SmokeLong Quarterly

Distrustful of maids, she placed a plastic cockroach inside the unzippered flap of her duffel bag. She went to the medical seminar, held in the hotel, and returned to her room in the evening.

Her duffel had been pounded flat, thrashed.
“Gotcha,” she said.

She lost her cockroach and then, on her final day, found it, next to her duffel bag on the floor. When she reached to pick it up, it ran away.