Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [53]
The telephone kept ringing. Hang up already, I thought. I’ve got a little problem slithering between me and the phone. The centipede was in no hurry. Its innumerable legs moved it a few feet in one direction, where it would pause and rise up, sensors sensing, and then it would amble a few feet in another direction. It was like watching the world’s scariest Slinky. But this Slinky could move, if it so chose. There’s a lot of propulsion available when you have a hundred-plus legs.
Still the telephone rang.
I descended from the table. It had been creaking ominously. I tiptoed around the room, hugging the walls, maintaining eye contact with the loathsome critter at all times.
“Hello!” I yelped.
“You’re not going to believe what’s coming,” Sylvia began, then stopped. “Are you all right? You sound funny.”
“Yeah…well…I’m being stared down by a centipede.”
“So kill it,” she said.
“No, you don’t understand,” I said, climbing on top of the couch. “It’s a very large centipede.”
“Just grab a paper towel,” Sylvia advised.
“Paper towel?” I bleated. “I’ll call you back later.”
I hung up the phone, bounded into the bedroom, and shut the door. Could the centipede get under the door? I wondered. It was, I estimated, about two inches thick. Yes, probably. I dashed into the closet and grabbed my jeans, as yet unworn in the tropics. I quickly put them on. Then I reached for socks, also unworn. I tucked the jeans into the socks. Then I put on the heavy work boots I had brought to Vanuatu for reasons I could no longer remember. So attired, I reemerged into the tiled living room, the kill zone. The hunted would become the hunter.
The phone rang.
“What?” I barked.
“Be really, really careful with that centipede,” Sylvia said. “I mentioned it to the people at work. Did you know that they’re poisonous? One bite, they said, is enough to kill a child.”
“Paper towel, then?”
“No! Don’t use a paper towel.”
“I’ll call you back.” I hung up the phone.
I tentatively approached the centipede. It stopped ambling. It seemed to sense that something was amiss. I raised my foot. Suddenly, it dashed. I squealed pathetically and jumped on top of the couch.
The phone rang.
“Did you kill it?” Sylvia asked.
“No. I haven’t had a chance. I’ve been on the phone.”
“You have to crush all of it,” she informed me. “If you only smash half of it, the other half lives on.”
I hung up.
Once again, I stalked the centipede. It had stopped in the middle of the room. I moved along the walls until I was behind the beast. The cat, still on the table, wailed. Inching forward, I raised my boot. I stomped it down just as the centipede bolted. I crushed its tail with a sickening splat. The rest of the centipede scurried on, now panicked and in a bad temper. I brought my other foot down. The centipede splattered with a grotesque crack, spewing copious amounts of centipede innards. And then I kept stomping. Splat! Splat! Splat!
It was probably dead, I thought. To make sure, I flattened it some more. Splat! It stank horribly. I had never smelled anything so noxious. Not even the cat would approach it.
“A lot of help you were.”
The phone rang.
“Did you kill it?” Sylvia asked.
“Yes. I have defended the hearth.”
I spent a moment recounting the adventure.
“Do you think there are more?” Sylvia wondered.
This was not a thought I wanted to linger on. Was this centipede a lone wolf among his kind, a distant wanderer, lost from his companions? Or were we living with a den of centipedes? Quite likely it was the latter. The splattered centipede was certainly an anomaly in one way. Centipedes are nocturnal creatures, preferring the darkness. Were there in reality dozens of centipedes wandering about while we slept, doing scary centipede things? Could I ever sleep again?
“Well, the reason I called the first time,” Sylvia