He stepped on a cockroach unawares and crunched it flat.  He kept on walking, but did suddenly turn to check if its brutal end had by chance been witnessed by other cockroaches.  He saw himself lain out at a cockroach tribunal, but quickly shut out the image in his mind in order to make it to school on time.  It revisited him half an hour into his night’s sleep.  Roaches had piled one upon the other to address him.  They told him they wanted to punish him for the killing, but, other than multiplying their own numbers, could come to no consensus on how to go about it.  Had he any ideas?  He offered at once to leave them extra garbage by the back door every day.  The thought, though, that he ought first to check in with his mother, did then, almost as reflex, wake him from his dream.  She was already there in bed by him, wiping his forehead, smoothing out his hair, with a look so open that he closed his eyes again and tried to re-enter the dream — to go ahead and face his punishment.  He tried and tried, but could find no way back to the tribunal.  It had disappeared so mysteriously that, years later, in a corner of his mind, he still thought of it as unfinished business.