Flash Fiction - Roach Motel

I am sucking up dead roaches with an industrial vacuum cleaner. I can hear the armor of their bodies clinking against the metal tube as they disappear from the floor. Every night, in every unoccupied room, I sprinkle white powder around the scarred baseboards and the next day I come to vacuum. Usually there’s just a smattering of insects to be sucked up, but sometimes, like now, there are piles of them. It never ends; there are always more.
I flip the switch and the roaring dwindles to silence filled by the slap of tennis shoes on concrete. A flurry of skinny children scuttle past the open door. I roll up the cord, preparing to lug the bulky contraption to the next room. I step out under the awning and spy Randy’s long white Cadillac pulling into the lot. I roll the vacuum along on its little pocked wheels, kicking it along to the sound of a woman yelling and a baby crying.
This next room, seventeen, has just a smattering of dead bugs, and since the beds don’t need changed, I’m back outside and on to the next one. It’s much bigger than the other rooms that families live in, and as far as I know they don’t charge much more for it. But then, I don’t handle the money, I just suck up the bugs.