Centipede

Melody rinsed the last of the toothpaste from her mouth, looking up at her reflection in the mirror. Tired brown eyes stared back at her, the dark circles under them prominent. Her frizzy black curls were messy and pointing in nearly every direction. She’d had a long, aggravating day; her boss had been on her all day long, and she’d only gotten home an hour ago. Her body burned and ached with exhaustion. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep the night away.

Mel dragged herself downstairs to grab a bottle of water before she went back up to sleep. She paused in her steps and turned her head back around, spotting something from the corner of her eye.

A centipede.

It was a long, disgusting, slimy-looking thing, completely motionless on the wall where it clung, perched high up in the corner of her kitchen. Its large body was an ugly yellowish gray color, and its thin legs were short and spindly.

Usually, bugs didn’t bother her. She either just let them be, or she killed them if they were actively being pests. But even Melody found herself cringing away from this creepy critter on the wall. It was just so noticeable. It was massive, being well over an inch long, and staring at all those little legs gave Melody the chills. These specific nasty bugs always did.

She really didn’t want to go through the trouble of squashing that massive thing. On top of that, she was just so tired.

Sighing, she glanced up at the clock: 11:58. It wasn’t even midnight yet, and she was too lazy to kill a stupid bug?

In frustration at her own hesitation and ineptitude, Melody grouchily grabbed a chair from the kitchen table and moved it under where the centipede stayed, unmoving, up on the wall. She grabbed a few paper towels and wrapped them around her hand, bunching up the rest in her fist, before she stood on the chair and reared up to the bug, nearly eye level with it. It was even uglier up close, and larger too.

Suddenly, the centipede moved just an inch, a quick scramble to the left, and seeing all those legs in motion gave Melody quite a start, almost sending her flying off her chair in surprise. She almost laughed at herself after regaining her balance as the bug went stock still again in front of her, shaking her head at her own cowardice.

Determined, she took her paper towel and closed her towel-clad hand firmly around the centipede, immediately going to squash it hard within her palm.

Before she could, the centipede darted away from and out of the paper towel quick as lightning—and crawled right across her hand in the process.

The sensation of all those disgusting legs moving against her skin, even for a second, was indescribably repulsive; Melody let out a mortified screech at the feeling. She shook her hand hard and fast, flailing and flapping it as hard as she could to get the disgusting thing off, off, off of her. She watched with heaving breaths, her heart pounding, as the big bug skittered away from her and along the floor at the speed of light, disappearing somewhere below her out of sight under the kitchen table.

Her body curling into itself in both exhaustion and disgust, Melody gritted her teeth. She got down from her chair, a humiliating feeling in her gut. She gathered up the wad of paper toweling in her hands and wrapped them around her hand even tighter, this time wielding it like a weapon.

She would kill this bug if it was the last thing she did.

She spotted it again, still and innocent under the center of the table where it could not be touched. She had to draw it out somehow.

Melody decided to reach her foot under the table and stomp hard, startling the centipede into motion, and it worked. The bug followed exactly according to plan, darting out from under the table and back into the open across the floor—probably aiming to get to safety at another unreachable corner of a wall, no doubt.

It was so fast. Mel could barely even keep her eyes on the repellent thing before she was pouncing on it, slamming the wadded up paper towels down hard and pressing on it with all her strength. The feeling of the crush filled her with a deep sense of revulsion, but she didn’t stop until the bug was motionless under the towel.

Melody let a long, tired sigh escape her, clasping a hand over her pounding heart. On her way to discard of the paper towel in the garbage, she glanced back up at the clock: 11:59.

Bedtime was well overdue.

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A silly little submission for the Just A Minute challenge 😆 I hope you guys enjoy!