As a renter, you can either surrender to the vermin that eat all your Chips Ahoy but don’t pay their fair share of rent or you can blow them off the face of the fucking earth. When the sticky traps suck ass and the snap traps don’t clap, I opt for the war criminal’s favorite initialism: ICBM.
My past airstrikes against pernicious pests have limited my apartment choices and have sent my renters’ insurance rates through what’s left of the roof. My mom begged me to donate my nuclear warheads to The Salvation Army, but how could I move to the big city without a tactical weapon? Besides, my new building has a liberal policy when it comes to ICBMs. It even has a sauna.
It was chill for a month—the apartment, not the sauna. No new mortal enemies the size of salt shakers. But last night, it all changed.
After a long day of underpaid work, all I require is a hunk of alpaca pâté. No crackers, no baguettes, not even a smidge of sharp honey mustard. Just pâté. I’d left my daily hunk on the counter dressed in a seductive slash of wax paper and surrounded by Peru-scented candles.
When I got home smelling of minimum wage, I saw six nibble marks: Mouse Code for fuck you, human scum. My alpaca meat had been dissipâtéd by a significantly tinier mammal. That’s when I took the nuke out of my air fryer.
“TOTAL WAR!” I squeaked in Micelandic and Volish. You gotta watch out for those vole bastards.
Deploying an ICBM solo-dolo is a real pain. In the past, I had someone from Taskrabbit do it, but finding a qualified weapons system specialist in Brooklyn is a bitch. So I commandeered the most affordable AI drone on the market: my knockoff Roomba.
Attaching a gun or a knife or a chainsaw to a Roomba is de rigueur. But attaching an ICBM to a knockoff Roomba is a fucking hassle. There’s nothing in either instruction manual for this escalation. I was an innovator, yes. But those at the head of the pack get chilly-willy without the herd’s funky body heat.
I tried duct tape, but the gray sticky stuff clashed with the missile’s metal. My red tie made it look like a Christmas present. Twine was a waste of time.
Scotch tape worked, though. You are a god among mice with a little tape, a knockoff Roomba, and a nuke. Sometimes you gotta nuke whatcha gotta nuke.
I left for work this morning feeling hella good about this shit—the ICBM, not work. My masterpiece was set to Kill Mode (formerly Clean Mode). But I’ve heard no po-po sirens or BOOM! I should’ve used double-sided tape.
Wait! There’s a message in my tenant portal. Nuclear Fallout Fee. Fuck.
Illustrated Epilogue
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Dan Dellechiaie (the writer) is a fiction writer from New Jersey. His writing has appeared in The Chamber Magazine, The Scare You To Sleep Podcast, New Hampshire Magazine, and Tongue. His newsletter, Dan’s Little Joys, can be found on Substack. www.dadell.com
Hameed Mourani (the illustrator) is a fiction writer and illustrator based in Tarrytown, New York. He received his BA from Marist College and his MFA from Columbia University.