Cocqui

The coqui were descending. At night, among the rattlesnake shake and hiss of the leaves, and the billowing ribbons of wind coming off the mountains into the valley, were the shrill chirps of the cocqui frogs. Scott clenched his pillows against his ears like giant earmuffs and counted leaping frogs sailing over his bed.

 “Ho-weeep!” they cried.

The morning came slowly, in increments, the light pooling into the valley and filtering into his bedroom slowly yet perceptibly. He had not slept. He was ill prepared for his meetings at work and decided to call in sick. He took short, tender steps to his bathroom and found that his bathtub was filled to the edges with cocqui frogs. They were packed together like refugees in a church, like victims of a cataclysm huddled together in a cafeteria.

Scott called the Oahu Invasive Species Committee and two men came over to his house. One of them started laughing when they saw his bathtub, then regained his composure when the other man sternly asked Scott if he was breeding them.

“No way,” said Scott. He made a gesture with his hands the way an umpire would signal “safe!” in a baseball game. “Hell no. They’ve been keeping me up all night. They might have been coming in through some crack in the walls or in the ceiling.”

"Well they're not like ants. They wouldn't just follow each other in."

"I don't know that," said Scott. "I don't know anything about this. I just woke up and here they were."

Both men narrowed their eyes at him, and then they looked at each other and shrugged.

"Do what you need to do. I'll be glad when this is over," Scott said and stepped back.

The two men exterminated the frogs with citric acid. They writhed and kicked under the mist and Scott felt a little sorry for them. The two men went out into the yard and sprayed citric acid over all the surrounding foliage, on the Hibiscus and the nearby bushes.

“Done. Sleep tight tonight,” they said, got into their van and left.

The next night, Scott could hear the frogs descending onto his home again. At first they seemed to be on the roof of his house. Then they were next to his windows. Eventually, the sounds came from under his bed. They could have been the ghosts of the murdered frogs.

“Ho-weep!” 

Scott through his pillow against the dresser and his bedside lamp fell and shattered on the floor.

“Damn it!” he shouted. “Shut up! He screamed. “Please shut up!”

“You shuddup!” a neighbor called out from the outer edges of the world. It was midnight. He turned on the bedroom lights and searched behind his cabinets, dressers and in the closet and found nothing.

Scott went out to the yard with his flashlight and searched the premises. There was a light drizzle falling, and grass, dirt and twigs clung to his wet ankles. “Where are you guys!” he called out to the darkness.

“Ho-weep!” chirped the frogs.

“Shaddup!” cried the neighbor.

* * *

When Scott woke up in the morning, he gingerly walked to the bathroom. His bathtub was filled again with cocqui. They were silent and huddled together. Their green bodies were moist and glistening. They were all wiping their eyeballs in unison with their four-fingered hands.

Scott stumbled back and began searching for his bug spray. He opened the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink and a swarm of fruitflies erupted like a cloud of bats from a cave. The room was filled with the manic hovering of fruitflies. They landed on the walls and on his face and took off again as he began spraying in every direction.

The coqui began feeding. They leapt in the air and started snatching the flies out of the air with their tongues.

“That’s it!” Scott screamed.

* * *

The next week, the entire house was covered with a yellow and blue striped fumigation tent. He had called Aloha Pest & Termite Control team and they had gone through the entire house and decided that tent fumigation would be the most thorough way to make sure  no pests would return. In the home, in addition to the cocqui frogs and the fruitflies, the team had found evidence of ants. There were ghost ants, pharoah ants, whitefooted ants and carpenter ants. They also found oriental termites, cockroaches, rats, mice, mongoose, and a brown tree snake in the attic. They also noted that while they specialized in pests, they noticed some plants in his back yard that were considered among the high-profile invasive species. There was miconia along the edges climbing up the cinderblock wall. There were clusters of fountain grass, growing near the walls and they urged him to poison these plants immediately before the seeds on the tips of those wirey stems let loose and floated off into the neighboring yards. So Scott rushed off, bought some round-up and sprayed his back yard.

He then gathered a few of his things and slept in his car. His neighbors recommended a few cheap hotel rooms but he refused and he slept in the passenger seat of his car with a bottle of rum.

He was drunk by 9 in the evening and he was listening to an old Beach Boys song on the oldies channel, and it filtered in like and echo through a time portal where an alternate version of himself was playing an old vinyl record, holding hands with a girl he loved. He began to sing along.

If you should ever leave me

Though life would still go on believe me

The world could show nothing to me

So what good would living do me

God only knows what I'd be without you

His neighbor poked his bald head out of the front window, and then came out to the car and asked him if he would rather sleep at a motel, or at least park somewhere else for the night. Scott declined. The neighbor then asked him to keep it down. Scott noted that the volume on the radio was already very low. The neighbor recoiled at his breath and asked him again to make an effort to be quieter later in the evening. He had to wake up for work at a very early hour and Scott’s screaming and shouting late at night disturbed him and his wife. He added that if the noise continued, he would be forced to call the police.

Scott apologized about the coqui frogs and assured him that after the tent fumigation was completed, things would be much quieter and everything would be back to normal. He also explained that he had been very quiet throughout the entire evening, being alone in his car with the radio turned on very low.

The neighbor shook his head and stormed off shaking his head the entire way to his front door. To Scott, his neighbor’s head looked like a boiled peanut.

Scott became filled with self loathing. He was humiliated. He was embarrassed for his house and for himself. It wasn’t that he was apathetic to his home keeping, it was his ignorance. He mowed his lawn every two weeks and he tended to the flowers and washed his windows and cleaned the brown gunk out his gutters like everyone else on the block. There was something else that he was missing, and somehow his home had become a nest of unwanted pests because of it.

Scott got out of the car and paced about on the sidewalk for a few minutes. He took another swig from his bottle and petulantly wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Then he began to yell.

"Judge me? Is that what you do? Are you a judge?"

His neighbor's silhouette appeared in the window.

“I’m actually a hard worker!” he called to his neighbor’s house. “You think I’m lazy? Complacent to lie in my own filth? Huh? Is that what that was?!” His shouting broke the silence. The porch light went on and his neighbor came back out the front door.

“Keep it down out there I’m warning you.”

"I'm not even talking that loud!" hissed Scott, his arms outstretched. He pounded his chest with his fist. “I work! I work my ass off! I take care of this house! I take care of myself! I work all day! I come home and cook my own dinners and after that I wash the dishes and put them away! I don’t own a television! Not like you! I read! I read books! Poetry! And not the insipid type by celebrities and rock stars! The real stuff! No cheap magazines! No ipads or websites. Books!  Then I go to bed and I wake up and I go to work like you! So don’t judge me like I’m some deadbeat!”

“Brother,” the neighbor said, his hand was out. “Calm down. Now, I never said any of those things. I’m just asking for a little consideration here. Sleep it off.”

The neighbor’s wife came to the door. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” his neighbor said. “He’s gonna sleep it off. Or we’re calling the police.”

Scott growled and skulked back into his car and turned the volume on his radio down.

* * *

The second evening, after having showered at the beach, Scott went to the liquor store and bought two ham sandwiches, a bag of chips and a bottle of Jim Beam. He drove back to his home and parked in thedriveway, and watched his tented home become a breathing silhouette at sunset. 

It had only been a day, but he missed the comforts of his living room, his easy chair, his books and his record player, an antique croseley recordplayer that his old girlfriend, Cathy had given him on his birthday.

It had been a happy home. And when she left him, she had told him "I hope you find happiness. I hope you find people you like and spend some time outside of yourself. Find your way back into the world again. Because it's just too much of a burden for one person to be the entire world for another."

He leaned back in his chair and opened his bottle.

By 9, he was drunk again. And singing. 

He sang quietly along to a song by The Everly Brothers. 

Don't want your love any moooooore!

Don't want your kisses, that's for suuuuuure!

I die each time I hear this soooound!

Here he comes, that's Cathy's cloooown!

Eventually, Scott's quiet crooning became louder and he belted out the chorus to The Platters.

They said someday you'll find

All who love are blind

Ooooooooooooooh! when your heart's on fire

You must realiiiiize

Smoke gets in your eeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeees!

By the time Lorraine Ellison came on, he was singing along at full volume and was so overcome with emotion that he was on the verge of tears. 

Where did you gooooo, when things went wrong baby? 

Who did you run to

And find a shoulder to lay your head upon? 

Baby wasn't I there? 

Didn't I take good care of you? 

No no! I can't believe! You're leaving meeeeee!

Staaaaaay with me baby

Pleeeeease, staaaaay with me baby

Yeeaugh, staaaaay with me baby!

An arm reached through the passenger side window and turned the volume down. His neighbors head filled the window frame. "Look. I'm getting real tired of you and your noise. Now, I don't presume to know anyone's business, but you need to calm down, put the bottle away, get your bearings and chill the hell out. Now. I have a shower you can use. I have some food you can eat to calm you down. But you need to find a place to stay and a way to be that's not your driveway and not the way you've been these two nights.

Scott was at a loss for words. "What?" He pointed his thumb to his chest. "That's my house over there. It's like 9:30... I live here. Who are you? On my driveway."

"It's 10," corrected the neighbor, "and you're being loud."

His neighbor explained once again that his wife and he needed to sleep, that they had work in the morning. Scott politely pointed out the fact that he was being very considerate about the noise, and that he too needed to be up in the morning. 

"But your singing," said the neighbor.

"I'm quietly singing to myself," countered Scott.

"You're rattling my windows. Now, I don't want to be forced to call on the police. Just sleep."

"Do you think it would be possible to sleep off being an asshole?" said Scott.

"We'll find out, won't we," replied the neighbor.

"Care to step outside?" asked Scott.

"I'm right here," said the neighbor. "You wanna be drunk and stupid?"

"Let's do it," said Scott. 

When he opened his driver side door, Scott tripped as he stepped out of his car. When he got back up, he heard something rustling from under his backseat. Thinking his neighbor had somehow gotten in there, he whirled around. An eruption of 30 mongooses leapt from his car. They flew out and knocked him back in an explosion of fur, scampering over his body. 

The neighbor screamed and began hopping about to avoid them as they scrambled from the driveway into his yard and into the shadows. 

"What the! What the hell was that!" Scott screamed. 

"What indeed," said the neighbor. "Look, I don't know what you're up to. So I'm just going to have to call this in."

"No! said scott. "No! No! No! You don't do that! That's not your call! Those weren't mine! No way! No!"

"Screw this. There's something wrong here." said the neighbor, and he began walking toward his home.

"No!" screamed Scott. "No! No! Wait, will you? You have no idea!" Scott ran after the neighbor and put his hand on his shoulder.

The neighbor, having his shoulder yanked violently back, turned around and punched Scott in the face.

* * *

When he awoke, he knew he was dreaming. He was a large Africanized bee, and he was stinging his neighbors repeatedly. His hive was covered by a large yellow and blue fumigation tent and the rest of his hive was trapped inside. He was angry and he buzzed about stinging people thousands of times. He chased his neighbor about the yard and stung him six times on his bald, oily head and he chased his neighbor’s wife into the house where he flew a hundred miles worth in circles, around the television, bouncing off the large window pane, along the walls and along the floors. His neighbor began swatting him with a pink flyswatter, and Scott realized that his eyes were compound eyes, like those of all bees and he saw thousands of flyswatters swinging away in unison. He didn’t know which one was the right one to evade and so he flew in a panic as thousands upon thousands of pink flyswatters swung at him. There were one thousand wives and one thousand angry husbands and they swung at him until finally they opened the back door and he shot out into the vast world. 

Although he knew he was dreaming, he felt high off of a newfound madness. The wind bent to the polished, aerodynamic curvature of his new body. He flew high and then swooped down low to the ground, zipping through the legs of lawn chairs and between the legs of pedestrians walking with their dogs and strollers, and then he flew high again. He thought about the others — those like him, who through their own unique circumstances had found themselves here, against their will, outlawed, tracked, exterminated. Those who were labeled invasive, but were brought here in their sleep. 

I'm dreaming, he thought to himself. Dreaming.

He flew along the forest floor, along a tiny stream, over wet rocks and soared high again through the branches of the trees. The world was alive with colors he had never seen before.

He landed on the stem connecting a leaf to a branch and waited, scanning his surroundings for other crazed, killer bees. He rested his wings and waited. Dreaming and waiting, he thought to himself. What a unique combination.

The forest went silent, and suddenly he was filled with loneliness. There were no others, he realized. He found a small hole in the highest branch of the tree he was resting on and climbed in. The burrow ran deeper than expected, and so he crawled in further until all light was eclipsed. It was the only way, he realized, that he could close his eyes.

That is, until he opened them.