They received their answer that night. It had started as a simple scurrying about the bedroom floor that warranted little reaction. Once around midnight, Diana woke up briefly, surprised by its solidified footsteps. She remarked to herself that they sounded surprisingly like marching, but she fell asleep too quickly again to draw any conclusions. It was exactly at 2 AM that their bedroom door creaked open, letting its soundwaves pierce dream country and re-introduce the previous day's worries.

"Diana, I thought I told you to close the door completely last night."

Diana was visibly shaking, and the bedframe reverberated with her increasing alarm. "Mark, you fool, can't you see it opened by itself?"

"That's impossible, Diana!" Mark whipped off the blanket and swung to the right to climb out of bed. "There may be a lot of weird things happening around here lately, but doors don't just magically open by…"

"Arrêtez-vous là!!"

This caught their attention. Mark's seated frame froze on the bed, and Diana whimpered quietly into the mattress. After a few seconds of this painful silence, the command came again.

 “Arrêtez-vous là!! Nous sommes sérieux!”

For a few moments, no further sound pierced the room. Finally, Diana faced Mark. "I think that's French." She turned to scrutinize the door, but no figure stood there, and no breathing denoted any fresh alien presence. "Mark, I can't see anyone…Mark, do you? Mark...Mark…Mark…Mark?"

Mark finally shook his head. "Not a thing there!" This tone of confidence spilled out into the open, Mark's feet hit the floor with the same resolve. His next action lacked the same resoluteness, however, as the man found himself flopping to the ground. Expletives pierced the air as Mark grabbed his feet, screaming in both pain and surprise… but mostly surprise. Over this superlative-laden roar, Diana could hear a chorus of voices conferring with each other.

“Les imbéciles sont tombés dans le panneau,”

“Avons-nous préparé le reste de la maison?”

“Oui, tout est préparé, numéro 2381. Annoncez votre présence!”

Diana bent over the bed and helped her husband back onto the bed. To her shock, she could see him pulling hundreds of thumbtacks out of his feet's bleeding cavities. "What the h-…"

“Écoutez! Depuis ce soir 21 juillet, cette résidence appartient désormais à la légion de blattes libérées réunies, désignées à leurs propres fins. Résistez-nous à vos risques et périls!”

Diana was more than a little disturbed, but Mark was clearly showing signs of growing anger. "Who or what is there?"

“nous le demons encore une fois, nous sommes...”

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Diana let herself down nimbly onto the floor, taking care to avoid every unseen obstacle in the dark. Gingerly moving forward, she kicked past thousands and thousands of thumbtacks ubiquitously placed. Once or twice, she accidentally stepped on one, and on more than a few occasions, she heard the satisfying crunch of something being crushed beneath her. Softly but steadily, she clambered to the light switch, ready to cast the light of illumination on the night's web of peculiarities. –Click! - went the switch.

The floor was wall to wall with cockroaches, interspersed among the thumbtacks. This time Diana screamed louder than Mark did.

"Mark, get the bug spray; they're everywhere! Can't you see they're climbing all over me!??!" Mark could see they were everywhere, but Diana was jumping up and down too rapidly for any of the roaches to clamber up her legs, who, for the moment, didn't seem interested in moving from their spots anyway.

“Madame, il n'y a aucune raison de vous conduire de manière aussi stupide, pouvez-vous s'il vous plaît arrêter de sauter partout comme un...”

With a herculean cry, Mark soared out of bed, clearing the space of the whole room and landing just outside the entrance. Landing on his knees, he could feel the muffled flattening of hundreds of little bodies beneath him. He continued down the stairs in the same helter-skelter spirit to the bathroom cabinet, where the aforementioned bug spray promised deliverance. Upstairs, he could hear the thousands of little pitter-patters rustling to and fro afresh, but this only added further zeal to his desperate mission. Ramming through the bathroom door, he dove straight into the cabinet above the sink, tossing out useless items where they prevented his view of the much-needed liberator. But as the floor piled up further and further, the cabinet revealed its gaping horrors to Mark's bloodshot vision. The spray was nowhere to be found.

Mark burst out of the bathroom without stopping to contemplate, rushing madly to the cabinet below the kitchen sink. This time, he flung everything out of it desperately, only stopping to look amongst the pile on the floor for the fabled repellent once he was confident nothing else lay inside. But no success was to be found in either spot.

Mark finally stopped to catch his breath. He wiped his brow; he was sweating. Then he noticed that the rustling above had stopped. Without a moment for himself, Mark bolted again up the stairs and approached the bedroom, but he stopped abruptly at the entrance.

Diana was tied up on the floor, face down. Inside her mouth was a sock.

"What did you little stinkers do with my bug spray!??!" Mark exhumed in growing consternation. "And for crying out loud, speak English!"

“Nous excusons, monsieur, nous ne comprenons pas vos propos. Cependant...”

Mark growled in exasperation and stepped boldly into the room. A sea of black parted for him, allowing his feet to touch the ground unimpeded. To his surprise, he found the thumbtacks had been removed completely. Making his way towards his wife, he ripped the sock from her mouth; he could hear the insects discussing something of great importance around him. As their voices muttered on and on, he could hear more and more voices adding themselves to their convention. The racket grew in volume, although Mark could sense that none of it was directed towards him. Wild-eyed, he asked his wife, "How much French can you understand?"

Diana, her head still pressed sideways against the floor, shook it in disappointment. "Not a word! You were the one who was supposed to become proficient in it! Get me out of these ropes, will you?!?"

Mark nodded and began untying. Immediately, the voices became louder; it almost sounded as if they were angry, he thought. Standing up, he raised his shoulders to bolster any nerve he might have within him. His mind racing furiously, he pumped his memory bank for any trace of French grammar or phrases. A catalog of vocab materialized hazily, and Mark ventured into the brave unknown with the first phrase that came to him.

"Bonjour!"

The voices stopped abruptly. Not a sound was heard for a moment, and an eerie silence permeated the bedroom. Diana gasped in shock but emitted no further ejaculation.

"Je suis Mark!"

He waited a moment more. When the cockroaches made no reply, he grew bolder.

"Elle est Diana!"

Mark smiled. The cockroaches seemed lost for answers, in awe of his progress so far, he imagined. He continued with “c'est…c'est…c'est…” but then stopped. Darn it. Diana, how do you say 'my house' in French?"

Diana had sat up by this time, although she was still tied up too strongly to free herself. "I know 'ma' is 'my,' but that's as far as my French goes."

Suddenly, Mark brightened. "Oh, wait! I got it!" He turned to face his highly attentive audience. "c'est ma maison!"

A rumble and a crack flattened the air around the two. All at once, the black hordes of synchronized insurgents scrambled up all four walls around them and onto the roof. Within 20 seconds, they had coated almost every spare crevice the room provided, and no light could pierce their enveloping form as they encapsulated every spare inch afforded to them. The room grew blacker with every second.

Diana was the first to overcome her stupefaction. "Mark, we gotta go!!!!"

He needed no reminder. With superhuman strength, he promptly tossed his tethered wife over his shoulder and raced out of the room, all the while noticing the walls outside were also whispering hidden contents within. Too panic-driven to investigate, Mark raced downstairs. But even the kitchen was humming a din of French cries; from out of the sink, the pipes, and the cupboards came the crawling calls: "Vive la revolution! vive la revolution! vive la revolution!" Mark didn't stop until he and his wife were laid sprawled out in the grass of their front yard. 

Mark untied Diana, but there didn't seem to be any appropriate response for a few minutes after. Panting on the grass, Diana stared in befuddlement at the whole catastrophe, while Mark stared in growing worry and fear. The whole house vibrated with growing animation, but the noise remained stifled within. Diana turned to face her husband. "You know, Mark, this whole thing is your fault. We're about to lose our house because you were too lazy to learn French!"

Mark stared momentarily and then shakily sputtered, "I just told them this was my house!"

"Yeah, well, it was the wrong thing to say. Can't you see what they want? This whole thing is a mutiny, an uprising!"

"A battle for our own house…" Mark stated emptily.

"The crafty little buggers were smart to start this at night, with all the exterminator companies closed. We have to act now before they take over everything! Did you say they hid all the bug spray?... then we need to use brooms."

"What chance do brooms have against an army of 10 million roaches?" Mark groaned for emphasis.

"A far better chance than us just sitting here watching! Anyway, do you have any better ideas?!?"

Mark was still too stupefied to offer any plausible alternatives, and he began standing up when Diana dealt him another blow: "And by the way, Mark, you have to do it yourself."

"What the heck, Diana!!?? Why can't you help??!!?"

"Were you tied down back in the bedroom?!" Diana's wrath mounted up in full force. "Do you want me to tell you everything they did to me back up there? Did you see the sock in my mouth? Huh? I'm not going back!!!"

With this enunciation in the open, Mark grimaced and faced the house freshly, nodding twice to himself. Abruptly, he bolted towards the house and disappeared within. For five minutes, Diana could hear no sound, and even the house seemed to have stopped vibrating. Then, CRACK!! sung the upstairs window, as a broom (presumably Mark's) smashed its glass and sent its shards sailing down towards the grass below. Diana sighed.