Read The Cockroaches of Stay More for Free Online Page B

have heard, all the way to Parthenon, the calling voice of Man, who had cried the name of the Woman twice. She had heard it, across those two furlongs of empty town.
    Although Sam could hear only the imagined steady locking of his little chateau, his sense of sight and smell were greatly refined in compensation, and he could detect the slightest changes in Woman as She Herself picked up the distant calling of Her name. She was sitting in Her cheer-of-ease, a marvelous piece of furniture with a high back of padded cushions to support Her spine, other cushions to support Her bottom, other cushions to support and rest Her arms, which ended in lovely hands that held a book, in the wan light of a kerosene lamp on a round table beside Her cheer-of-ease. Sam appreciated that She preferred, although electricity was available to Her, to light Parthenon only with the comfortable glow of kerosene lanterns and lamps. It was easy on all four of his eyes; his ocelli, or stargazers, did not alarm the bejoshua out of him every time She lighted a lamp.
    When the distant wail, “Sharon,” wafted through the open screen door of Her room, the Woman dropped Her book into Her lap, involuntarily emitted three different scents of fear, annoyance, and excitement, which Sam’s sniffwhips thoroughly perceived and classified, then spoke aloud, after the second sound of Her name, “Oh, for crying out loud! Larry, why don’t you just drop dead?”
    Sam did not hear this, but he could clearly determine that She had heard something from afar, that She was disturbed by it, and that She had spoken out against it. She did not immediately resume reading Her book.
    Sam’s mother had in his second or third instar explained to him the circumstances, handed down from Grandpa Ingledew, whereby Woman inhabited Parthenon, which, in ancient Stay More, had been one of the general merchandise stores for a whole population of Man, or Men, as well as Women and Children. The ancestor of this Woman, Sam’s Woman, had been a proprietress of this merchandise store, which occupied the central room of her dwelling, her bedroom and sitting room occupying one side of Parthenon. The ancestor-Woman, a fabled demigoddess named Latha, had later abandoned Parthenon, and it had remained unoccupied through countless generations of roosterroaches, just as all the other buildings of Stay More were uninhabited and most of them disappearing through rot, neglect, windstorm and rainstorm, fire and vandalism. A generation ago (a roosterroach generation from east to west is about two whole years), this Woman, Sharon, suddenly returned to Stay More and reoccupied the dwelling-part but not the store-part of Parthenon. Sharon, Sam had discovered before he lost his hearing, was the actual granddaughter of Latha, and the two Women still communicated by the instrument which sat permanently on the same round table which held the kerosene lamp.
    Sam had even seen the ancient demigoddess Latha on more than one occasion, when that Woman had come to visit Her granddaughter, and the two had sat together in rocking cheers on the porch in the dusk, although usually when Latha came it was daylight and Sam was fast asleep. But the one time Latha had come at night and Sam had crawled boldly beneath Her rocking cheer to listen to the two Women talk, his hearing had been excellent and he had been able to catch enough of the conversation to deduce that his Woman, Sharon, although She had grown from earliest childhood to adulthood in Stay More, had gone away and lived for years in a city, then in a town, then in a city again, before coming back to Stay More to clean up and fix up the old Parthenon and live in it alone. The grandmother, Latha, had been concerned that Sharon might become very lonely in the dead village, but Sharon had protested that She would not be. This had been before the Man had come.
    Because of his lifelong residence in the Woman’s bedroom, Gregor Samsa Ingledew knew a few things that no