lightning bug

The lightning bug was at large in my room, and that was simply not okay.
I had to sleep in there. As someone whose nightmares consist mostly of things with six legs, it would never do to leave him to flutter about in the night. The lightning bug must go.
I was faced, therefore, with two options: catch the poor misplaced fellow and return him to the outdoors, or kill him. I'm pretty sure the last time I caught a lightning bug was when I was four and after great exertions of persuasion on the part of my sister. I accidentally crushed it. No way was I risking that again.
So it seemed I had got to kill him. Though I detest their squirming legs and buggy faces, I've always tolerated lightning bugs for the sake of their comforting lights viewed safely from indoors. I found that this made me very reluctant to slaughter one simply for being lost.
However, I rationalized as I retrieved the flyswatter, I had not much of a choice. To face the wrath of my relatives by waking one of them to deal with it, I knew from experience, was not worth it for something that didn't sting. A  bedroom is a bedroom, and simply should not contain bugs of any sort. It was too bad, but that was why God made millions of these little pests.
So I confronted the lightning bug with the flyswatter in hand and I hesitated. Childhood memories of halfheartedly attempting to catch its forefathers with my friends, of wholeheartedly enjoying their natural beauty, and more recently of my baby nephew discovering the thrill of capturing them, gently presented themselves to me as if in reproach. Why was I, an insectophobe, getting sentimental about a species of flying LED? And yet I was.
I considered the specimen before me. He kept frantically trying to climb up the wall, falling down upon his back, wriggling for a second, righting himself, and repeating the process. Why doesn't he just fly? In answer, he floated about an inch and retreated to the ground, forlorn. I figured his wings were damaged.
Jolly good then. He won't be able to survive in the wild anyway. I should just put him out of his misery.
I made an insincere whack with my flyswatter that I knew would miss. The poor thing had never done anything to me. It wasn't his fault I had an irrational fear of his kind. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time...
And then my eyes dwelt on its legs. Its crawling, grasping, spindling legs. Every twitching movement of every threadlike limb was distinguishable
and utterly terrifying.
I whacked with gusto this time. I whacked and whacked and watched as each whack brought on a fresh seizure of death pangs from the lightning bug. He convulsed, his insect body curled inward in pain, his yellow light knocked a little bit loose. It took many whacks for him to die.
Shaken out of the idea of sleep, and in a writing mood anyway, I sat down to write a macabre account of the incident, with the intent of highlighting my own weakness. By and by I noticed an annoying little fly that needed killing, and having no reservations about exterminating such insignificant terrorists, I stood up to get the flyswatter again.
Upon my return, my eye fell on where the fallen lightning bug should have lain, but he was not there, nor anywhere to be seen.
Serves me right.