cw: this post is about an EXTREMELY GROSS thing that happened with an insect so don’t read it if you think it will be triggering for you!
A few years ago, a guy I was sort of dating told me a story I’ve never forgotten: that one time, he took a sip of water without looking at the glass of water first. Because he did not look at the glass of water before taking a sip, he neglected to see that a centipede had, while he was sleeping, crawled into the glass and died. And because of this glaring but understandable oversight, when the water went into his mouth, so did the centipede.
At the time this story was relayed to me, I was living in a basement apartment that was absolutely lousy with centipedes. On more than a few occasions, I stumbled over to my shower in the morning and pulled back the curtain to find a big guy just sitting there, enjoying the condensation-rich atmosphere.
I am ashamed to admit that instead of being brave and maybe killing these bugs with a shoe or something, I was afraid to even touch something that would then touch a bug. Do you know what I mean? After all, what was a shoe but a mere extension of my own arm that any savvy centipede could use as a bridge to scrabble up in a moment of peril? Anyway, so what I would do in these instances was boil some water and then pour boiling water on the centipede while screaming (this part was involuntary), which would effectively dissolve it and wash it down the drain.
All of this to say, at one time in my life I was well-acquainted with centipedes and willing to deal with them to a certain extent, but was also still terrified of them. If you believe in karma, I was also readying myself to endure one hell of a comeback with each centipede I boiled alive. Which brings us to this morning.
This morning I woke up very slowly from one of those sleeps that takes a long time to pry yourself out of. I woke up at 6:58, looked at my phone, fell back asleep, and had at least three more dreams before eventually forcing my eyes open at 8:30 or so and vowing in earnest to start my day. Again, I grabbed my phone because, like many, I have been poisoned by modernity. Among a series of notifications that had amassed overnight—one from the New York Times, a couple from gmail—was one from an app called Plant Nanny that I downloaded last week. The premise of this app is very simple: it encourages you to drink water throughout the day by anthropomorphizing your level of hydration as a sweet little plant that must be watered. When you drink water, the plant is happy! When you don’t, the plant is sad.
Anyway, so Plant Nanny was informing me that my “plant” was thirsty and that I should water it. I turned, bleary-eyed, to the tall glass of water I had placed at my bedside before turning down last night. There it sat, still full. I picked the glass up. I held it to my lips. I felt something solid. I pulled the glass away, and without looking at it, flashed back instantly to that story I’d been told five long years ago. The story that had periodically tickled the back of my mind when I reached out in the dark to take a sip of night water; the story that had formed a dull but distant fear that, until now, never came to fruition.
I didn’t see it, but I did feel it. Something was in the water. Swiftly, calmly, even, I threw the glass as hard as I could (??? don’t ask me why I did this) into my closet. Then I just sat there. Was that…? Was it??? I think it was. Oh fuck, fuuuuuuuuck me I think it was. I slowly got out of bed and tiptoed over to my closet; peered inside. Sure enough, crumpled on top of my backpack and surrounded by a pool of water was a brown mass with several crumpled legs akimbo. Some of those legs had just been in my mouth.
For some reason, even though I knew it was dead, I was still too scared to touch it. I really had to psych myself up, do a few laps around my kitchen after wadding up some paper towel. Eventually I said, “Just don’t look at it,” out loud and grabbed the dead centipede (which had, I cannot stress this enough, been at least partially in my MOUTH only moments before) with said paper towel and marched it over to my garbage can, which I dropped it into before tying it up very tightly and putting it outside.
As you can imagine, the rest of my day was effectively ruined. I tried to get up and get at ‘em, as they say, but I was a woman haunted. I caught myself more than a few times in a morning Zoom call making this face: ༼ ಠل͟ಠ༽
I wanted to forget it. I took myself to IKEA on my lunch break to try to distract myself with the phantasmagoria of affordable Scandinavian homewares one can expect to find therein, and it sort of worked for a bit, but inevitably an intrusive thought would march into the foreground of my consciousness (on thousands of legs, maybe!) saying things like, “a centipede, in your mouth,” and, “guess I’m never drinking water again.”
I’ve learned a very hard personal lesson over my thirty-three years on this earth, which is that I cannot simply turn off bad thoughts and memories. I have tried. Believe me, I have tried! In my experience, trying to shoo them away not only doesn’t work, it makes them more intense. And so, shuddering my way through the IKEA store, I slowly reached a truce with myself. By the time I weaved my way through the satisfyingly geometric floor models and living room displays with staircases that stop abruptly at the ceiling and made my way down to the marketplace, I decided to stop trying to forget that this morning, I took a sip of water that had a dead centipede in it, and that some of its legs went in my mouth. It was useless. It had happened, and I had to own it.
Let me be very clear: from a purely sensual point of view, this is one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. I never wanted to have an intimate knowledge of the mouthfeel of centipede legs, but I do now, and I can’t undo that. Indeed, one the the main tenets of my identity for the foreseeable future will be that I am a person who almost swallowed a dead centipede, and I have to do the best that I can to not let it become the entirety of my identity.
There are lessons here, to be sure: it’s not like I didn’t have a harbinger in the form of an identical story to warn me that this sort of thing may one day come to pass. And you can bet your ass I will never again bring night water to bed with me.
Even so, what happened happened, and I can’t let it drive me to leave my house forever (something I briefly but earnestly considered this morning) or ruin my life any more than it already has (which is a lot, to be clear. I am forever changed). I just have to sally forth and keep trying to find joy (I can barely remember what that even is or means) until I’m only thinking about it every five minutes, and then every five hours, and then every five days, and then only when I’m trying to one-up someone when we’re sharing stories about gross stuff that’s happened to us.
Until then, perhaps I can use this harrowing event to educate others: if you think a centipede crawling into your night water and dying can’t happen to you, please know that it can. You now have me as proof, just as I have that guy I sort of dated a few years ago as proof. Count yourself lucky that you know not the taste of centipede legs, and by god, do everything you can to keep it that way.
A harrowing tale. Thank you for your service, this is the PSA we all deserve.
Loled at the image of you throwing a full glass of water into your closet.
I have black mold in the corner of the wall behind my bed and I’m choosing to not think about it because it makes me sick to even PONDER. Every day I make this choice and I’m sure i’m slowly being poisoned because of it. Just thought you should know this.