They are crawling again. It�s not fair, I�m only sixteen and my life is already over. I didn�t think I�d ever say that while I was still alive, but here I am, wishing I were dead. At least if I was dead I wouldn�t have to see them every time they crawled out of their holes.
My name is Angela Martell, and as I said, I�m sixteen years old. There�s nothing special about how I look, 5�3, 125 lbs, freckles, red hair and glasses. You know, typical geek. I even used to play Dungeons and Dragons and video games and listen to Rush and Devo. I say used to because I haven�t left this house in a year and I don�t expect that I will again for quite a while. Because every now and then they crawl, and I have to put them back in their holes.
I just killed one, before I started writing this. It was big and ugly (as if there�s any other kind, I know) and looked like a big ol� spider, except it had like, 20 legs on each side. It popped when I stabbed it, spewing yuck all over the room. I hate it when they explode.
Shoot, I was supposed to explain what�s going on, that�s why I�m writing this. I�m going to warn whoever is reading this that I like to carry on about nothing sometimes, so be ready for all sorts of random stuff that�s not about the bugs, even though I�m supposed to tell you all about them. Anyway, the trouble with them actually started with my father.
He was one of those weird guys; you know the type, always running around looking for �the truth.� My childhood was a series of encounters with progressively weirder gurus sitting at our kitchen table, talking about things that I still don�t really understand. All sorts of things about cosmic rays and vibrations and ancient civilizations and their gods, the usual new age crap. But there was this one guru, a woman. And she knew her stuff. In fact, this mess with the bugs is totally her problem.
Sorry, I had to stop writing there for a moment, one of the fliers made a bid for the front door. I got it, but it was close. I have moved out of my chair and am now sitting at the front door. I can�t afford to be distracted. If one of them got out� Well, better to not think about that. I got the flier and everything is as OK as it can be in this situation. But I was talking about the lady guru.
She wasn�t a hippie or a Goth chick, which right there made her different from most of the people my father talked to. She was this normal looking businesswoman with a smart pantsuit and these small wire frame glasses. She was the kind of girl you expected to be sitting behind a desk telling people not to talk in the library, pretty but bookish and naive. She was defiantly not the kind of woman that I would expect to open a gate to Hell in a suburban family home. But she did and I�m still paying for it.
This is getting ridiculous. Never before have so many of the bugs tried to get out. Now I�ve gotta go around checking every nook and cranny for the darn things while still watching the front door. I�ve done this enough times to know that it won�t stop until I send every last one of the crawly things back to Hell. Sometimes I wonder if it would really be so bad if one of the critters got outside, I mean, honestly, what could they possibly do. Yeah right� Dad told me to keep them contained and he knew what he was talking about. Off I go.
Got em all on this floor. I couldn�t find very many, just some creepy beetle looking things in the crevices. Which means that the bulk of them are in the basement. Have I mentioned that I hate the basement? I�ve hated it since before this whole mess started. I remember being a little girl and being terrified every time Dad told me to go get something from down there. Its one of those nasty cold stone basements, with the screwed up looking mushrooms that look like eyes in the corners and slugs all over the walls. At least it used to have slugs on the walls; I don�t even want to think about what�s down there right now. But I�ve gotta go down there, but first I have to bar the front door.
Wish me luck, diary.
Oh God�Oh God�Oh my God�. I can�t do it right now. I just can�t write at the moment. Get it together, Ange. I know I have to write this, not just for others but also for myself. It�s a diary and a testimony but�not now� Ok� Better now, or at least as better as I can be expected to be. I need to get out what happened and I don�t have a lot of time to do it. I think I messed up, big time. Why did I have to go into the basement? Couldn�t I just have guarded the door until the sun came out? I guess hindsight is 20/20 as Dad used to say.
Ok. I went into the basement with a flashlight and the small pistol in my other hand. I don�t know what kind of gun it was, just that it�s one of those pistols that people call �ladies guns.� Honestly, the bigger guns scared me. I also had a crowbar (which I had used to stab and beat many many bugs) tucked in the waistband of my jeans. When you�re fighting a lot of little things, guns are no good, not even little ladies guns (I found that out one day when I had a ricochet almost take my face off). I know I should have been armed with more, but it was all I had and it had worked pretty well in the past. Still, I felt under armed. If I had a tank and nuclear warheads I would have felt under armed.
So I walked down the rickety stairs into the basement, pulling the chain on the exposed light bulb as I entered. I was relieved when the light actually came on with a quiet click and whir, ever since the gate was opened the power has been crazy down here, sometimes flickering, sometimes not working at all. That was what the flashlight was for.
I finished walking down the stairs, making a kicking motion with my feet as I walked, just in case something coiled or lurked on the step before me waiting to strike. The stairs were empty. It looked like the entire basement was empty. This distressed me.
As I said, I knew the house was crawling with these things, and to not find any in the basement was worse than finding a teeming mass (or so I thought at the time). I was about to give up and start punching holes in walls upstairs when I saw movement by the furnace.
It was a subtle sliding motion. Ever walk through the grass and see a snake slink by, not actually see the snake but see the grass part? Well, the noise that that makes was what I heard, except harsher, as if something very large had just slithered out from under the furnace on the side I couldn�t see. Hesitantly, I stepped around the furnace, gun held out before me like a cross in a cheesy vampire movie. As soon as I got to the other side of the furnace I screamed.
It was the biggest of them I had ever seen.
It looked like a centipede, if centipedes were as long as I am tall, and had a strange mottled, reddish- green color. As I walked around the furnace it raised its head and stared at me with its creepy multifaceted eyes, clicking its oversized mandibles with an audible ka chink ka chunk noise. I�m usually pretty ok with bugs (at least the ones of the non-demonic variety), but centipedes have always given me the willies, and here stood the granddaddy of them all, as big as life and twice as ugly. I started to step back and it lunged at me.
Lucky for me, it was all intimidation, or maybe it was simply too stupid to understand space, because there was no way it could hit me from where it sat. Its strike hit the air several feet before my face. However, this goaded me into action, as I tore toward the stairs. Forget that, I thought, there is NO way I�m doing battle with such a thing. As soon as I saw the stairs I let out a scream that I�m sure was ear splitting.
The stairs were covered with bugs, hundreds of them. Flying, crawling, hopping, flopping bugs. A mess of them. Escape was impossible, I would just have to try my best to survive until morning and hope they would go away as they always had.
I could hear the centipede behind me, making disgusting slither tick noises as it made its way across the stone floor. The other bugs paid me no notice, and I wondered, not for the first time, if these things were smart, using tactics like blocking me off as their big brother made its rapid way toward me. Finally, I knew I had no choice. It was either this mega bug or me.
I wheeled around, bringing my pistol up to just below shoulder height. I think I closed my eyes and even though I haven�t been religious in years, I�m pretty sure a prayer found its way to my lips. I pulled the trigger.
In the movies, when things get shot they fly backward several yards, usually though a pane of glass or something. But if I needed any further proof that this was the real world, not the movies, the centipede just kept coming. It was like the gun didn�t phase it. I fired again. Nothing. It got closer. I screamed. It got closer. I tossed the gun to the ground and pulled out my crowbar, the monster was bearing down on me. I swung the crowbar, putting all of my slight weight into it. It was like hitting a brick wall. The centipede reared up, legs waving in my face and� Oh God.
It bit me. I have never in my life felt so much pain. It was like somebody stabbed me in the arm with a pair of fireplace pokers. I fell to the ground, my mind crazily thinking that this can�t be happening, that the world is a fair place and it�s no fair to make a kid have to do battle with things like this centipede. I closed my eyes, waiting for the killing bite.
Obviously it never came.
As near as I can figure, it was getting close to dawn, so they had to crawl back into their holes. All I know for sure is that when I closed my eyes I was surrounded by demon bugs and when I opened them there was nothing. I know, this sounds like a cop out, like a movie that ran out of budget before they stopped filming. If anybody is reading this, I�m sorry about that. I�d love to make up a great heroic ending, and maybe I will some day. That is if I have someday. I started getting sick to my stomach about an hour ago and I�m not sure what�s next. How do you look up the effects of giant demonic centipede venom on the internet? I�m pretty sure it won�t kill me, as I don�t feel like what I expect people who are poisoned to death feel like, but that�s not what worries me.
What worries me is tonight.
I�m sick and weak, and the front door is a long way away on the other side of the room.
