All winter from within the walls of the cellar, it heard her footsteps, her muffled voice. It felt her presence from afar while it slept, while it lurked in corners, while it stalked spiders from behind stacks of musty boxes or papers. It was patient. Patient for its food. And for her.
Sometimes the solitude was unbearable.
Sometimes distractions served to pass the eternal winter months. When its body had grown so much that it once again pressed too hard against its outer shell, it would travel to its spot beneath the shelves and through the crack in the wall.
With each step it felt as if its insides would be crushed by the unforgiving shell. Or it felt like the shell would rupture and split apart exposing the centipede’s new body beneath. It was a demon’s cocoon, cramped, uncomfortable.
And there, in that spot in the wall, as if suspended in the pink strands of fiberglass insulation, was a collection of its previous molts. A graveyard of carcasses, a tribunal of ghosts of its previous lives. Here is where it began the tedious process of molting once again. The sound of her sweet voice echoing, resonating even to this distant spot. It swelled its body and recoiled to the rhythm of her speaking, and slowly dragged itself out of its shell.
Two more legs this time. A full fifteen pairs. An adult.
This time there was a hapless wandering sugar ant that had come to rest inside one of the decomposing shells as if it were a house. It waited for the ant to emerge then pounced on it with speed unsurpassed by any other insect. It pinned the ant belly up with one leg then stung it with its venom. It watched the ant wriggle its legs and pincers in fear, then watched the ant go limp. The centipede devoured the ant whole, feeling the ant’s hard segmented body stretch its bowels.
She hated ants, it knew. In the late spring, it moved out from the dark, moist depths of the cellar. It followed the rising temperatures, the migratory direction of its prey, innocently closer to her. The first time it entered her living space, it found scores of ants flattened on a tiled floor, the massacre just committed as the colony hadn’t come to collect their dead yet.
The centipede was not deterred.
In the weeks following, it traveled the main floor of the house, emerging only at night to pick at dead insects along the kitchen counters or near the trash. Once it ventured up to the second floor and emerged into the bathroom from between two slits in a metal air vent. It was dark except for the faint yellow glow of a nightlight emanating from under the door. The centipede crawled out onto the wall, a matte off-white. It found the texture easy to scale.
Midway between the ceiling and the floor, it rested beneath a window ledge and felt the cool freshness of night air wafting in from a crack in the seal of the window.
Sensing movement in the house, it froze. It felt the vibrations of her footsteps beneath its legs trembling through the drywall. Within moments, she burst through the door and into the bathroom, switching on the light.
Not three feet away from her, it could smell all her scents through its antennae. Her skin, her hair, her femininity. From beneath the shadow of the window ledge, it watched her evening ritual, her face in the mirror, upside-down.
Maybe it was the way her eyelashes looked when she rubbed off her makeup with oil. They were long and fingerlike. When she blinked they were tender as butterflies and just as enticing. Maybe it was the way her eyelashes were thick and black with a lighter hue at the tips. They fanned out in perfect rays on both the bottom and top of her eyelids.
For days it waited in this spot. Unmoving. Starving. Waiting.
Once in the middle of her ritual, she shrieked upon seeing a spider in the corner of the ceiling. She flailed about with her slipper in hand as the spider jumped and dodged death. The centipede wanted to dart out and kill it. For her. But in the end, she smeared the spider against the wall and left the bathroom.
The centipede ate the remains of the spider, then followed her to her room that night.
At first it believed it would only dare to get close enough to remove any spiders from her presence, and for a week, it resided under her desk at night while she slept. The scent of her body became torture, though, and made its antennae feel like they would snap from sheer intoxication.
Sometimes, it imagined crawling over the soft skin between her fingers. Rising and falling over the mounds of her knuckles. Sometimes it wanted to crawl in a spiral up the length of her legs.
Then one night in the middle of the summer, when the heat was particularly oppressive, the scent of her was particularly strong, further enhanced by the sweat accumulating along her hairline. Each droplet was saturated with her pheromones, still warm from having just emerged from her skin.
It was too much.
When she took off her clothes and lay on her bed, she did not pull over a sheet as she typically did. She was exposed, vulnerable, as if she’d spread her legs for a man to enter. And when her breathing grew heavier, it was like whispers, like soft moans, urging it forth.
It was compelled, drawn. There was no turning back. And as it rounded the top of her mattress and came closer to her than ever before, it did not hesitate before stepping up onto the curve of her pillow.
The first few days, it just watched, perched, not daring to touch her.
Maybe it was the way her eyelashes seemed to come alive when her eyes twisted and rolled in her sleep. It was like an animal, a dance, the way a stripper looks in a man’s lap as she writhes and bends for his pleasure.
Once it crawled over her eyelid, letting her lashes tickle and rub its body from beneath.
Maybe it was the sweet scent of her breath. Baking soda and mint, and then the light hint of chamomile tea emanating up her esophagus. She slept on her side with her mouth parted just slightly. On one night, it stood before her lips, extending its antenna into the sensual cavern of perfume and felt the gentle breeze of her breathing.
Or maybe it was the heady scent of her perspiration. On another night, treading lightly, it traced her hairline with its steps, exhilarated. It followed a bead of sweat as it trickled down her neck and came to rest momentarily right in the origin of the valley created by her breasts. Inebriated and delirious, it could have died on that spot. Instead, it gathered the droplet into its mouth and drank it.
It sat there, cradled in her skin until she stirred.
On one final night in the late summer or early fall, it watched her one last time, knowing it would soon have to return to its corners of the cellar. But with great pleasure, it left her its seed in a sticky mass on her pillowcase, the same as it would have done for a mate of the same species. It knew she would never take it, but perhaps her eyelashes would graze it, or her lips might press into it as she slept. That would be enough.
It would never know. And neither would she.
***
Barbara Christina
Barbara Christina is a New Jersey native with a B.A in English: Creative Writing from the University of Rochester. She is currently working on several projects including other short stories and two novels. More of her work and updates can be found at http://blips-of-imagination.blogspot.com/.
Photo by Kristaps B.
