The 5am bug
Shiny. Yellowy green with brown antennae and red go-faster stripes on the back legs. Seemingly a cross between a cricket and the violently green tiny fruit flies that I used to mush up for their DNA. But they were freeze dried, so they didn’t know. The green ones gave the best DNA pellets too, the little brown crunchy ones had hardly any and the fat beige ones always wound up with masses of pink floating proteins that gave masking problems in the PCR.
I think the fall from the roof stunned him, but he’s woken up now and is waving his antennae at me. Hello bug, I’m sorry I’ve mashed so many of your brethren. Are you a him? There’s something ever so masculine about the busy way you’re exploring your surroundings, traversing the various scraps and piles of paper before me. Does it seem odd to you, bug, these unnatural colours that mark the bleached pages? Can bugs see colour? They must, on some level, be able to distinguish the different wavelengths or what purpose would there be in all those hieroglyphic markings that looks so readable under the microscope?
He disappears behind a stack of paper. I wonder why he crawls, when he has those glittery cellophane wings?