to resist my body’s natural inclination, of that idiot that said women don’t belong in politics. And that moron who ran up the back of my car last week. And … “Oh!” I opened my eyes and peered furtively around the waiting room to see whether my trill of pleasure had been noticed. An older couple sitting to my right looked at me askance. “Ugh,” I moaned loudly and wrapped my arms around my stomach, feigning pain. I closed my eyes again and tried to think of anything other than the agreeable tingling across my thighs, my elevated temperature, my…
“Hey, Cat! You sick?”
My body almost capitulated. Why him? Of all the people I knew, why did it have to be Andrew who walked in here? I’d been obsessing about him for months: his AFL shoulders, his rugby legs, those swimming pool eyes, and now … “Aaah,” I squeaked. I wanted to say that I was just in for a routine check-up, but I could only shake my head, while my mouth opened and shut without making a sound. Fortunately, Janet came to my rescue.
“Ms Longwood? Dr James can see you now.”
I nodded at Andrew and hastened to the doctor’s consulting room, unintentionally slamming the door behind me. I sat down before being invited to do so and looked in earnest at the young woman seated at her desk. I was thirty years of age and considered myself young, but she looked about sixteen to me.
“How can I help you, er…, Catherine?” she asked, squinting at my personal details on the computer screen.
I sat dumbly staring at the floor, wondering how on earth I could tell her. “I have…,” I began but couldn’t proceed. “The other day, I was …” I tried again, but I felt a spasm and my eyes fluttered. “A cockroach crawled into my…,” I stopped and wrinkled my nose at the doctor - a visual clue that I was embarking on a delicate subject, “…vagina.”
“I’m sorry?” said the doctor after several moments of silence. Her voice was barely audible, and I knew she was probably more than a little taken aback by what I had just told her.
I raised my eyes to look her in the face and swallowed hard. “I have a cockroach in my vagina,” I repeated. “It crawled in there, and it’s moving about. It…,” I lowered my voice, “it … stimulates me. It must be near my cervix. I want you to get it out.”
The doctor looked dubious. I was certain she didn’t believe me, but then it struck me that she may have been under the impression that I had put it in there for my own pleasure. “I left my hat in the woodshed, you see, and I needed it because it was sunny, and…,” I blathered, “the cockroach had taken up residence in it… my hat, I mean, and when I picked it up, I could have sworn that it scurried away. I thought it was gone, so I put my hat on, but then I felt something drop down my back, into my shorts, then into my knickers. But it never came out. I felt it go in…” I looked at the doctor in earnest.
“Right,” she murmured, and fell silent again.
“Can you please get it out?”
“Um, you say you can feel it…stimulating you?” she spoke slowly. Evidently this wasn’t a part of the medical faculty syllabus. “Um, in what way?”
“You know,” I said, but when she looked blankly at me, I whispered, “Sexually.” Hysteria rose inside me, “It moves around. It’s disgusting – those legs, and antennae, and wings, and it was one of those black shiny ones… I just can’t bear to think about it.”
“Um, how long has it been in…there?”
“About a week.” She raised her eyebrows, and I felt my face redden. “I thought it would come out, like, when I had a pee. But it hasn’t. It obviously likes it in there. Oh, my God! It’s probably feeding on me.” I wanted to scream on the one hand, but whenever I got tense, I felt it scuttle around again.
“Right,” said the doctor again, chewing her bottom lip as she pondered my predicament. “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of this before. I’m just going to ring through to my mentor.” She picked up the phone and pressed a button before I could object. “Um, Dr MacLean? I have a patient here, Catherine Longwood…Yes, you know her? She says she…”
I was mortified: Dr MacLean was my dad’s tennis partner. What would he make of all this? The cockroach was going wild, now, and I quivered, unable to tell pleasure from pain.
Dr James ended her call and turned to me, “I need to examine you, first, and then I have to give Dr MacLean a call back. He said that a cockroach is unlikely, and that you may be experiencing spontaneous orgasms.”
While lying on the examination table, the sensation stopped abruptly, and I wondered if, perhaps, I had been wrong. Perhaps the cockroach had simply fallen to the ground, and all of these sensations were pur
ely psychosomatic? Maybe I’d been single for too long? Although a fortnight didn’t seem unreasonable to me. Perhaps I’d been punishing myself for breaking up with Paul? Sex with him had been very good, after all.
“I can’t find anything,” Dr James said, after giving me a lengthy examination. “Perhaps you should monitor these sensations for a week or so, it could be a trapped nerve, or something more complicated. If it continues, come back and we’ll make an appointment for you with the specialist.”
She looked at me hopefully: hoping, that is, I would go away and leave her alone.
By the end of the consultation, I remained free of any stirrings below, and for the first time in a week, I felt serene; ‘un-stimulated’. By the time Dr James ushered me from the room, I was convinced that my fertile imagination had been entirely responsible for my woes; I was indeed the hypochondriac the doctors believed me to be. “There’s no need to trouble Doctor MacLean with this,” I smiled as I passed through the door to leave. Too late, I thought, and grimaced at the thought of his next tennis match with Dad.
I drove home feeling relieved, despite my utter humiliation at the clinic. I felt good; at peace in soul and, more importantly, in body. Once inside the house, I put the kettle on and went to the bathroom for a pee. But as I sat on the toilet, I heard a small but unmistakable splash of something falling into the bowl, followed by another and another. Jumping up from the seat, I looked down in horror. “Oh, my God! It’s had babies!”
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading my short story. If you enjoyed it, won’t you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favourite retailer and, perhaps, send a link to your friends? I hope you may also enjoy some of my other short stories and first novel.
Myfanwy Tilley.
Short Story:
Sons of Adam
Party Animals
The License
Full Length Fiction:
Psyche’s Garden