Blue Centipedes

The unsettling still before cloudburst lingered, effecting urgent fussing; fret. Pressure grew exponentially as night loomed. I’d lain out the estranged socks, diligently reuniting, when it happened. It’s an impressive thing, when the sky bursts. Explosive climate decompression; releasing. My parent’s house had a tin roof: flooding rain roared of steel drums, awesomely inundating. Grabbing socks atop my bedspread, charmed footfalls advanced me downstairs on time to elemental beat, descending perhaps too eagerly.

Grandma sat, proud as always, with just the slightest slouch of left shoulder, in an old oaken armchair. The basket of yarn dutifully balled all evening in precise, measured motions, lay at rest. Slender, expert-albeit-brittle hands crossed in silent gratitude. Mom, departing reports, was lost to acrylic and canvas while Dad sat at the table tracking his way through a word search. Even Joey was reclined in the old blue LazyBoy with a tech. magazine, a rare appearance for my older brother.

As the universe itself, it seemed, had deemed this a moment to gather in rest, I dropped my sock pile on the foot of the couch and, in due diligence to Mother Nature, arranged pillows for maximum comfort while opening to the marked page of my favorite book.

Steel rain drummed tune, pungent wet (not of mildew but of soil, fertile and strong), impregnated the air. I was utterly satisfied. Even the geckos retired their barking. Each enthralled by our own musings, the forward ticking of clocks’ hands fell meaningless to our deafened ears.

Shifting atmosphere anew, my brother’s cat slid across hardwood floor, hallow-talon-sockets slashing, hissing like a snake. This huntress’s victim proved to be a dead, slightly withered, centipede. “That’s just a young one!” said Dad, “but it’s so big!” I groaned, primly tossing the cadaver in the trash. “You can tell it’s a juvenile by how blue he still is,” and with that, Dad promptly marched into his raincoat and boots, flashlight appearing in hand uncannily. “Going to make sure the gutter hasn’t clogged” he announced, urgently closing the door behind himself.

Joey trot upstairs, Mom started on the dishes in the sink. Grandma’s worn, crooked hands again coiled neglected yarn - ironically, a brilliant sapphire blue.

I could feel Grandma’s gaze on me, even before tearing from trenches of page-bound battle. Her black, yellowed eyes pierced thick lenses deeply mounted in crepey skin. We both knew the expectation but I, so seduced by temptation, charged eyes-first back into war, devouring familiar words as novel: the whisper of a thrush felled winged behemoth. Fire rained from the sky; vengefully consuming: taunting the lake’s fallacious promise of safety. All hope lie in corrupted hands…. “Aaaah!”

The fate of the scorched would have to wait as fire of my own raged from toe through foot and up shin, burrowing like acid into ligament and bone. Grandma clutched her chest, fingers curled white. Taming shrieks to grunts and growls, I dropped to the floorboards, upending the socks. Dad burst through the front door, a blast of rain joining the commotion. Concern quickly adapted to vexation. Racing the rainbow of socks about my pathetic form, a blue monster failed to escape the slicing blow of Dad’s trowel.

The cat was given the head as a trophy but the body was Dad’s. I guess he’d measured while I writhed in pain: “Eleven-and-a-half inches!” Much too gleefully, he boasted, as the still-fighting segments of beheaded nightmare undulated inches from my face, far too many legs suspended from tongs yielded by Dad’s murderous hand. Rudely prancing down the stairs, Joey whistles as if impressed by the beast then says, “here’s your laundry basket back Mom,” shooting me a merciless smile.

“Get it out of here” I whimpered at Dad before creeping, lame and sheepish, to the bathroom to attend my wound. Two tiny punctures in my second toe, angry-red in the shape of a “v;” mark of a demon whose venom tortured still. Soap did not disinfect my shame nor water rinse away the pain.

Ice pack in hand, or on foot rather, grimly I set to sorting socks (intently ignoring Joey and his magazine) while Grandma sat stoic, hands elegantly draped on oaken arms, the cat’s soft purr humming percussions. Dad chuckled and tugged on dry socks. Now, done with centipedes, he returned to hunting words. A gleeful chirp from Mom as a masterfully-placed stroke of blue brought her painting to life. All other sounds gave to reverence; listening, to rain on tin.