Late one evening Cooter and his father, while in the same house, secretly spoke together on a chat line. All night they talked about their plans for the future. It was midnight when Cooter said to his father, “Being a student can be so boring. Sometimes I wish I were a cockroach.”
“Coot! Are you insane?” cried his father. “Don’t ever have such silly thoughts, because Doctor Demented might overhear you and grant your wish. Goodnight, son, and sswe-e-e-e-e-t dreams.”
But Cooter couldn’t stop dreaming of being a cockroach. He imagined how people would jump and scream as he crawled up their legs. His dreams did not go unnoticed by his archenemy.
The following morning, he woke up on his back, with six legs kicking in the air. They were skinny and black like those of a cockroach. He should have felt horrified, instead, he realized he couldn’t go to school and imagined a great adventure.
His mother opened the door and screamed. “Cooter! It’s 6:22 AM! You’ll be late for school again!”
He scurried out of the room, crawled up the wall and jumped onto the sink. There he was, in the mirror, a perfect cockroach. So why didn’t his mother notice?
“Take a shower. You stink!” she said as went downstairs.
But he always smelled and looked terrible on Thursday mornings. He opened a bottle of his mother’s perfume and put it all over his body. Then he plopped his father’s wig on his head and combed it.
Suddenly his sister opened the door and quickly shut it. “DAD! Or, uhm, MOM! I mean—whoever! Just lock the door when you’re naked! Oh, I’m gonna be sick. Ugh!”
The naked boy opened the door and begged, “I’m sorry, but I think I’m losing my mind. Sis, look at me once more. What do I look like?”
But she had covered her face with her hands and run away, laughing and saying, “Take a look outside!”
He returned to his room and peeked through the window. There, to his amazement, Doctor Demented was having a séance on their front lawn, and he appeared to be peeling something, possibly large beetles.
Coot couldn’t understand it, so he just laughed and got dressed. He struggled to put on a shirt and not one but three pairs of pants. The shirt hung around his neck and each pair of pants fell to his feet.
“COME DOWN AND HAVE YOUR BREAKFAST,” shouted his mother from the kitchen downstairs.
Driven by hunger, his six skinny legs ran to the kitchen, under the chairs and table, where he lustily ate every crumb from the floor.
“Good bug,” said his mother. “Now, wipe your feet and climb up on the table. There now, here’s some jam on my knife.”
“Don’t touch my apple!” said his father. “You can lick my empty cup. I’ll leave some coffee stains on it.”
After the bug finished his meal he crawled to the living room. His sister was sitting on the couch reading a book. She tried to smash him with the newspaper. Her father caught her arm before it completed its deadly blow.
“Alexis! Have you no love for the little creatures of this world?”
“LITTLE? Dad, look! It’s huge and it gets bigger every day!”
“Be nice to your brother. He won’t hurt you.”
“Mom!”
Cooter’s mother came with a great meat tenderizer.
“We can’t afford to keep feeding that cockroach. I warned you!”
Without waiting for his reply, she crushed the giant cockroach and dragged it into the kitchen. That evening Cooter was cooked with herbs and rice and served in steaming bowls. It was the most exciting day of his life, and he had no one to thank but Doctor Demented.
