OMGJeremy

Some Nightmares Skitter and Go By the Name “House Centipede”

I have put off writing my part of the series of Bug Week articles we decided to do.  I have put it off for almost two months now.  Why?  It is because I am a coward when it comes to things that have so many legs, and because I am psychologically fragile and need to only see a picture of an insect and then well, it is like I see them everywhere and feel them on me.  It could be mental insanity, or it could be a strong creative imagination, or it could just be the result of a real phobia.  I wonder if the people on Maury who are afraid of mustard can feel the mustard on their skin whenever they think of it.  Are their sensations of touch and taste mixed together?  I can’t allow myself the luxury to write about phobias in general, however.  That is for another day.  No.  I have to stay on track and tell you about house centipedes.  This is my own self-made Hell.  No one but myself to blame.

When I originally conceived of the idea that we all write about our most feared insects, it was with the intention that it would just be a decent Staff article.   I was curious about what those guys were afraid of – what do manly men like them fear?  Time passed and the Jeremies and Billy had written a ton and I had not written a word.  Eventually, I divided up the article into individual articles so that I could wait a while longer before I needed to write.  It is because I realized that I would be writing about house centipedes and to be honest with you I am telling you this part to put off writing about them a little longer.  To be honest with you, as soon as I wrote their name in that last sentence, I started feeling a little twitchy.

If I found this crawling on me the only scream I would let out would be a scream of joy.

I spend a fair bit of time every day flinching at a stray thread touching my arm, or eye floaties zooming by my peripheral vision.  Occasionally, a bug is actually there and it is a shock indeed.  I seem to be getting more and more afraid of chitinous monsters as I get older, and I fully expect to be one of those elderly people who falls and shatters a hip because they thought they saw a cockroach and completely lost their shit in a storm of overreaction.  I already get held hostage by the tiniest and least threatening of spiders at an embarrassing frequency.  But even spiders are a comforting presence when compared to a house centipede.  But spiders, listen, I still don’t want you crawling on me oh god I keep thinking things are crawling on me

If you have ever seen one of these horrific beasts, then you already know exactly why this is my Most Feared Creepy Crawly Thing.  The house centipede has more legs than anything else, well maybe not in number but my god they are long long legs.  Far longer than they need to be or have any right to be.  And I can’t stand long insecty legs.  When they run (which is at nightmare speeds), their legs make some hypnotic rippling motion but instead of going into a deep trance, most people get the fuck out of the way.  I think the worst part about them is that I am pretty sure they don’t have good vision, or not even any eyes maybe, but one can be strolling on a wall on the other side of a room and when you see it – it will stop.  There’s no way it should be able to know you just spotted it, but it knows.  So I figure it is either psychic and terrifying or its thousand legs are actually sensitive feelers and it can ACTUALLY FEEL the movements of your eye, or intention, and of course that is terrifying too.  They can live as many as seven years (which is long for an insect) and grow larger with each passing year.  The good news, I guess, is that they hunt roaches and spiders and are one of the few predators of cave crickets, but man – IS IT WORTH IT?

Baby sloths don't travel at nightmare speeds, bless their little slow-beating hearts.

So far in the house I currently live in, I have not seen any centipede.  Just thousands of spiders and two cave crickets and a couple of waterbugs and houseflies and there was a fruit fly problem for a week or two last year… That’s actually all I think.  But in like every other house ever, there has been an Occasion.  A horror-defining moment in my life.

One time, when I was doing the domestic chores in a former home of mine, I moved a chair and thought that there was a piece of wheat or something under there.  Or maybe part of a kitty toy.  It seemed strange though and I got on the floor really really close to see what it was.  It never dawned on me that it could be a house centipede because it was so still.  I imagine it was paralyzed by psychic visions of its imminent demise, or it couldn’t believe any human animal would get so close to it.  It did not know how to deal with such boldness.

So I am like down there, on the floor, staring this thing in its face (I was close enough to see that they do have little dots that might be eyes), I am like five inches away from it.  And it is not really very long, but it is fat.  It is really fat.  WAS IT FULL OF EGGS?  God I don’t know but when I realized that I was that close to that many horrible terrible awful legs… I think I must have blacked out.  Because the next thing I know, I have the vacuum cleaner out and running and I have sucked up that house centipede before it could gather its wits to gtfo.  I do not normally like to send insects to the vacuum, as I think that is probably a terrible way to go, maybe, but I could not bear the thought of seeing it move in any direction, or know that it slipped under the baseboard and could be traveling ANYWHERE at ANY MOMENT, dreaming of vengeance.

Of course then I left the vacuum running for about ten minutes so that it would not crawl back out.  It also gave me plenty of time to flail and dry heave and fight back tears because I am sometimes the girlest of all girls.

A pygmy loaf of love and happiness and I want you to pay special attention to how there are not too many legs happening here. No jolts of terror. Just jolts of wanting to hug.

The worst time of all however, occurred in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I was living in an apartment building that was just FULL of these things.  I am not even saying the word anymore, fyi.  But like, growing up I think I had seen a few around here and there.  And I was just like, I just didn’t even know WHAT it was.  I probably thought I was just seeing night terrors while I was awake, which is kind of a reasonable assumption to make.  They don’t seem like they should actually exist.  So, yeah I was scared of them, but I didn’t really understand what I was seeing.  Then I move to Milwaukee and I lived on the THIRD FLOOR, and these are typically basement-dwelling monsters, but even on the third floor they would just suddenly be on the wall and I was braver back then.  I would do my best to try to kill them.  Or my boyfriend at the time would do so.  I don’t think you can capture them and release them, I just don’t think that is an option.

Oh, it was in that building in Milwaukee, also, in a hallway coming from the elevator that I saw one JUMP OFF OF THE WALL and I heard it hit the floor, on carpet.  It was that big.  I swear it was like five inches long I wanted to die on the spot.  But like, the Worst Time Ever.  I was in the bathroom.  I needed to use that bathroom for what GOD intended.  And there, thankfully before I sat down or anything, as soon as I walked through the door, actually, a house centipede of alarming length and speed climbed out from under the tank.  It climbed up the back, over the top, to the wall, and back down into the shadows again.

Baby anteater, I love you.

I can’t really remember what happened after that, but it is probably safe to assume that I developed Bathroom Issues and kidney infections because I would not feel safe in a bathroom for a long, long time.  In fact, I had apparently completely buried that memory until I started writing this article.

Thanks, me.  Good going.