You walk through the house at any given moment and you will see something fly by on tiny wings, or something with a hard, black exoskeleton making a mad dash for the shadows. You can't find a single room that doesn’t have an insect setting up shop somewhere.

It wasn’t like this when I was a kid. Hell, it wasn’t like this just five years ago when I came home from college because my father was freaking the fuck out when my mother had enough of his shit and bolted for my grandparent’s house in Florida.

There were no bugs then. Well, there were your random bugs that you will find in any quasi-country home, but nothing like the insect army that camps out here since I moved back in.

The thing is, I own this place now. I am the only person who has to deal with the little fuckers because I am the sole human inhabitant of this house. It became mine on paper when my father decided it would be a good idea to jump off the oak tree in our backyard with a rope tied around his neck.

The old man, he had bounced back more or less when my mother left him, but it was all he could take when his new girlfriend, Amanda, told him it was over.

Amanda had been living with my father in this house for close to a year when she decided that the old man was, in fact, too old for her. My father, he was fifty-three. Amanda, she clocked in at a paltry twenty-two.

"I'm getting the fuck out of here," she told me.

"Have you told him?" I asked.

"No. I don’t want to deal with that shit. I'm just going," she said.

I didn't make an effort to talk her out of it. I didn’t see any reason for me to intervene in that shit. Amanda, she wasn't my mother. It's not like I had a vested interest in seeing her stay with him.

After she left, what my father did was quit his job. He taught biology at the community college for twelve years. He left all of his shit in his office, didn't even bother boxing it up.

He stayed in bed for three days before taking his trip to the backyard. I guess I should have saw it coming, but I didn't. I was busy fucking my girlfriend at the apartment that she had just rented on the day he did his depressed Tarzan impression.

They say it took him around five minutes to die. It didn't snap his neck, like most people assume it would, so he pretty much strangled to death. He even appeared to have changed his mind, or maybe it was just reflexes. He had claw marks around his neck from where he had fought to try and get the rope off, but it didn't work out for him.

I had been back in the house for about a week after he died when the damn bugs started showing up. Maybe the old man sprayed some holy bug killing formula or knew something about housekeeping that he never imparted to me, but they were everywhere now. Now, the major problem with an infestation like this is the fact that you can't bring any decent girl back to the place. I mean, if you find some chick who can ignore things that scuttle and buzz, then you could have probably fucked her in the Kroger parking lot where you found her to begin with. As for me, I didn't worry about this too much, although it did stick in the back of my mind. The girl I am seeing, she has her own place now, so that makes things easier for me. To tell you the truth, I don’t think she would mind the bugs so much, but I’m not going to push it. After I get enough cash together I am going to give some pest control shock troopers a call and let them go all insect holocaust on this place.

My mother, she came to the old man's funeral. She had a tan that bordered on a sunburn, and she looked more or less happy. Not that she was happy that the man she lived over half of her life with decided to clock out in the most permanent fashion, but happy from getting away from him to start with. She gave me a brief hug and a couple hundred bucks.

"You should get the Hell out of this place," she said.

"I mean leave this town, maybe this whole damn state."

"Just let me get things sorted out," I told her.

"How long have you been sorting things out, David?" she asked, and then shook her head just a little.

"You’re right. I’m packing my things and heading for Tibet tonight," I say, and she doesn’t laugh like I hoped she would.

She gives me the number for her new cellphone and then walks up front to talk with Uncle Ray, who looks like my father, only, you know, alive and all.

With the funeral over, I had a lot of time to sit around the house and pretty much do nothing. I ate the rest of the old man’s cereal which he had boxes upon boxes of. From time to time I would look out the window at the oak tree in the backyard and remember when he put a swing on it for me when I was eight. It was one of those damned tire swings and it would fill with rain whenever we had a storm. In the summer, it would be a nice place for mosquitoes to rock and roll in, and they did. All the way up until my teenage years, I was perpetually covered in mosquito bites. I remember this shit while eating the rest of a box of Corn Flakes. I fucking hate Corn Flakes. I’m standing in ratty boxer shorts eating a bowl of cereal that I hate in a house filled with gnats and what I can only guess to be roaches.

The bastards move too fast for positive identification. The old man would know what they were, you can bet on that. Yeah, this is the best way to spend an entire day.

I am packing up most of his things when I find the photo album. It was tucked underneath his bed next to a box of old tests and quizzes that he never bothered to return to his classes. I open the book and it has three fucking ants in it. Good deal. I am glad they decided to join the party. I smash them with my thumb and flip them onto the carpet. With that ugly business out of the way, I look at the pictures. All of them are of her. Not my mother, but Amanda. The old man had it bad, I guess. Hell, I know he did. I mean, you don’t kill your fucking self over somebody if you don’t have it pretty bad for them. All the pictures of her, they don’t have my father in them at all. They are just her. Amanda smiling, sitting on a large rock. Amanda standing on a beach. Amanda getting out of a car with a nice black dress on. I know why the old man was so into her. Now I also know that he probably found out who took those pictures.

I decide to take the whole damn box to Amanda’s apartment and see if she can come up with some snotty bitch excuse as to how they ended up in the old man’s possession.

Was it my fault that she would rather fuck me than my father? I really don’t think so. When she first came home with him, she flirted with me the entire night. The old man was so proud of snagging a young piece of ass that he didn’t even notice. It wasn’t a week before Amanda and I started fucking on a regular basis. When she moved in the house with the old man, she thought she could keep the whole thing going. Fuck him, get money to buy all kinds of pretentious shit. Fuck me on the side, and actually get off from time to time. When she got enough money from my old, worn father, she rented herself an apartment and hauled ass. I was fucking her in that same ass on the day my father did his swinging tire thing.

"That poor old bastard," Amanda said, a couple of days later.

"I wouldn’t have left if I’d know he was that fucking fragile. I mean, I could’ve waited him out."

"You’re a saint," I told her, and then I dug my fourth finger into her cunt.

I even tried living with her in the apartment, but I decided that I deserved the goddamn house for putting up with all of this shit in the first place. I decide to give the pest control people a call and put an end to the bug problem for good. With that out of the way, I can spruce the place up a little and actually have a decent place to live for a change.

I take the vacuum out of the closet and try to clean the carpet. The thing has potato chip fragments in it from when I was a kid. I don’t even want to think about what else could be smashed into its green tendrils. I make a little game out of it though, and end up sucking up an entire colony of ants while I am at it. I had to run over the living black dots at least five times before they were hurled into the vortex of my holy cleaning machine.What I did was save the pest control guy a little trouble. I even got a moth off of the living room curtains with the vacuum.

"You bastards, I win," I say.

I call Amanda to ask her if she would be interested in some heavy duty fucking and maybe helping clean the house, but she didn’t seem very tantalized by the offer.

"Clean your own house, jackass," she said. "I have enough work to do."

"How about that heavy duty action?" I ask.

"You can also take care of that one yourself," she said.

"Oh, and while I am getting such love from you, I would like to know how the old man got hold of those goddamn pictures," I say, and swat at the back of my head after feeling something land there.

"Fuck if I know," she says, and hangs up on me.

Yeah, the old man really knew how to pick the domesticated women. I got a feeling that the bugs were just waiting for him to check out of this life so they could roam free. I am willing to bet most of these fuckers are female.

I am flipping through some of the old man’s books when the pest control jackass finally shows up. I decide to let him have a go at the place on his own, and I head out to the only bar in this general area worth sitting at.

"Don’t worry about locking up when you leave," I tell him. "It’s not like there’s anything here worth taking."

Mr. Pest Control, he just nods his head and starts looking at the walls and baseboards.

I smash a moth between my fingers on the way out the door and it leaves that fucked up residue on my hand which I don’t bother to wipe off. I consider going back inside and giving Amanda another try, but I honestly think she is ready to give my ass the high-heeled boot and search for another poor chump’s life to ruin. Shit, I should have seen this one coming. My fucking father kills himself over her and she pretty much shrugs it off. Whatever.

It’s not like I need that bitch anyway.

When I get to the bar, I see Uncle Ray drinking alone in the corner. Ray has been a decent friend of mine over the years, so I decided to join him.

"How about I join your brooding ass?" I ask him.

"Have a seat, prick," he says.

"So, I am thinking about getting drunk as hell while some jackass kills half of the world’s insect population in my little cottage," I say.

"I thought about getting drunk as hell for no real reason," he says.

"So, I did."

I order a pitcher of beer and spend the next hour drinking it while Ray seems to contemplate the universe while looking and peanut shells.

"Listen," he says. "I am real sorry."

With that, I know it is time for me to leave. I really hate that shit. Who isn’t sorry about the old man? I mean, the old man was even sorry about himself. I don’t need to be reminded about it every goddamn second of the day. Ray telling me he was sorry was too much like the old man telling me he was sorry. Does he not understand that I live in the house where he lived? That the tree is right there outside of the kitchen window where I have to look at it each time I go to the goddamn fridge?

I get up so fast that I knock the pitcher of beer over, but there wasn’t enough left in it to cause any real scene. Ryan just kinds of shoots me a sad look which I don’t bother to acknowledge and I head out of the bar.

Before I go home I decide to give Amanda a call from a pay phone. After three rings, a deep, smoker’s voice answers the phone. A man’s voice.

"Goddamn cunt," I say, and slam the phone down.

When I get back to the house, the fucking door is locked. Even though I have the key, the fact that the jackass locked the door after I told him not to pisses me off so bad that I kick the shit out of it and it swings open. The pest control bill is on the kitchen table, but I don’t bother to read it. I am sure it will be worth it to have all those little bastards gone from here.

I don’t see a single bug in the entire house, which almost puts a smile on my face. I get a beer out of the fridge and chug it, then I stumble into the bedroom and fall face first on the rumpled, smelly sheets.

Sometime during the night, I shoot up out of a dreamless sleep feeling the scratching of a million tiny legs on my chest.