If there had been a camera present, this would have been the most Epic video on YouTube.

You haven't laughed a real laugh until you've seen two grown women (albeit, young grown women) running and screaming in fear. Especially when you see that they're being pursued by something less than three inches long.

My first roommate was also my best friend of eight years, and when we were eighteen we decided to move away from our families (or rather, since I was coming back from college I was moving away from the dorm) and into our own place where there were no rules.

Jenn and I were (and still are) very different people. But one thing we have in common (aside from the ridiculous rate at which we read books) is our fear of the nasty, creepy crawly. And when I say fear I mean outright ridiculous we can't deal with it, must run away in fear of our lives, phobia. There is no rationality. Logically, we totally know that most bugs can't harm us. (Uh...except the wasp, but there's a fun story about that coming up, too.) I mean, when is the last time a caterpillar bit someone? Or a butterfly? Yes. We freak out when butterflies fly too close. We can totally watch them at a distance and admire the beauty. We just, you know, like to keep them outside of the bubble that we call our personal space. As in, dude, you're in my bubble. Back up.

Yeah, that applies to butterflies. Honestly, if it's got more than four legs and it isn't cute and fuzzy and at least the size of the palm of my hand, we're probably completely weirded out by or terrified of it.

Which brings me to the first story I was going to tell you: the story of the giant mother-fucking cockroach that tried to kill us.

And by us I mean Jenn and I. Our two beautiful and yet very useless cats sat by and watched, as did our two guy friends who were visiting that night. Actually, the damn thing came in with them.

To the point: Jenn, Colton, Erik, and I all had awesome plans to go to Mesa Rosa for an awesome tex-mex dinner followed by a trip downtown for some major decompressing at Kasbah's, a totally relaxing, hippy hookah lounge where Turkish music and decor is the key, and where it's not unusual for random patrons to get up and perform belly dances for free. (No, they do not serve alcohol. So, presumably, these lady patrons are sober. Unless they got drunk before they came to decompress. But that seems counterproductive.)

However, when Colton and Erik entered our apartment at the beginning of the evening (they had driven up from Belton where they both lived in On Campus Housing for UMHB, which meant that no girls were allowed in the dorms EVER, and not even in the lounge after nine, and EVERYBODY had a curfew. In college. Ug.) a friend came running in behind him. It was the Biggest, Ugliest, Most Diabolical Cockroach Water Roach In Existence. For real, this thing was longer than my index finger. Can we say RADIOACTIVE MUTANT much?

Erik and Colton watched it in fascination (I always thought they saw it outside and decided to let it in on purpose out of some misguided thought that all creatures deserve life or something) as it trotted right into our living. Jenn and I reacted instantly. By screaming and turning and trying to get away from this thing.

Now, let me give you a visual. Jenn is six feet and three quarters of an inch tall. She is built to take hits. She likes to fight with the boys. She's always been kind of a tom boy. She looks very much like the Native American blood she's got in her. Except for her very German nose. And she was running, jumping up on the couch a split second ahead of me.

And I was right up there with her. But the damn thing was still coming at us, and though we were high up and safe on the couch, there just wasn't enough distance between us. So I did the only thing my brain could think of: I tried to climb up the back of the couch to get further away. Except that our "couch" was actually a futon (that had seen many a wild party before it was passed on to us by a mutual friend) that I had covered in a black silk sheet in an effort to hide what we thought (or hoped) was from a nosebleed years prior to our owning it. And of course, I slipped and fell off of the couch.

And landed on my stomach lying on the carpet. And when I lifted my head and looked instinctively in the direction of the Evil Invader, it was a foot away from my face and still coming at me.

There is no way to describe the wordless noise that came out of my mouth. It was very high pitched, very loud, and more than a shriek. There are no vowels that can convey the way it might have sounded. I have never been able to reproduce the noise. But it drowned out Jenn's shrieks and everybody covered their ears, except the cats, who actually high tailed it to Jenn's bedroom on the other side of the kitchen.

Only a second had passed since I fell, and I didn't even pause. My foot was still caught in the silk sheet, and I tried to get to my feet to save myself. I tripped and fell back down. And rather than try to right myself again, I crawled on my belly, still making that awful noise, and into my bedroom. Once inside, I immediately started stuffing clothes and shoes and blankets under the crack in the door, keeping the Nasty Death Bringer from coming in after me.

I finally managed to get some semblance of self control back and I started shrieking in a tolerable pitch for Erik and Colton to, "just kill the fucking monstrosity! Now! Before we all die!" and Jenn eagerly seconded my motion to wipe the thing off the face of the planet.

Erik and Colton had watched this entire scene unfold in less than a minute, and when we started begging for help, they finally acted. By, you know, just dropping into fits of helpless laughter that called to us even in the far reaches of our mind where fear ruled, and it brought up something more powerful: anger.

Indignant, I ripped out the protective wall from in front of my door and came out, jumping immediately on the couch to protect myself from the Demon Thing that was watching us, perfectly still, from right in front of the couch. Jenn and I began screaming things like it's not funny, you assholes, and laugh it up, just kill the fucking thing!, and my personal favorite, for the love of all that's holy, you morons, if you don't kill it we can't go eat!

Ah, nothing speaks to the male mind like the threat of starvation. Or, you know, missing one meal, which in the male mind is directly equal to starvation. Galvanized to action by the thought of hunger, they stepped into action and busted out the Insect Killer and Windex from under our kitchen sink. And they stepped up and doused the little beast with oodles of these high powered chemicals, and guess what? It just started running. It wouldn't die. So Colton put his big foot over it.

And he was all like, "Wow. This thing is really strong. I can feel it moving my foot when it's trying to get out." Which just freaked Jenn and me out even more because that just convinced us that it was a Radioactive Demon Freak Mutant Bug that had no business being alive.

Finally Colton and Erik put it in a jar, took it outside, doused it with lighter fluid and lit the poor thing on fire. I know that seems cruel, but it was a Mutant Bug and it totally needed to die. There was really absolutely no way that that unearthly thing could live side by side with humans and not try to do anything diabolical, like, you know, trying to eat us or trying to crawl into our ears and get into our brains while we're sleeping.

Colton and Erik refer to that as our Finest Female Moment.

Honestly, it wasn't our fault though. I mean, that thing was huge, and it wanted to kill us.