Everybody knew it, the house-eater. The house-eater covered our apartment complex with a white blanket; it raised the temperature, but it also protected us from hail. Most of us were skeptical from the very start since the metal frame was buried around us, so the large white blanket came as no surprise.
In the beginning, not everybody understood the house-eater for what it was; oh no, the house-eater seemed inoffensive. Our houses, sprouting from the soil, were populated by every kind of crawling folk. My family arrived when our houses were ripe and red. I bit into one and found my very own room. It was moist and slightly acidic. My room was comfy.
During the day, I did what every earwig did; I hid in my room. I spent my time sleeping, dreaming of spiders and their unattended eggs, and writing a play about earwigs versus spiders, the delicious bastards. My name is Christopher—or Chris, for short. I left my room which I noticed was a little too ripe for my taste in texture and especially in decoration, so I searched for another room and for food.
There was a smaller room, still unripe, upstairs. It hadn’t been claimed yet, so I started biting my way into it. I preferred a firmer home because, despite not being a vertebrate, I suffered from back pain. Mom said my exoskeleton was never properly formed and I became slightly crooked.
My previous house disappeared in the blink of an eye. My head was sticking outside, and I saw the shadow of the house-eater taking my old house away. I was lucky: it was common to lose family and friends in my community like that. Last time Carmine was taken away inside his own house, the rumor was he was devoured by the house-eater. Fortunately, Carmine came back, but he was never the same again. His antennae were severed, and he depended on his family to hunt for him. Some of us would prefer death to living without antennae.
But the best part of my day was the night. It was the time I crawled out of my house after sleeping and working on my play. I wrote the role of the spider for a well-known actor. I still had to talk to him, but being a method actor, I was sure he would love to live among the spiders to capture their essence –and eat some of their eggs too.
Before going to Dahlia, I would stretch my legs and scream at my neighbors. They were loud, and I could hear their thumping the whole day. I did not have a mate because I did not have the moves. My cerci were not especially nice, curvy, or thick. Their thumping made me angry and envious. I practiced the moves of my cerci in secret, inside my unripe house, but I wasn’t lucky yet.
Dahlia was full, as always. Crawling folk were hovering, flying, and climbing around. As a frustrated writer, I arrived and had a double-aphid. The goal was not to get drunk but to relax and release tension, hoping I’d perform some good moves. One could only hope to make nice moves. My house was still unripe, so if I managed to attract a female, we could thump a lot before the house-eater came for me. I just wanted to finish my play and thump.
She came in flying – and we rarely fly. I was mesmerized by her brown beauty. I wanted to be able to fly too, so I could mate with her in the sky in front of the moths and frogs. She would be mine. She ordered a double-aphid too and sipped it slowly. The aphid drink deflated from the bottom to the top. Her cerci were cute and perfectly curved. I felt inspired by her class.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly, and she looked at me, surprised.
“Are you the playwright from Pears and Apples?”
“Yes, that’s me. I am Chris.”
“Ah… I thought it was lackluster. I preferred Left with lichen, Pears and Apples felt like a regression. I am Nora.”
“I worked so hard on Pears and Apples. It was out of my comfort zone. I tried to push it with Julienne dealing with choice overload and consumerism. Did you really understand the message?”
“I did understand the message! Honestly, though, what bothered me was the depiction of the female character. She was unidimensional and only cared about consuming and keeping her cerci well-groomed. No female will reason in such a simple dichotomy! I rest my case.”
“You might be right, Nora. I am writing another play, still unnamed. I can still redeem myself.”
Nora was beautiful and smart. I was a mess, aphid-drunk and eager to thump. “Would you like to see some moves?”
“I only enjoy moving in front of the frogs.”
My cerci moved, and I moved, caressing her body. She giggled, and her antennae moved, responding to her excitement. I was about to thump! I would thump so hard all day long! Nora followed me to my apartment.
Secretly, I wished my neighbors would complain about the noise of my day-long thumping. Nora and I were made for each other. She and I were synchronized. It happened fast. While I was writing my play, we alternated between my unripe apartment and hers. Unlike me, she lived between a wooden plank and the soil, a house-eater free space. In this we disagreed; she nagged incessantly about moving with her for good. But my apartment was soft and acidic. Wood wasn’t for me.
Then Nora laid eggs, and our romance was over. She was a mother. Summer was gone, and the parties in Dahlia were over. Nora prepared to hibernate and thought spending time with me and listening to me rambling about my play was useless. She changed while I stayed the same, even though I was also in the process of moving houses. The house-eater attacked again, and many apartments disappeared.
He was a daytime creature. It was easy to take us by surprise, but I was smarter because I knew exactly what a ripe house meant: a house-eater would claim it soon. I gathered my belongings and my play manuscript and moved.
The problem was that the end of summer left us with fewer housing options. They still had tiny studios on the upper levels of the apartment complex. I moved in before going to sleep hoping the house-eater would not snatch me.
Nobody tells us the last apartments of summer are hard to bite, but I made my way regardless. I still had nightmares about the day Nora kicked me out to hibernate. The romance was dead. I was only good for my sperm. Living in a tiny studio while editing my play as she slept warmly with our children made me melancholic, but that is the life of a poet and playwright.
Without a female to distract me, I set my mind to editing. And I forgot the most basic survival rule for an earwig: the end-of-summer apartments are reaped earlier. We believe the house-eater became greedier and plucked every apartment from the complex, leaving us desperate and cold.
Nobody alive had ever seen the full extent of the titan body of the house-eater. We knew its paws tipped with tiny sticks it used to grab and pluck our apartments away. Soon, however, I was about to find out. I slept among the pages of my manuscript when my house was plucked away. In my silly little head, I thought I was dreaming. Editing was exhausting. I woke up, and I was home. But my home was not attached to the apartment complex anymore.
In that moment, my life passed before my eyes, and the only thought in my head was Nora. I never asked her what she did for a living and what her favorite singing insect was. Nora was right, in Pears and Apples I depicted Julienne in such a flat manner because that is exactly how I perceived females. On the brink of my death, I could only think of how I was such a failure.
My studio moved again, and I saw the titan. Its head could probably fit thousands of earwigs living together in a community. The house-eater’s morphology remained a complete mystery to me. Would it be slightly acidic? Could I bite into and be the first earwig living in a house-eater? It was an alien to me. Fear gave way to speculation and then to fear again. Without my manuscript, I jumped out of my studio and fell onto a flat surface. I ran for my life, but I noticed the house-eater did not care about me, it cared only about my studio.
I lost my play, my apartment, and my dignity. I saw the house-eater finish many more apartments. I wondered if it would be able to consume the entire neighborhood in one meal. We were completely powerless. I spent the next days and nights walking back to my neighborhood. I was hungry, scared, and angry. I needed to find a place to hibernate, and I ended up in a shared room with other male earwigs kicked out by their partners.
During the last days of heat and light, I wrote a brief manifesto about the house-eater and my bravery returning home. I was the talk among males and females without eggs. We found juicy spider eggs, and suddenly, I was irrelevant, old news. My manifesto and lost play meant nothing.
My house meant nothing. My life was expendable.
And ultimately, the house-eater would come for all of us.
