Would Kill To Be Your Roommate

(I moved to South Carolina for graduate school after growing up in the North. In South Carolina, cockroaches, known as “palmetto bugs,” are common, even in the cleanest of homes. They are simply everywhere, and one just has to learn how to deal with them. My roommate is a local of the town, and from a very wealthy family. For some reason, she never encountered palmetto bugs in her own home, presumably because her parents must have sprayed their property ad nauseam to keep them away. This means that she won’t go near them whenever they appear in our apartment, so killing them is up to me. Since my roommate generally does not contribute to the household chores and upkeep of the apartment like I do, I find this a little annoying since I do not like dealing with the palmetto bugs myself. One day, I am at my office in the university. I have my bag packed and am ready to head out the door to go home. I suddenly get a text from my roommate.)

Roommate: “When are you coming home?”

(While my roommate and I are not antagonistic toward one another, we aren’t exactly buddies either, so I find this odd.)

Me: “Um, I am just finishing up a few things here. What’s up?”

Roommate: “There’s a cockroach here!”

(I pause, slowly unpack my bag, and sit back down at my desk. I ignore her text for some time. More texts follow.)

Roommate: “It’s crawling toward me!”

Roommate: “It flew at me! I locked myself in my room!”

Roommate: “Now it’s just sitting on the floor, looking at me!”

(I respond to some of the texts with a chuckle, but mostly ignore the them. After an hour has passed, I get hungry and decide I should go home now. Once I get home, I find my roommate scrubbing the floor in front of the bedrooms.)

Roommate: “You couldn’t have been back five minutes ago? I had to kill it myself so I could get myself a pizza!”

Me: “Yeah, sorry. But hey, it’s your first kill!”

(She glared at me. She knew what I did.)