I Got My Just Desserts: Never Trust a Stink Bug (I Ate One)
Last night, I wrote a short, reflective piece about the little brown refugee I'd found on my desk. I declared I was too soft in my old age to kill it, and that it deserved mercy as it was simply trying to stay warm. A generous act, I thought. A moment of humanity.
I was spectacularly, disgustingly wrong.
I paid the price this morning, mid-sandwich. Nothing fancy, ham and cheese, the kind of lunch that doesn't warrant narrative. But then came a sound that made my jaw freeze: a specific, unpleasant crunch. Not the satisfying snap of fresh bread or the gentle give of crisp lettuce, but something else. Something flat and brittle and wrong.
Then came the taste.
It hit like a chemical attack. Bitter. Acrid. The precise flavour of industrial cleaner mixed with rotting gym socks, but so much worse, a taste that seemed to bypass my mouth entirely and lodge itself directly in my brain stem. My entire mouth flooded with it, the smell and the flavour and the wrongness of it all happening at once. I spat the entire mouthful onto the desk, absolutely certain I'd poisoned myself.
And there it was, embedded in the bread like some kind of terrible prize: a tiny, flattened, dark brown corpse.
The Refugee.
My mercy had been rewarded with a mouthful of its vile, toxic defence system. I had saved the bastard from the cold. I had given it shelter. And it had repaid me by attempting to destroy my taste buds for a week.
The moral clarity came quickly. The stink bug is not a refugee. It is not a victim of circumstance. It is a terrorist. An enemy combatant. It infiltrated my home, infiltrated my sandwich, and launched a chemical strike against my mouth. My soft-hearted persona didn't just crack, it died right there on that desk.
From now on, they all die. Every single one. Without exception. Without hesitation. No more mercy. No more refuge.
The only refugee I'm sheltering now is the one inside my own mouth, desperately trying to escape the lingering taste of stink bug.