I never slept well in college. Ever. Part of that is due to my roommate slamming the doors in the morning hours before my alarm, despite me asking her repeatedly to stop. The other part was because of an incident that inadvertently turned me into the resident monster killer. By monster I mean every huge and unholy creature that dared to crawl out of the shower drain.
One morning, I awoke two hours before I wanted to, sick to my stomach and ran to the bathroom, yet again it was a false alarm. However, this time around as I checked to make sure the sink wasn’t leaking again, I nearly gave myself a mini heart attack. There it was, a giant flipping centipede. Bear in mind I had never seen a centipede before in my life, only in pictures. Boy, was the real thing larger and more mortifying in person. Then again everything was bigger upstate from the portion sizes to the insects and crows. It was huge, the size of my hand, it had legs from its head to its ass and it was hairy all over. I never knew that bugs could even have that much hair. I was wearing flip flops and I did not want to step on something that huge, not that I would do it anyway because being chicken around bugs runs in the family.
My brother and I used to grab shoes when we saw spiders and then cower in the corner together until our mother took care of it. I also didn't want centipede guts on my favorite flip flops without knowing if this thing was poisonous or not and I didn't have enough time to Google it.
I stared at it long and hard until I saw the most horrifying thing in the world.
It moved.
The way it moved was what got me. It hoisted up its big hairy ass with its innumerable long legs upwards and sauntered its way towards me in a surprisingly coordinated fashion. I swore like a sailor using every curse word from every language I barely knew. Was this thing insane to boot, can bugs even lose their sanity? I looked for something to trap it with. I spotted our tiny garbage can and tried using it to squish the demon. I kept missing, or so I thought, the can had an indent that trapped the thing instead of squashing it. So I settled for that, trapping it so I wouldn't have to deal with the moral dilemma of ending a living creature’s life and have its guts spilled on my clothes. I went back to bed.
My roommate woke up, started getting ready and slamming her drawers as per usual. I stirred and looked at the clock. I had only one hour of sleep left and I knew during that entire hour she was going to be slamming everything that could be slammed if it was unfortunate enough to be in her way.
“There’s a giant centipede under the garbage can.” I muttered through the pillow.
“Okay!” she said cheerfully, “I’ve killed centipedes in my pool before.”
Okay, at least there was a brave soul in this room. Someone to take on the abominations of mother nature.
I’m never that lucky.
A few minutes later I heard her screaming at the top of her lungs and dashing back into the room.
“Get UP!” she demanded and stomped her foot, “GET UP!”
“Why?” I groaned.
“You didn't tell me it was that big.” her voice went even higher than I thought it could. She looked at me with her usual smile but shaded with fear. I’ve never seen her afraid of anything in my life.
Oh god no…
“You killed it right?” I asked carefully.
“No I didn’t! You didn't tell me it was that big!”
“I told you repeatedly that it was huge you didn't believe me? I thought you killed centipedes before!” I said slowly rolling out of bed, missed the step stool and fell on my ass. That got a good chuckle out of her.
“They were small and clear all I had to do was splash the water from the pool on them and scoop them out.” she squeaked.
Dear mother of Mary that thing was still on the loose, I felt myself pale. I've only had a few hours of sleep at this point and it looked like that was all I was gonna get. She handed me her thick pink rainboot and hesitated to open the door. Had it already escaped?
“Go on, open the door.” I said calmly.
“It was moving before I got out, I don't know where it is now.”
Holy chunky chicken casserole, what the hell were we going to do if it was by the door? I remembered that it wasn't that fast, something that big couldn't be that fast right?
“Just open the door! It can't get past both of us!” I hoped. She opened the door slowly and we shuffled in. There it was right where I had left it with the garbage pail beside it. I handed her the boot.
“You do it.”
“No you! You do it!” as she said this the thing started moving towards the wall. If that thing could stick it could hang over our heads every time we used the bathroom, it could get the jump on us at any point in time! As my mind raced with the disgusting possibilities I readied the bright pink boot of doom and hovered it over the giant monster that was swaying its butt back and forth as if it was taunting me. I dropped the boot.
And missed.
I tried again and again and each time I was narrowly missing as it kept trying to scale the wall. Each time I nearly got it, it would just slide of the wall with my roommate yelling in horror and trying to tell me how I should kill this unholy terror from the background. I was swearing in my head trying to remember other curse words in other languages until I exhausted the list. It began sauntering towards me, again.
“Damn it!” I screamed as I dropped the boot one final time hitting it directly. There was a sick squelching sound as a stream of clear juice bursted from what I assumed was its mouth but dared not to entertain the thought. The more I thought about it the less sleep I was gonna get. As soon as we made sure it was dead I handed the boot back to her,
“We can wait until maintenance gets here right?” I yawned as I went back to bed.
A few moments later my roommate came back and said, “I cleaned it up using your broom!”
Cleaning up the evidence with my stuff. How delightful. She started slamming drawers in a rush to get ready.
Ten minutes later my alarm clock was blaring.
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