Centipede

I saw a centipede in person for the first time a few days ago. It was about 4 in the morning. I had just finished writing, I was in bed, the lights were off, and I felt something tickle my thigh. Usually when I feel that, it's the fan hitting my leg hair and all is well. But that night my legs were under the covers.

I lifted the covers, but before I could even lay sight on my legs there it was. All wiggly and fast, speeding up my shirt, working its way to my mouth. Maybe it was the silent yelp, or my legs kicking around, but the centipede decided it was time to head in another direction.

It crawled under my bed, where the boogeyman hides. It stopped being so quick, it was just there. At first I figured it should be harmless. It's lost; that centipede isn't even supposed to be indoors. I set myself back onto my pillow, and curiosity took over.

What if this centipede had evolved mentally? What if it decided to seek revenge, crawl into my mouth, refuge in my intestines, and breed? My every following shit would be infested with tiny centipede babies, scraping the edges of my colon with it's wiggling leg-claw-things.

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It took me a second to realize it'd probably die in my stomach before any of that happened. Unless it really did evolve, and its outer shell became impenetrable by those acids lining and eating away at my stomach. If corn can do it, why can't an arthropod?

It was at this point that I figured I'd check underneath the bed, just in case it was still there. It was. I saw it; laying there. Wiggling its little claw things at the wall, pretending it was trying to climb it. I knew it was actually etching a blueprint of my body, trying to take it over. To appropriate my soul.

And then I squashed it with my slipper. The bottom half. It was stuck to the ground, but it was still alive. Left to die slowly after thinking such cruel thoughts over me, a poor random nobody in this world. I watched it die from the edge of my bed afterwards, just to be sure.

Paul - 1 • Centipede - 0