their legs are hair

Woke up sort of exhaustedly grateful that it's Friday and all I have to do is drag myself through one more day at work and then I can stop showering and putting pants on till Monday.  Simon was howling in my ear like an air raid siren, so I sat up and blearily turned on the light, whereupon my peripheral vision must have screamed at me because my eyes zeroed in on a very, very wrong-looking dark splotch on the wall across the room.

It was a centipede with a body bigger than my fucking thumb.

It remained perfectly still on the wall as I stared around the room in a kind of shellshock wondering what to kill it with.  I decided the cover of Virginia Woolf's The Waves would most easily wash off after the slaughter, so I crept very slowly across the room with a twentieth-century masterpiece clutched in my hands, readying it for use as a weapon.

But the damn bug was too high up on the wall to get a certain shot.  The last thing I wanted was to miss and watch it fall behind the dresser where it would doubtless scurry all over the floor.  Recalling the flyswatter I keep on the balcony, I sneaked out of the bedroom, fetched the swatter, and returned to the battle zone thoughtfully thwacking myself in the palm and wondering if I could get enough oomph to crush a giant nightmare.

My aim with a flyswatter is just horrible.  Carefully I got myself in position, eyed the centipede, gave a couple of experimental shakes like a golfer about to tee off, and let fly.

I missed.  The horror-legged thing started to move.  Desperately I struck again --

-- and centipede exploded all over my face.

Apparently their exoskeletons are a lot softer than those of wasps and spiders.  Waves of legs rippled away from the blast site on the wall, and jelly globules of bug guts flecked my skin.  Gagging, I rushed to the bathroom to get that shit off my face, wondering if maybe I should douse my head in bleach.

At least my mouth wasn't open.

So far in this daily writing project I've reflected on arthropods and Chris.  Maybe I should call this the Bugs and Boyfriend Blog.