c'mon, i got the bullets in my head

throw me the statue

(P comes walking into K's room to find his sister perched atop her bed, tennis racquet in one hand, an wild, murderous glint in her eyes.)

K: FUCK OFF, MOTHERFUCKER! YOU BLOODY FUCKING SHIT!

P: What is the matter? You're teaching your hamster bad language.

K: The cockroach that I saw that day in my room! It's back! You gotta help me kill it! I can't do this on my own! Don't be a coward like you usually are, you're the boy, you gotta learn, if not no one will marry you!

P: ...OK, hold on, I'll get something to whack it with.

K: Hurry! I think I see it!

(He leaves. K's eyes are glued to the spot where she thinks she saw something moving. P returns with an exercise book.)

P: See, I knew my chinese books would come in handy one day.

K: Ahh! I see it! There, by my Econs file! Get it! Oh shit, it just ran into the file!

(P whacks the file viciously.)

K: No! Don't hit the file! What if you crush it and its guts are smeared all over my monetary policy or something! How am I ever going to study Econs again? I'll fail my A's! Oh the irony.

P: Then what do you expect me to do?

(K uses her tennis racquet to prod the file, hoping to force the cockroach to emerge. They wait - nothing happens.)

K: It's not here. Shit. I bet it ran into that huge stack of files and notes in the corner.

(Their MOTHER enters the room.)

M: What the hell is going on. I don't appreciate so much screaming this late at night.

K: Cockroach in the stack.

M: Oh my god, I told you to clear up that stack from your floor. No way you're gonna get it out of there. That is a bloody enormous stack.

K: I know, I know, OK? I regret it now. But it's there and we gotta do this.

M: Well, please stop yelling your head off. How old are you? I could hear you through a locked door, with my TV on!

K: The door being locked doesn't mean anything -

M: It means that your screaming can pass through wood!

K: Yeah, but the fact that the door is locked... OK, never mind.

(M makes a pissed exit.)

P: Now what.

K: OK, I've got a plan. Why don't we each take turns to remove one book or file from the infinite stack. Then eventually we'll work our way to the bottom, where the cockroach is. Then you kill it with your chinese.

P: OK. I'll go first.

(He picks up The Great Gatsby, shakes it and lays it aside. K reaches out from the bed, picks up The Dublin Plays, and does the same.)

P: My turn again. This is like Russian Roulette.

(The process continues. File after file after book after book after essay after essay is drawn out. Agamemnon. Wilfred Owen. The Duchess of Malfi. The Chairs. Critical Commentaries. Greek Readers. Great Expectations. Waiting for Godot. Every time she has to lean over and pick something out, K gets that terrible bloodcurling sensation of things running up and down her legs, but it's just her imagination.)

K: (as she fishes out yet another old Mask Crit Comm she stole from 24) Hey. This girl did masks for a play called Chasing Cockroaches. I kid you not. Look.

(A sound of a cage being gnawed on from the far corner of the room.)

BOTH: SHUT UP, VLADIMIR.

K: We're almost done. We've gone through my entire JC syllabus. Where the hell is that piece of shit?

P: All that's left is that little pile of paper.

K: That's just rubbish paper.

(P fishes out something laminated.)

P: Rubbish paper, eh? Isn't this your O level certificate?

K: Oh. Yeah. And look, my KI IS proposal, AWESOME. I thought I lost it forever.

(A flash of brown.)

BOTH: ARGHHHHH!

K: SHIT, no screaming! No screaming!

P: I'M NOT SCREAMING.

(Chaos. They flail.)

K: Get it! Get it! GET IT!

(A resounding THWACK. A ringing silence. A little brown body falls out from underneath a notebook labelled ' Moustache'.)

P: We got it.

K: Hit it again. Hit it again, quick. To make sure that it's dead.

(A pause.)

P: It looks pretty damn dead to me.