~*ScaAaAry*~ October: Episode 1

Happy October, internet!

As usual, I've been terrible about writing because I forgot what I meant for this blog to be about, and that causes me immense writer's block.

Fortunately, it's almost Halloween, which means I can talk about something I have in spades: FEARS! The inspiration for a "Things I'm Scared of" series came to me this morning as I was breaking a banana into pieces for D's smoothie. I looked out into the dining room and there I saw on the wall...

MOTHER#$%*&!!!!!!
Image source and blog post that made me feel even worse

A "house centipede" as long as my arm was staring down at me from near the ceiling. I truly froze in fear. Thankfully, D calmly sent that demon spawn to meet its maker while I cowered in the other room with my eyes shut and fingers in my ears. (What if I heard sound of him missing it?)

My fear for these monsters stems from my senior year of college, when I lived in a one-bedroom cinder block "apartment." Despite the carpet burns and ceaselessly leaking shower, things were going fine until soon after the maintenance team replaced my back door, installing the new door flush with the outer wall instead of the interior wall. A few inches of crumbling concrete were newly exposed. Oh yeah, and this was right next to my bed. (Did I mention I was living large?)

The first time I noticed a centipede, I was lying on my bed talking to D. on the phone. It was directly above me on a precariously balanced drop ceiling tile. My blood ran cold when I realized there was no one to kill it for me. I suited up like I was about to fight fire, and after much screaming and carrying on, I stomped it with my rain-booted foot.

This incident made sleeping pretty difficult for the next couple of nights. So after a long day of work and classes, I decided to go to bed early. As I pulled back the covers on my bed, another centipede scrambled over my pillow and under the covers.

I calmly shut my bedroom door and walked the mile to a friend's apartment and didn't even mind when they made me go to the bar in my hideous pajamas before they let me sleep on their couch.

Suffice it to say, it was a long school year. So while spiders are kinda freaky and I don't miss South Carolina's mouse-sized cockroaches, house centipedes have a special place in my nightmares.

Tune in next time for the next installment of FEARS! October.