Trouble in Paradise - Hawaii's Hidden Evil

The biggest problem with finding a seven-inch-long centipede hanging upside down from your ceiling is that you realize you'll never sleep fully comfortably again. I knew, about 30 seconds after I processed exactly what that nasty thing was that was dangling above my bed that my restful nights were in the past. Reddish-colored miniature snakelike creatures that looked like they had hair would soon dominate my dreams, and I'd have to figure a way to wire my mouth shut for the few hours that I did manage to doze off.

Welcome to paradise.

I should note that I'm not particularly squeamish in general when it comes to insects. I'm not freaked out by spiders. I'm manly enough to handle snakes. I'm not a total wuss. But centipedes ... I'm convinced these demons slithered directly out of the pit of hell and into my new apartment. I've never seen such a disgusting beast in my life. And I've never felt such an adrenaline rush at the sight of a bug. (Not that I was afraid of it, mind you).

The first time I saw one of these hellbugs was in March of 2004, shortly after my wife and I moved into our new apartment about 15 miles west of Honolulu. I was on a jarred-from-sleep mission to the refrigerator for nothing in particular. Which was pretty much all that was in the refrigerator anyway. I wasn't exactly sure what had awakened my slumber until I heard an awful noise coming from the hallway - it sounded like someone was scraping a paper bag across our hardwood floor. Shhht...shhhht...shhht. I flipped the kitchen light on and turned slowly, terror seizing me as I watched the monster slither from the hallway into the living room. It froze. I froze. I was positive I had peed myself, but there was no evidence of that. I remembered talking with a coworker just a few days before about Hawaii's plethora of bugs ... our new apartment, nestled atop an environmentally protected cliff, seemed to have more intruders than the old one. Makes sense. You can't bug-spray an area that's been deemed "protected land." "Who's protecting me, though?" I wondered. We bug-bombed the place, found a few dead cockroaches, nothing major. "Just wait till you find one of them centipedes in there," Jerry, my coworker, had said. "My wife goes after them things with the scissors and chops 'em into little pieces. It's the only way to kill 'em."

Scissors! GET THE SCISSORS!!!

I snagged the pair outta the knife block on the kitchen counter and moved toward the living room like a tiger pacing toward an unsuspecting, motionless gazelle. I only paced twice before common sense butted into my plan. "I'm not gonna get close enough to that thing to cut it into pieces! Are you NUTS?!?! Look at how big it is! That Spawn of Satan could swallow me and take me back to hell with it inside its evil, fire-breathing stomach!!!" I was sure the creature was at least a foot long. Had to be. It was just lying there in the middle of the room and it seemed to be aware that I was there and very unconcerned that I was there. It was, after all, bigger and more fearsome than I could ever be. I looked around the room for something I could use to kill it without getting closer than the five feet now between us. My eyes fixated on the can of Lysol on the coffee table. That's it, I'll deodorize it to death! I later read that aerosol spray is a great way to stun hellbugs - which are, of course, fast as hell - and give you time to chop them into little pieces, as Jerry's wife recommends. But not knowing this at the time, I was just reacting to panic, trying to find any advantage I could.

I sprayed. The monster reared up off the ground. Uh oh, I pissed him off. Now he's gonna kill my whole family, too! He coiled up into a ball as I began scanning the room for my next weapon of mass destruction. Sunday newspaper. Perfect. Now, it was 3 in the morning, and I'm usually mindful of my neighbors to a fault ("Honey, don't blow your nose so loud; our neighbors are sleeping!") But at that moment, all I cared about was sending the hellbug back to its maker so my apartment could again be a safe place to live. The future of our entire complex was resting on my right arm and the two-pound roll of newsprint I wielded. I cocked the paper back as if I were Joe Montana getting ready to heave a Hail Mary. Teeth clenched. Eyes closed. THWACK! Paper hit hardwood so loud it sounded like a gun shot. I left the paper on the floor where it had just certainly dented the hardwood and sighed, but not exactly in relief of anything. Despite the gun clap, I really wasn't feeling brave enough to pick up the paper and survey the damage. After all, this was an alien devil bug I was dealing with. Who's to say that in hell, Lysol and newsprint don't have the same effect that steroids have had on professional baseball players here on earth? I wasn't gonna risk it. So I grabbed my shoes out of the bedroom, put 'em on and began jumping up and down on the newspaper, adding in a side-to-side shoe-grinding wiggle every now and then just for good measure. NOW, it was safe to survey the scene. NOW, I could admire my work. NOW, I ... . Shhht...shhhht...shhht.

HOLY SHHHHHT!!! The alien eel from the deepest pit in hell is also immortal! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

More stomping. More squishing. Frantic stomping and squishing. Unbelievably frantic stomping and squishing. And yet, Shhht...shhhht...shhht. I was beside myself. I could've killed an armor-clad army of 12 with the fury I'd unleashed. How could there possibly be more Shhht...shhhht...shhht???

After five more minutes of this, I swept the whole pile of now-tattered newspaper out the back door, figuring that if the beast were still alive, I could at least put a pane of glass between us quicker than you could say Shhht. I swept the whole bundle onto the patio and began sorting through the brutally murdered pieces of Sports section, Comics and Classifieds. The monster was underneath it all, flat as a tone-deaf country singer, insides now on the outside, still looking scarier than Freddy or Jason ever did. AND STILL TWITCHING!!! I grabbed a small metal pole that was leaning up against the wall and started stabbing the living hell out of the demon. Two pieces. Three pieces. No need to take any more chances.

Finally. I felt like a gladiator ... a killer borne out of necessity, because it had been either him or me. Survival of the fittest. I was the strong, menacing, top-of-the-food-chain human! Courageous king of the apartment. The brave ruler who spits in the face of fear and giggles at the sight of death!!!

I tiptoed back into the apartment, carefully inspecting every inch of ground before I stepped. Exhausted, I made my way ever so cautiously into the bedroom. My wife woke up about five minutes after I crawled back into bed, rolled over and discovered I was still awake. "Honey, why is the light on?"

"We're gonna be sleeping like this for a while, sweetheart."

Nearly a month went by before I felt comfortable enough to walk through the apartment in the dark again. Long gone was the night light. We'd seen and killed a couple smaller centipedes in that time, but they were just mini-demons. Hardly as vicious as the super-sized devil from before.



It also happened to be nearly a month before I walked into the bedroom late one night, bleary-eyed from two hours of reading in bad light, and saw another gigantic hellbug. The mere sight of this one didn't frighten me nearly as bad as the first. I was a seasoned veteran by now. What was special about this demonic dinosaur was his chosen location - directly above the bed, gripping tightly to the ceiling. I quickly chopped him in half with a butcher's knife, discarded the remains (after they stopped twitching) and ... flipped on the night light.