Eddy learned early on in his life that people didn’t need friends when they had cable television. Unlike real people, TV people led interesting lives; they plotted against loved ones, went on road trips, discovered islands full of cannibals, and won kitchen appliances by choosing the correct door. These people didn’t work in retail or in offices, and when they did, it was spiced up to catch his interest. He couldn’t change the channel or press the mute button when real people bored him with uninteresting stories about themselves. This boredom with people made it so that for most of his life he went to work, lived his life through the TV, and fell asleep in his chair. When retirement came, he realized he didn’t even need to leave the house at all. His days could consist of chain-smoking, microwave dinners and a Golden Girls marathon with absolutely no guilt at all.
By the age of 58, he had his own little universe revolving around his recliner. Throughout the years, the objects in his house had been caught by the strong gravitational pull of Eddy’s laziness and orbited the chair in which he spent most of his days. The recliner was chaotically surrounded by a two-foot radius of remotes, snack foods, beer, TV dinners, and cigarette cartons. The microwave and mini-fridge had migrated long ago from the kitchen to his side, functioning with powerstrips and extension chords. All the other rooms were left abandoned and bare in exchange for a cluttered, easy-access living, and Eddy liked this just fine.
Eddy’s niece came every Tuesday to make sure he was alive. It isn’t certain why she bothered, but every week she would bring him groceries, put in new air fresheners for the stale cigarette smell, and attempt to clean the filthy carpet. Eddy never really noticed. She always showed up during Days of Our Lives, and while he didn’t particularly like it that much, it was the only decent show on during that time slot. Any television show was better than listening to a 20-year-old with a vacuum tell him that the less he did, the less he would be able to do in the future. So he just watched the screen as she did what she came to do and left in tears.
The girl stopped coming at around the same time the roaches showed up. They had settled nicely into Eddy’s daily life without him even noticing, crawling into open food bags, under the seat of his recliner, and sometimes into his microwave if he left it open. It was during one of her usual attempts at cleaning the carpet that she discovered the beginnings of the roaches’ city-state, crawling out of Eddy’s chair and trying obtain food from the open chip bag near his leg. Frantically, she shrieked and stomped on as many bugs as she could until she noticed how impassive her Uncle was. He didn’t even look her way, too engrossed by the TV to care. Calmly, she grabbed the vacuum and the air fresheners and slammed the door as she left. Eddy was too busy watching Who’s the Boss to notice anything but the annoying thumps and the loud slam that covered Tony Danza’s punch line. The laugh track that followed made him wonder what he missed.
When he finally recognized the roaches’ existence, he wasn’t that bothered by it; he saw his house guests as a new form of entertainment. At first he tried to name them, but after a while it became too much effort. There were so many. After watching the seventh “Sir Ed of the Recliner” and the twelfth “Eddy Jr.” crawl on the armrest toward a neglected Chicken Alfredo bowl, he lost interest. Sometimes he played with them, throwing a noodle a couple feet away from him to watch the roaches retrieve it, otherwise he left them alone. During the first week of the roaches’ stay, he would just chain-smoke as he watched Guiding Light, glancing occasionally as the serfs at his feet collected food for their kingdom.
Eventually TV became too much of a hassle for Eddy. Shows required him to pay attention to the plot and know who the characters were. His roaches didn’t ask that of him. He could fall asleep anytime he wanted and not miss a thing. He could just lay there and still feel entertained. When he was completely motionless, he could hear them scurrying around inside the recliner, knocking into each other between the metal frame and laying their eggs in spaces in the cushions. If he turned just slightly in his chair, one of two roaches would flutter out from under it, surprised by the shifting of their newfound country. It was rare that someone could oversee the creation of an entire civilization with no movement at all, and Eddy liked it even better than TV.
Eventually the cockroach kingdom increased beyond the rooming capabilities of his recliner, expanding their empire into the now unplugged and open mini-fridge. Once a day Eddy would will himself to sit up and, with effort, open three TV dinners. One would be for him, two would be for the roaches. The microwave had long been used as another cockroach shelter, so Eddy would leave their dinner clumped and congealed on the floor for the colony and slowly work his way through his own cold meal. The roaches didn’t seem to mind too much. The rest of the day would be spent with lights shut off, listening to the recliner nation churn with life.
More than once Eddy had gone through a TV dinner only to find a wriggling friend kicking in his mouth. He was beyond being disgusted, thinking instead that it would require more effort to spit it out than just letting it be. He chewed these crunchy delicacies and continued with his meal in peace, going back to listening to his other subjects work on expanding the realm.
On his fifty-ninth birthday, Eddy’s reign came to an end. At this stage, Eddy didn’t like to move. When the TV dinners ran out, he would just leave his mouth open and doze. If he noticed a wiggling feeling on his tongue, he would close his mouth, chew, and swallow. As for the cockroaches, they learned how to find food on their own; all they had to do was wait for the king to sleep. He never seemed to notice the small sharp pains on his arms and legs, or the slowly bleeding wounds that were left behind. Then again, he didn’t notice much anymore. He didn’t even notice when his niece turned on the light, dropped the birthday cake in her hand and screamed.
Maggie Anderson is a freshman English major and a Literary writer for Generation.
