When I was in the Navy down at Cecil Field in Florida, I woke one night in my barracks when I heard a slight scuffing noise and thought “What the hell is that?”
I turned on my light to find the biggest roach I had ever seen, scurrying across the deck. Without hesitation, I leaped out of my rack, grabbed one of my black boondockers, and ran straight at the thing trying to smash the thing holding the boot by the tip and using the heel as the hammer.
I smacked at it three or four times, missing with each try, and the thing scurried under the crack at the bottom of the door and ran into the hallway.
Too pumped up, and thinking I would never get back to sleep with a monster like THAT lurking in the barracks, I opened the door and ran after it into the hallway in my white, Navy issue boxer shorts, whacking frantically at this thing.
Finally, I scored a blow, and the beast made a loud sickening crack as the heel of the shoe came down on top of it. I froze, and when I lifted the shoe off of the dead thing (or so I thought) it suddenly took to flight!
It scared the crap out of me! I didn’t even know those things had wings and could even fly, but what was more unsettling was the fact that it seemed to be about the size of a softball as it took to the the air, wings beating like mad.
A big, wing-beating thing the circumference of a softball!
What an episode! I could imagine every scene. You’re a good short story writer.
...I smacked at it three or four times, missing with each try...
Yep, those things have evasive maneuvers honed over a hundred million years of evolution or something. You never get them on the first encounter. There's always a chase...