Remembered Dream
You submit to living in rotten holes when you are young that you would never accept as a full adult. Or at least, you pray you will never have to again. The worst for me I called the Roach Motel. I noticed three times (initial viewing, when picking up the key and on my first trip moving in) that they always left all the lights on in the apartment but I was too naive to suspect why. I frugally turned them all off after dropping off the first load of my things: when I returned and turned the lights on half a dozen roaches scattered.
I set off three foggers that night. I caulked cracks and baseboards, became obsessively clean and constantly sprayed poison. Sprayed it and breathed it. Nothing could eliminate them entirely. I’ve seen real infestations since and know I had it easy. I also smoked 1-2 packs of cigarettes a day.
Wracked with bronchitis, hallucinating on my mattress on the floor, I dreamed I saw a stream of roaches scurry from my apartment. I followed them into the sewers where tributaries joined into a pestilent river, flowing to where a multitude congregated in a great dark dripping chamber. They had erected an altar where they worshipped the shell of a crab. Its pedestal was surrounded by the glittering trinkets that they had stolen from a thousand wretched efficiencies like mine.