The Irreparable Consequences of Running Late for Class

Now, they are in the kitchen with screwdrivers, opening gallon cans of red paint.

Hmmpf!!! I crack a muffled cry through the tight fabric, my stomach twisting at the thought of mom coming home to find her tiles covered in red. Her 8th-century Sevillian ceramic tiles. My legs kick frantically in the air – I look like a flipped-over beetle about to die from dehydration in the sun.

"Hush there, child…" Whispers a raspy voice as one of them turns around, a hairy appendage held to his mouth. "We're almost done."

His antennas wiggle excitedly as my eyes widen in horror. I struggle to jerk away from the chair but the rugged ropes only tighten. If only I had known to shut the bathroom windows…

Never forget to lock the doors, they said. Don't let strangers in, they said. But most importantly, never run late for class, they said.

They are now beyond thousands, or perhaps even millions, coming out of every tiniest crack and crevices, crawling in each direction over the wallpapers, the stove, the oven, the fan, the table and the plates, the chairs and the napkins, in and out of the fireplace, over and under the flower vase. I think back in disgust of the many times I used to lick the crusty openings in the wall as a kid, relishing the salty deposits that coated the cracks, all those years, left there by those!!

In turn, they plop into the cans of red paint and crawl onto the sides, coated in blood red, fanning out their wings to dry up faster. A hundred more come in rolling a tube of pitch-black paint, some viciously attempting to saw off the lid with kitchen knives, the others a little less successfully with teaspoons. The biggest ones with the longest – and might I add hairiest – limbs use their claw-like pincers to dot regular patterns on the others' backs.

Mmmmpf! I whimper in anguish. There was officially no saving the tiles – my kitchen floor had now become a Pollock masterpiece.

Suddenly my restraints come loose. "You have neither seen nor will speak of any of this. Our ladybird cousins are preferable to cockroaches in the human world, you see." I look up in surprise as the one who spoke joins the zillion others who flew out in unison into the blood-colored haze.