Tuesday, May 3, 2005

Would it be unreasonable to claim, under most circumstances, life isn’t terribly exciting? The screenplay to my reality doesn’t parallel the tortuous surprises of a daytime talk show, nor does it offer explosions and plumes of gutwrenching adrenaline. No, any drama is probably manufactured–made, with so many pints of elbow grease, to supplement a mundane existence.

Would it be so preposterous of me to ask for a normal, relaxing shower, then? I’m talking shampoo, hot water, and, maybe as a perk, not being hounded by the very spawn of hell. Just a thought. Soap, facewash, shampoo, rinse: you too have a routine and follow it you must, lest you wake up in a toilet.

Where precisely the house centipede should fit into my showering sequence, I don’t really know, but the crawlie sure as heck situated itself somewhere between the first two steps. All I can tell you is I have a shelf for my toiletries, and I saw something move on this ledge when I reached for the soap. I leaned in for a closer look, only to recognize the telltale band of yellow.

My mortal foe had returned after months of plotting its insidious devices.

“Holy sh–” I yelped, putting on my glasses and leaping out of the tub.

I quickly took a sponge, soaked it with hot water, and drowned the bugger in liquid justice. Its legs curled in futile defiance before it died a noble death on the tile. Or so I thought. Indeed, as serenely as it lie, as treacherously as it waited, poison still coursed proudly through its foul little body. I turned my back for a moment and it was gone.

The shower head! What a perfect weapon. I pointed it toward the ledge for a solid minute, rinsing away my irrational fears. Something floated off the shelf, a bug corpse without any legs. I stepped back in the shower. Strange, I thought, how did it lose all its legs?

The short answer? It was a decoy. Yes, my crafty adversary had used the corpse of another insect.

Unfortunately for me, I discovered this when I went for my shampoo. Something moved. Again. Except this time, my goddamn glasses were partially fogged. Were my eyes deceiving me? I removed my glasses. Couldn’t see a thing, and I sure wasn’t going to lean any closer. I wiped my glasses clear and, right before they fogged up again, I saw it. The house centipede had returned, insolent as ever and no worse for wear.

“YOU WANNA PLAY BALL, FUCKER?” I shouted.

I leapt out of the shower again, grabbed my towel, and found my bottle of Lime Away. There would be no dawn for this centipede. I sprayed once. It reeled. I sprayed twice. It slowed to a crawl. I sprayed a poetic third time. Absolution was mine.

I also walked into a fern at the mattress store over the weekend. I’m pretty sure there was a time when gracefulness came easily, but my stock’s been depleted. Guess it’s time to go to Wal-Mart.