Tide

There was a brief gasp between the walls, as the fumigator pressed proprietary liquids behind the stove. The roaches had staked their claim, the kitchened wounds would not close, she thought. Imagined limbs scratched a comforting rhythm as the poison flowed from foot to brain. Or what passed for brain, anyway, buzzing frantically now beneath a heavy carapace. He would never have had the courage to do what was needed. The walls swelled into a mass grave, the house at war with itself. Against the scrabbling masses driven mad by the oceanic certainty of death, she alone stood in the tide, her feet rocking backwards with each terrible surge.