Decades ago in the midst of long-hours of brown outs I would sneak out our katulong’s local comic books and read them with fervor in between my father’s Superman and Legion of Superheroes. One such komiks was Kilabot comics. It was not scary at all, but it was quite raunchy, with lots of sex scenes. I can still remember the distinct weird smell of the paper, like wet basahan. In one story in Kilabot this family lives in a haunted house, and of course one by one the members are killed off by the evil spirit and such. The aunt is ordered to dance dance dance endlessly, until she dies from exhaustion. Of course she has to dance nude.

Kilabot Komiks! Image lifted from Pinoy Komiks FB page

Two of the most commonly used terms in the damn komiks series are: “naaagnas”, because something is always rotting, usually someone’s face, and “hilakbot”, because it’s hard to draw characters’ facial expressions so they are just described in the narrations as nahihilakbot. I am reminded of this particular hilakbot term last night when, as i entered my room at 11:30 pm, when what should I see but…. eight cockroaches crawling around, some with fluttering wings on the verge of flying! EEEEEEEEEP I yelped. There is no other way to describe it, I was really nahilakbot. This has happened before, back in June 2008, when, as I was listening to Alanis’s recently released Flavors of Entanglement, twenty-four–I counted them–twenty four roaches just crawled in my room from nowhere. This is properly documented in my blog in…. Friendster! AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

But this time I was prepared. I nimbly reached for my can of Baygon and sprayed–SPRAYED!–at the disgusting vermin. I stepped on the bed, jumped, and sprayed at the ones crawling high on the walls. They didn’t immediately die, but they fell, fell, and writhed in agony. More roaches came in! I cartwheeled and sprayed in 360 degrees and hit more roaches fluttering around. Die you motherfuckers, I was thinking. After a few more minutes I was gasping, both from exhaustion and the suffocating smell of Baygon. In a few more seconds I would writhe with the roaches on the floor, so I dashed out and ate sushi.

I then went back to the room and swept out the damn roaches.

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