Gerald, it's Prehistoric Big!

A blood-curdling scream erupted from the living room, shrill enough to shatter glass. Gerald was napping in his bedroom. His eyes shot open. “Goddammit, woman, what?!” he croaked, not moving. He waited, listened. Nothing. Gerald winced and rubbed his temples. His blood simmered and his mouth was coated in paste. And Christ, did his head throb. Was it too early for a drink? What the hell time was it, anyway? “Violet!”

Gerald reached for the bedside clock, which had been turned over on its front. He put the clock upright and squinted at the red digital display. It said 3:07PM. Gerald pulled himself up, rolled over, put his feet on the floor, and looked down at them. “It ain’t too early for a drink if I say it ain’t too early.” Satisfied with this logic, Gerald rose, steadied himself, and shambled out of the bedroom. He didn’t bother putting on pants.

He had to pass the living room to get to the kitchen, so Gerald might as well see what hell his fool wife got herself into this time. “Violet!” he cried, turning the corner. “You can’t just belt out a scream like that! I’m trying to sleep off this goddamn hangover! And when I—”

Gerald’s wife was standing with her arms folded protectively in front of her on top of their small, hideous credenza—a wedding gift from Violet’s parents that he always hated. The damn thing had sentimental family value or some bullshit. So-and-so’s third cousin on this one’s mother’s side gave birth on it. Or some bullshit. In a rare act of diplomacy, Gerald decided the credenza could stay. Choose your battles, goddammit. That’s what he always said. She’ll be less apt to get mouthy if you throw her a bone every now and again.

“What in the blue-ass Jesus are you doing up there?” Gerald cried.

“Gerald! You-you should have seen it!”

“Violet, get the fuck down off that thing! If you fall and bust your ass, who’s going to take care of you? Not me! I’ve got to go to work. At my job. To support us. Understand? Violet, do we have any Heinekens left? Please tell me we have Heinekens. Even two.”

“Gerald, it was huge! It went under the sofa!”

Now she’s pointing.

“Violet, what did I say? Honey, if you bust your ass…” He clenched a fist, shook it. Took a breath. Released his fist. Then he walked out of the room.

By the time Gerald got back from the package store, Violet appeared to have made her way off of the credenza and was nowhere to be found. After cracking a beer, Gerald examined the top of the ugly piece of furniture, and sure enough, there was a deep scratch where her shoe had gouged the finish down to the wood. He laughed to himself. She sure must have scared herself, climbing up on this thing like a goddamned jumpin’ jack! Oh well. Maybe now he could convince her to get rid of the damn thing after all, now that it’s gouged.

“Violet, do we have any Tylenol?” he bellowed, and took a swig from the can.

Later that evening, Gerald still hadn’t been able to find his wife. To be honest, he didn’t really look that hard for her. The quiet was nice. He found his dinner waiting for him on the kitchen table around seven-o’ clock, piping hot, just like he liked it. But she was nowhere to be found.

Suits me just fine, Gerald thought, shoveling mashed potatoes into his grin. Now I don’t have to listen to her whining about whatever the hell it was. Her voice reminded him of an old subway train squealing over the tracks underground. Only louder. Gerald laughed and took a swig from his fourth Heineken.

After dinner, he switched on the T.V., plopped down on the sofa, and cracked his fifth beer. MacGyver. Murder She Wrote. Goddamn MASH. When the hell is the Late Show on? Gerald glanced over at the grandfather clock gathering dust in the corner of the room. 2:00. That’s right. The grandfather clock stopped working three years ago. “I don’t have the money to fix that goddamn thing,” he grumbled.

Settling on Wheel of Fortune, Gerald sank back in the lumpy cushions of the sofa with his arms splayed out behind him and a beer between his knees. He couldn’t solve the puzzle, but who cares? Vanna White looked smoking hot in the slinky little silver dress she was wearing. And now that you mention it, the contestant in the middle, Wanda, looked pretty good, too. “Guess I got a thing for blondes,” Gerald said out loud to no one. Violet was a brunette, of course—the most boring color of all. Her hair looked kind of like dirty straw. Gerald farted.

“And the category for the next puzzle is ‘Phrase,’ Pat Sajak announced. “Wanda, would you like to spin the wheel?”

“I’d like to solve the puzzle!” Gerald hooted. “I. Want. To. Fuck. Wanda.” Gerald bellowed laughter and slapped his knee. He drained his beer, crushed the can, and stood up. Then he shuffled off to the kitchen to get another. Maybe a snack, too.

While he was rummaging around in the cupboards, Gerald heard a quiet rustling sound behind him. A light tapping. He ignored it. There were no snacks. “Jesus, Violet, what do you do at Everybody’s, anyway?” he grumbled to himself, “cuz you sure ain’t buying food.” He pulled out a box of crackers. “These aren’t even good crackers,” he said, grimacing at the box. He replaced it in the cupboard and found some pretzels. “Goddamn coaster crackers. What am I supposed to have with these? Ketchup?”

“We don’t have ketchup, Gerald,” a soft voice spoke up from behind him.

“Christ!” Gerald dropped the nearly empty bag of stale and broken pretzel rods on the counter. What was left in the bag rolled out onto the kitchen floor amidst a snowdrift of salt. Gerald spun around. He was crimson. “Violet!” he screamed. “You’re going to give me a goddamn heart attack! What the hell are you doing creeping around like that? Where have you been, anyway?” Then, “We don’t even have ketchup?”

Violet took a step back. “Did you see it?” She stole a glance over her shoulder into the dark living room and the flickering of the T.V. on the walls.

“Did I see what? A snack? No! No snacks here!”

Violet lowered her voice. “The centipede, Gerald!”

“Centipede?”

“Yes! I’ve never seen one so big!”

“Jesus H. Christ and all the sinners and saints, Violet. Are you hiding from a bug?”

“Gerald, you don’t understand! It was huge!” She held her hands apart to demonstrate.

“Yeah? And it’s just hanging out under the sofa now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it left. Maybe it’s someplace…else….” She cast a very worried glance around the kitchen floor, the dark spot near the trash can, the space beneath the refrigerator.

“Well, Violet, if there are any bugs in the house, it’s because they’re looking for something to eat. You don’t buy food, so there’s no food here. Ergo, there aren’t any goddamn centipedes or crickets or spiders or any of it.” Gerald thought for a moment. “I’ll tell you what. If you want to hide from the big, scary centipede, let me give you five bucks. Go to the Food Bag down the street and get me a bag of Combos or something. Get out of the house for a bit. Get some fresh air.”

“Combos?”

“Or Cheetos. I don’t know. A goddamn snack. Maybe some chocolate chip cookies. Or Bugles.”

Gerald pulled a crumpled, torn, discolored, stained five-dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to his wife. “And I’ll look under the couch.”

Violet beamed. “You will?”

“Sure.”

Violet reached out and squeezed her husband’s arm. Her eyes were wide. “It’s big,” she said. “Like, really big. Gerald, it’s prehistoric big.”

“Ok, Violet,” Gerald said in mock sympathy. He sent her on her way and smacked her butt on her way out.

Still has kind of a nice ass, he mused, watching from the back door as she hurried down the walk toward the street. “Maybe I’ll tap that tonight,” he considered. Gerald scratched himself, belched, and closed the door.

“Now, where the hell was I?” he asked the empty kitchen. The sound of applause called from the other room. Gerald saw his open Heineken on the counter. Aha. He grabbed his beer, managed to find a half bag of marshmallows, and took them back to the living room where the final puzzle of the evening was underway.

He flopped down on the sofa, put his beer on the stained coffee table after taking a swig, and splayed his arms out behind him. What was on next? Was it Jeopardy? Gerald hated Alex Trebek, the smug prick, so it had better not be. Maybe The A-Team was on. Gerald popped a marshmallow in his mouth. It tasted like plastic.

“Where’s the goddamn remote?” He felt around on the sofa next to him. Nope. He stuck his hand in between the pillows. Not there.

“Stay tuned for Jeopardy!” the T.V. said. “Coming up next!”

“I’d like to buy a ‘fuck you,’ Alex,” Gerald spat and gave the T.V. the finger. He jammed his other hand in between the sofa cushions.

“Do you have…Combos?” Violet asked the man at Food Bag.

“I don’t work here, lady, but they’re right over there,” the nice man said. He pointed to an end cap across from where they were standing near the road maps.

“Oh, thank you!”

The Combos were only seventy-five cents. Gerald’s five dollars could definitely buy more snacks. What else did he say he wanted? Chocolate chip cookies? Funyuns? No, Fritos, that was it. Or was it Cheetos? She started searching for these items, but made the mistake of glancing over at the freezer. That was where they kept the ice cream. Ice cream was Violet’s favorite. Especially chocolate.

Gerald didn’t really have much of a sweet tooth, and he said that cold things hurt his teeth, so ice cream was pretty much out—except for on special occasions. It seemed like he could tolerate cold beer pretty well, she observed, but ice cream is colder than beer, she rationalized. Either way, Violet kept this observation to herself.

Is this a special occasion? Violet thought for a moment. The man who had pointed her in the direction of the Combos watched her stare at a rack of salted pumpkin seeds as she thought about it and thought about it some more. And she finally decided that, yes, goddammit, it was a special occasion. Today was the day that she escaped the biggest centipede that she had ever seen, and Gerald actually listened to her for once and would see it hiding under the sofa when he looked. And he would kill it. Violet thought about the big disgusting thing and shivered.

Unfortunately, Gerald would not see it that way, and she knew it. He would just start yelling about his teeth, and probably make some jab about her weight or something. She couldn’t put on that much weight, really—she never ate ice cream. It still made her feel bad, though. Violet marched over to the freezer.

Twenty-two minutes later, Violet walked out of Food Bag with Gerald’s Combos, a bag of some weird brand of chocolate chip cookies that she’d never heard of (Keebler was too expensive), and a big ole’ pint of chocolate goddamn ice cream. She had her evening all planned out, and she went over her plan on the short walk home.

Gerald would have no reason to look in the freezer unless he was looking for ice (which is very cold, by the way) to make a drink. But he’s drinking beer, so he won’t need ice. And he’ll just sit on the sofa all night with his beers and his snacks and watch T.V.. He’ll probably go to bed after The Late Show. And while he’s doing all that, Violet could have her ice cream. Maybe she could take it outside and eat it on the back stoop. That was actually a fantastic idea. It was a lovely evening.

Violet turned the corner and started up the walk to the back door. A wayward thought about the centipede burrowed into her head and she slowed her pace. What if it’s still there? she thought, stopping. What if Gerald couldn’t find it? What if it’s hiding under their bed? Maybe she should wait a while longer.

But then the ice cream would melt….

Violet stamped her foot in aggravation, shook her head, and walked up to the back door.

“I’m ho-ome!” she called as the door swung shut behind her. “Gerald?”

Violet put her pint of ice cream in the freezer and hid it behind a freezer burned bag of fries. “I got your Combos!”

She went into the downstairs bathroom. When she came back out three minutes later, Gerald’s Combos and weird, off-brand cookies were still on the counter where she had left them.

“Gerald?”

Violet went into the living room. Gerald sat sprawled on the sofa, but it looked like he had fallen asleep. His head was leaning against the sofa back and his arms were splayed out behind him. An open can of Heineken sat on the coffee table beside a cluster of condensation rings. The news was on. Harvey Leonard predicted light showers tomorrow evening, but otherwise, a clear and sunny week ahead. Violet scanned the floor around the sofa nervously. The flickering T.V. sent ghastly shadows creeping across the carpet. She tiptoed closer.

“Gerald!” she hissed. She didn’t want to disturb her husband, but she also didn’t want to wake up the centipede. She inched closer. Was he breathing? She reached out her hand and gave him a nudge. Nothing. He wasn’t breathing. Gerald was dead.

“Dead!!” Violet wailed.

Gerald’s eyes shot open in terror for the second time today. He screamed bloody murder. Violet screamed.

“Violet!”

“Gerald! You’re not dead!”

“You almost gave me a heart attack! You almost made me dead! I’m about three seconds from making you dead, Violet! And buried! What in the ever-loving name of the Most Goddamn High are you trying to do?”

“I got your Combos,” Violet said. Gerald looked at her. “And chocolate chip cookies,” she added.

“My what?” Then he remembered. Gerald brightened. “Oh! Thank you, Violet.

“They’re in the kitchen.”

“Thank you, Violet.”

She continued to stand there in front of the T.V.. “Gerald?”

“Yes, Violet?” he lilted through gritted teeth.

Violet lowered her voice. “Did you see it?”

“See what?”

“The centipede!” Violet whispered.

Jesus Christ. No, he didn’t see the centipede. No, he didn’t look for the centipede. Yes, he forgot all about the goddamn centipede as soon as she finished blab-blab-blabbing about it. What was the word she used? Prehistoric? Ha! Sure, Violet, like King Kong. Jesus Christ, women are all the same. ‘Look at the size of that tiny-ass spider! It’s huuuge!’ A ‘prehistoric centipede’ is an inch. Tops.

“I killed it,” Gerald lied.

Violet’s eyes widened. “You did? You killed it?”

“Yup. No more cockroach.”

“Centipede.”

“That’s what I said. Dead, dead, dead. By the way, what would you say to us ditching the credenza? It’s gouged.”

A couple more minutes of back-and-forth, and Violet finally left him alone. Geez, what a royal pain in the ass. Go to bed, Violet. He heard the back door open and squeak shut again. Did she go outside? Oh well, who cares.

Gerald got up and shuffled into the kitchen. He popped another Heineken, grabbed his Combos and cookies off of the table, and went back into the living room. One more hour until The Late Show. For the moment, he was stuck watching Scarecrow and Mrs. King—Gerald still couldn’t find the goddamn remote. He plopped down on the sofa, took a swig of his beer, and rested the can on the coffee table. Then he proceeded to rip open the Combos with such unnecessary force that the bag entirely split and its contents flew off in every direction. He threw the bag down.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Gerald yelled, slamming his fist on the table. The can jumped, but thankfully did not spill. The floor, table, and sofa were covered in cheddar cheese Combos and crumbs, however. Gerald leapt up. Combos lined the cracks in the cushions where he had just been sitting.

“I’m not cleaning this!” Gerald erupted. He took a step backwards, fell over the coffee table, and landed on his back. He was soaking wet from where his open Heineken had landed on him.

Gerald wriggled up into a sitting position just in time to see one of the Combos disappear from the back of the sofa cushion. Then another one disappeared. Something was pulling them inside the sofa. Another one disappeared. Gerald sat on the floor of his living room, covered in crumbs and beer, and watched, slack-jawed. An ad for Alka-Seltzer came on, someone lamenting their acid indigestion. Another Combo was pulled into the sofa. The T.V. flickered as the Alka-Seltzer fizzed. The centipede came out.

Issued is a better word. A regular bug will just appear. First you don’t see it, and then you do. And they move fast. Gerald had plenty of time to watch, mesmerized, as well over two feet of the prehistoric monster trundled out from where it had been lurking on dozens of pairs of curved, smooth, segmented spindles. They tapped and scratched their way out from the bowels of the sofa, moving liquidly. And it kept coming.

Two feet.

Three feet.

Just before its alien face reached his foot, Gerald snapped to. He scooted back and pulled himself up onto the coffee table. The centipede’s forcipules, hinged open and glistening with venom, collided with the leg of the table instead of Gerald’s own. He heard an audible crunch.

“Jesus Christ! It’s trying to eat me!”

Undeterred, the centipede rounded the leg of the coffee table and started coiling itself up. Gerald could see its compound eyes, lifeless, as it climbed.

“It’s like King Kong!”

Gerald leapt off of the coffee table and headed for the credenza. He could hear the thing’s spindly legs trundling over the top of the table as it came after him, like nails scratching, drumming.

“Violet!” he screamed, lumbering on top of the hideous piece of gouged furniture. “Jesus, Violet!”

But Violet was outside on the back stoop, eating her chocolate ice cream and listening to the Bee Gees on her Walkman. She bobbed her head and thumped her foot and had a grand old time, oblivious to the screaming and carnage that was taking place just inside.

Much to Gerald’s dismay, the centipede had no problem climbing up the side of the credenza. And by the time Gerald had fallen off of the goddamn thing and landed hard on the floor, wrenching his back and twisting his ankle, it was already trundling over his foot and up his leg, forcipules glistening, eyes dead. He could feel its legs gripping him sharply as it twisted up toward his thigh. The weight of the thing was repulsive.

Gerald gave Barry Gibb a run for his money. He belted out a scream so high and loud that it pierced Violet’s headphones and overrode You Should Be Dancing at full volume. She furrowed her brow and pulled the phones off. Then she heard it all.

Oh no.

Violet leapt up, leaving her stomach down where she was sitting, beside her overturned ice cream. No time to bother with that. She threw open the kitchen door. “Gerald!” She couldn’t see into the living room, but she could hear struggling and swearing and crashing. Violet glanced over at the rack of Ginsu knives on the counter beside her. They were an anniversary gift she had gotten for herself two years ago. She snatched up the biggest—the cleaver. It gleamed in her hand as she burst into the living room.

The T.V. was a strobe on the walls, casting disorienting shadows out at monstrous angles. There was movement on the floor in the corner. Rolling, squirming. Hollering.

“Shit Christ!” Gerald shrieked. Violet slammed on the overhead light.

Immediately, the shadows were gone, the darkness dispelled, and the horror revealed. The sudden flood of light appeared to have startled the demonic centipede, for it suddenly decided to change course midway up Gerald’s neck. Its sapling-thick pairs of legs trundled across Gerald’s chest as it made its way from his body back onto the living room floor. It was headed toward the safe darkness beneath the sofa.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Violet cried. She lunged, most uncharacteristic of her. Also uncharacteristic was the way that she swung the cleaver down and chopped off the centipede’s head. It fell to the carpet with a sickening squish, spurting yellow sludge. The body continued to move, only now in a twisting, random, and frantic sort of way. It crashed into the sofa, changed directions, crashed into a wall, changed directions again. It left a sticky smear of oily putrescence dripping down the wall as it headed for the kitchen.

The cleaver came down again. And again, accompanied by Violet’s war cries. Her hair was matted with gore, her face a wild-eyed mask of blood-soaked rage. The cleaver came down again. Now the thing was in pieces scattered harmlessly across the living room floor. The legs still twitched; some tried to trundle, and one of the longer sections wiggled slowly from side to side, like a dog’s tail. But that was all.

Violet rested on her knees, panting. She was covered in stink. The splattered cleaver dropped from her hand to the floor with a thud. Gerald threw up.

“Coming up next,” a disembodied voice announced from somewhere miles away, “The Late Show with David Letterman!”

The spot on the living room rug where the centipede’s head had landed and leaked rancid goo stained the rug permanently. The other spots were easier to get out with the carpet shampooer, but the fabric of the carpeting looked as if it had been scorched. They also couldn’t get the smell out, so Gerald and Violet ended up ripping the whole goddamn thing up, anyway. And wouldn’t you know it? Gorgeous hardwood flooring right underneath! Gerald said he could buff the shit out of it and make it look like a million bucks. And he did. In fact, the only spot on the whole floor that was discolored at all was right where the cleaved head leaked. So they put a floor lamp there and called it a day.

They also got a new sofa. The other one was still operational, but that was beside the point. They went down to Foral’s Couchland and got themselves a nice new set. A sectional with a recliner. Financed. Violet wanted tan and Gerald wanted olive, so they settled on brown, and it all fit perfectly in their living room on their nice hardwood floors.

The credenza was gone, too.

Gerald lay back on the recliner with his arms folded behind his head, and Violet sat on the sectional, sewing. The A-Team was just ending, but stay tuned, because Knight Rider was on next.

“Doll, I’m going down to Food Bag for a snack,” Gerald said. “Do you want anything?”

Violet looked up. “I’d love some chocolate ice cream,” she said, smiling. She always had such a pretty smile.

“Chocolate chips?”

She thought about it before shaking her head. “No. No chocolate chips.”

“Ok.”

Gerald got up from the recliner and left the room. He squeezed his wife’s shoulder on the way out.