In Continuum.

So I was at my computer, minding my own business with a webcam chat. Then my sister's scream tore through the air like a jet fighter flying low overhead, as if she was being raped or something. But of course, the chances of a rapist climbing nineteen floors just to rape someone is unlikely, unless Peter Parker has officially gone to the dark side. But there are things that could scale the walls of my condominium, or just take off on their wings and then fly all the way up from the ground. The more skillful of these beings would take the elevator, but they aren't usually very smart. You've seen the way those flying bugs bang their heads constantly on light bulbs, you know that they are not going to last very long on the evolutionary cycle. Anyway, one of such beings made its way up to my home yesterday night, and it was a giant cockroach. It showed itself on the doorstep of my sister's room, waved its feelers a couple of times to say hello. My sister took about five seconds to process the sight of a cockroach at her doorstep, another five seconds to convert that thought into a scream, and the next five seconds were devoted to both the execution of the screaming and the slamming of the door. The act of slamming, however, caused the cockroach to freak and run into MY room. 

Initially, it was just my mother staring at my sister in confusion. Then it was me jumping out of the way of the cockroach that came into my room and went under the table. I have a problem with roaches in my home, but I have a bigger problem with roaches in my bedroom. I have this insane urge to annihilate them, but they are usually so tricksy and cunning. Insects don't usually appear in my room, and I'd usually leave them to Earl in the past. Of course, that was before Earl died underneath the wheels of my chair. I suppose that is a reason why the roach was allowed to roam the house, perhaps Tommy and Jake haven't been doing their jobs. So it went under my table, and my worst nightmare happened - it disappeared. I have mentioned before, that I dislike two types of roaches: the type that flies, and the type that appears in your room, then disappears. My mother was mobilized, and we brought along two brooms and two bottles of dish washing liquid meant for oily frying pans. We were determined to kill that little bastard, and we were ready to do so. I felt like a Ghostbuster somehow, with my finger on the trigger of the squirter and the broom. Too bad we didn't have that awesome car that they ride in, that'd be awesome. 

Anyway, so the little bastard disappeared. My mother and I surrounded my desk with our weapons in hand, ready for a sudden attack from the accused being. It was a long wait, though, and it remained out of sight for the longest time. I began to grow restless and nervous, the thought of it laying eggs in my bedroom and then spawning young offsprings underneath my bed raised the hair on the back of my neck. Cockroach invasion is one thing, infant cockroaches invading is another story altogether. It is probably the nightmare of nightmares, and that was the thought that haunted me while I waited for its appearance. My mother jumped onto the floor and shone a torchlight into the darkness that was under my table. She couldn't see anything amidst the dark and the balls of dust at first, until she saw two curious feelers when the light swept pass it. She whispered, "OK, I see it. I can see it!" That was as far as a plan went for her, and that was when I suggested her to stick a broom underneath the table to chase it out. 

Here is where our opinions differ. My mother wants to spray the cockroach when it comes out with the dish washing liquid, while I really wanted to kill it with my broom. Just as that little bugger made a dash for its life out from under the table, the dish washing liquid kissed the back of its wings and it took a u-turn and ran back into the darkness. "Should have squashed it" I said, and we went back into our positions. So we have a middle-aged woman with her messy hair sprawled on the floor, me with my dish washing liquid and broom ready to strike, and my sister still screaming in her bedroom, far away from the battleground. It was a strange sight, but that is usually the arrangement of the members of our family when such things happen, unless it is when we are battling those creepy crawlers on our own. There was this time when my mother encountered one of these irritating buggers under the washing machine. She threw a slipper at it and knocked it out - but not dead. What she did later was to sandwich the cockroach between two pieces of paper, and then she stapled the edges together just so that it'd give her a good reason not to squash it. My mother has a thing with insects and other small animals being squashed. You should look at the way she squirms at the way Bear Grylls ate that lizard on television. I've never seen her like that before. 

So, our little cockroach friend, let's call him Bob, peeked out from the edge of the power sockets. It just kind of stayed there and looked up at us while we conjured up a plan to kill it. Poor Bob, I wonder if it was scared or not. It's the thing humans do to creatures they don't like, we tend to put horns on their heads and then think that they are all evil. Once in a while you have computer-generated movies like Rattatouille to portray rats in a cute manner. You won't really see that happening for cockroaches, though. Joe's Apartment did try to give cockroaches some attitude and funk, but I still found them to be repulsive afterwards. Besides, that movie sucked, so double negatives. My mother and I started debating on whether we should chase Bob out towards open grounds or back under the table. I stuck the broom onto Bob without thinking, and it limped several centimeters into the corner of the room when my mother drenched him with a healthy dosage of dish washing liquid. I somehow imagined the sound of those Ghostbuster guns at that moment, and I thought I heard the quiet scream of Bob in the corner. 

So bought drank a little too much of that green toxic liquid, and apparently couldn't take it. He flipped around and laid there on his back for the longest time while I fished it out with a pincer we used for the fish tank. There was Bob, amidst an old issue of TIME magazine and small hills of tissue in the trash, and we packed him him and returned him back into the rubbish dump at the back of the house whence he came. So the episode ended with Bob drowned in a pool of green toxic, while my sister became paranoid for the rest of the night, and a few nights afterwards. I, however, have grown to be somewhat paranoid as well, after my mother told me about the small cockroaches she has been killing in the kitchen from time to time. I sometimes wonder if I'd hate cockroaches less if they were prettier. Like, if there were multi-colored, perhaps I'd appreciate them a little more than giant brown insects. At any rate, no cockroaches are going to survive in my house for very long, with the brooms and the flying slippers around, we are fully prepared for the next attack.