Bug Spray

I quickly pressed the CALL button on my phone, searching for the name in my most recent call logs. "Harry." I pressed CALL again.

The phone rang four times before he picked it up.

"Hello?" Came the groggy voice crackling through the speaker. He'd been asleep.

"Ding dong," I replied, before hanging up.

It was about half a minute before I heard footsteps approaching the door in front of me. It swung open to reveal Harry, his short black hair slightly messy from having just woken up, with an unamused expression on his face. This wasn't exactly the first time I'd woken him up like that.

"You use your units to do that?" He said.

"You opened the door, didn't you?" I replied. Pushing past him and turning right, into the TV room, I fell onto his sofa, held up the Burger King bags I'd brought, and tossed him his. I eagerly took out and unwrapped my Steakhouse. I hadn't eaten anything that day, and happened to be starving.

Harry opened his own bag, after closing the door, and then made a sound I can only describe as Harry-like. Something between a possessed rubber duck and a badly designed trombone.

"Where's the rest of the ketchup?! There's two packets in here!"

"I asked for four extra packets," I said, my words muffled by bread, sauce, patty and bacon. "That they get the order right for once, that's a different matter."

"Damn it, Diego. I'll pull your lungs out through your ears."

"Just get some from your kitchen."

Before moving towards the kitchen, he furiously crumpled the empty Burger King bag into a ball and hurled it at me. It fell a couple of inches short. I just sighed. I was well used to Harry's behavior by now. We'd been best friends for years. He loved nothing more than to frustrate me.

"Where's Roger?" I asked. Roger was my other best friend. He was usually here before me.

"Give him time," he called back from the kitchen. "Travel by moose is slow."

Right on queue, the doorbell rang. Harry, a bottle of ketchup underarm, emerged from the kitchen and opened the door. There stood Roger, his curly hair a near-Afro as always. He was wearing another Dragon Ball t-shirt, slightly faded black jeans, and his favorite expression of empty apathy. He was at least two inches shorter than either of us.

"Already with the ketchup?" He asked.

Harry giggled manically in reply.

"I hope you eat yourself to death."

"Shut up, maple-humping animal of the north," Harry growled back. We loved taunting Roger with Canadian jokes. We're not racist; we're just dumbasses.

I tossed Roger his own Burger King bag, after he'd thrashed Harry for the joke, and we moved to he kitchen to finish eating.



Now I may be speaking with a bit of emotional bias here, but having a friend who's obsessed with playing Yu-gi-oh, when you aren't, may be the most mind-fuckingly frustrating daily situation I have ever experienced.

"...I don't care if you can kill things with flying marshmallows, Harry. I'll learn to play the game when I damn well feel like it."

"But I want to own you with the unholy wrath of my frogs with hats!" he complained.

Just then we all heard the front door opening, stopping me before I could let loose at Harry the chain of profanity I had been forging in my head. The doorway to the kitchen is almost opposite the front door of Harry's house, about a foot to its left. From where we stood, we could see half the door, which swung open to reveal Harry's Mom, her hands full of grocery bags.

"Hi, guys," she called. We all returned the greeting, and we were starting to move to help her with the bags.

We had taken two steps when something huge and serpentine latched its legs around Harry's Mom and buried its mandibles in her head.

It was a centipede, but at least 9 feet long and as thick as a grown man's waist. It had a segmented shell that was dark red in color and shined dully in the light, like unhealthy blood. Its antennae were two long, bright orange worms, two feet long each.

The centipede was eating the poor woman's head now. Its long, jagged jaws sheared through flesh, hair, and bone and shoved it into a foaming mouth that was making repulsive squeaking and clicking noises. We could hear Harry's Mom's hair tearing out, her flesh tearing, her skull cracking.

Now I'm fairly sure most of you have never personally witnessed a giant bug devour someone's head before. It comes as a pretty substantial shock.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" The three of us yelled in unison.

Apparently the thing hadn't noticed us at first, because the moment we did that it dropped the now-headless corpse of Harry's Mom and rushed us with pants-shitting speed.

Harry and I managed to jump out of the way, but Roger wasn't so fast. The thing charged into him and would've impaled him on those giant fangs, but Roger managed to grasp each one and fall backwards, barely avoiding becoming Canadian bacon.

The centipede was now on top of him, hissing and foaming with rage, while Roger wrestled its jaws to one side and then the other, desperately trying to keep them away from his face. "SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIIIIT!" he kept screaming.

Harry and I had been on the floor, just staring jaw-dropped like retards, but our bodies finally responded, and we scrambled to our feet. Before we had a chance to give Roger some help, we heard more vicious hissing behind us.

Two more of the ball-shrivelingly huge centipedes were crawling in through the front door. One of them paused and took a bite out of Harry's Mom's corpse, before hissing angrily and shoving it aside with one of its many legs. Apparently it wasn't too happy with the taste. It then put its hindquarters directly over the corpse and dropped a big blob of something viscous and dark yellow on it.

Harry reacted first. He quickly picked up a slipper that had been on the floor. With a shout of fury, he flung the slipper like a boomerang at the beasts.

"SHOE, BITCH!"

I was about to question Harry on his batshit insane reaction, but the centipede in front had been half-risen with several pairs of front legs in the air, hissing, and the slipper had hit it square in the mouth. The slipper lodged itself in the foaming, writhing mess, and immediately the centipede started making a horrible hacking sound, and spasming wildly. I just stared.

"Yeah! The slipper's on the other foot now!" Harry yelled at the thing.

It wasn't amused. It coughed out a few bits of slipper and charged past me, right at Harry. It locked its jaws around Harry's waist and flung him to the side like a rag doll, pinning him against the kitchen counter. A moment later, I heard more hissing right behind me.

"FUCK!"

I threw myself to the floor as fast as possible, and the jaws sliced the air right above my head, missing by inches. My life flashed before my eyes. A little voice in the back of my head noted that I need to get out of the house more.

Scrambling to my feet again, I pressed my back against the counter as the thing approached slowly, eyeing me with its icy, beady black eyes, full of hunger. I looked around frantically for something to defend myself with.

''There! ''

A knife holder, full of different sized and shaped blades, almost directly behind my right shoulder. Keeping my eyes on the centipede, I reached back quickly for a knife. Instead, in my hand I now had a blender, its lid falling noisily to the floor.

"Ahhh, shit."

The centipede raised its head until it was eye-level with me. I got an idea, and then it lunged.

"SHIT!"

I screamed as I smashed the blender'a glass bit over the bug's ugly head. It reeled back slightly from the blow, but struck again with blinding speed. With now only the little rotating blades in the middle and the stand in my hand, I pressed the button to turn the blender on and stabbed the thing in the face, over and over again.

"FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU," I kept screaming, thinking I was shearing the bastard's face to ribbons. Turns out the blender wasn't on. However, the pointy plastic bit that sticks straight up in the center of the rotating blade was a pretty good weapon, and I jammed the thing in its eye. The centipede made a grotesque series of squeaks and backed away, stumbling. With one final "FUCK YOU," I drove my foot into the blender as hard as I could, lodging the whole thing into the centipede's head with the loud crack of its shell breaking.

It fell over onto its back and started writhing wildly. I could just stare. Seeing the underside of a bug is never pretty. Seeing the underside of a giant bug, one with dozens of legs all flailing like an armored-worm orgy, is downright disgusting. A pool of sickly yellow-green blood started pooling beneath it, and the smell hit me. I don't even know how to describe that. It was like the very asshole of Hell.

I doubled over and puked onto its head. The centipede, now feebly kicking, made a hiss that very much sounded offended.

I felt relieved that I was still alive, and made a mental note to brag about this to any girls who would listen later on. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I looked over at Harry, who was repeatedly stabbing his own near-dead opponent with a spatula.

"ORDER UP!" he yelled.

I turned my attention to the balcony that connected with the back of Harry's kitchen, where Roger still struggled with the first centipede. He was pinned against the far wall, half his face pressed against the cold glass window, the jaws almost at his throat.

I looked at Harry.

"Help Roger out! I'll be right back!" he said. He bolted from the kitchen, towards the bathroom in the other hall.

With no time to argue, I grabbed the nearest chair.

"HEY, UGLY!" I screamed. The centipede actually turned around. "HERE'S YOUR SEAT!"

I flung the chair as hard as I could. It sailed over the centipede, missing Roger by an inch, and smashed through the window. I just stared. Roger stared, his mouth open. Even the centipede was staring at me, still not moving. For a few seconds the only sound was the faint blaring of an alarm from a car I apparently hit.

With another roar, Harry barreled into the kitchen and sprayed the centipede full in the face with a black can. It reeled back, hissing angrily, but also swaying. Roger grabbed it by the tails and pulled it towards the window. "Help me!"

Harry and I each grabbed as many of the centipede's legs as we could, lifted it up and back towards the window, and with one final push, we threw it out. It fell three floors and onto some douchebag's silver Hummer.

We all collapsed to the floor. We were exhausted, but we were alive, and relieved.

"What...what the fuck are these...things??" I breathed.

"No idea, but they're dead now," Roger replied. None of us were feeling too curious after having just barely survived the Attack of the Giant, Multi-Legged, Armored Murder-Dicks.

"What...what did you spray it with, anyway?" I asked Harry. "Bug spray?"

He held up the can. "Deodorant."

"Why the fuck did you spray it with deodorant?!"

"They smell like shit, and I couldn't find the bug spray."

"Guys," Roger said. He was pointing at the front door. We both turned.

More of the centipedes were flooding in. We heard glass shattering all around the apartment as they came in through the windows.

We bolted to the three doors that led into the kitchen, from the front, side, and back, and closed and barred each one with a chair. Outside the centipedes clicked and squeaked. They weren't hissing. They hadn't seen us.

"Awesome," I said. "What now? There's at least a dozen of them out there. They're like Jehovah's Witnesses."

Roger still didn't seem any more stimulated than usual. After a few seconds, Harry declared,"I have an idea. Roger, there should be some air freshener and hairspray in that cupboard over there. Get them both."

"Why do you have hairspray in the kitchen?"

"No time! Just do it!"

He came back with the two cans. Harry grabbed them both, along with the deodorant, and stuffed them in the freezer.

"What are you-" I began.

"The deodorant dizzied that one back there, right?" Harry replied. "So what if we use it to dizzy them all?"

"How?"

"The cans should get unstable if they get cold enough. When that happens, we throw them out there. It probably won't kill them, but the combination of sprays floating around in the air should stall them long enough for us to haul ass outside!"

"There are probably more out there," Roger pointed out.

"Beats getting trapped in here, though." I wasn't too sure the two wouldn't eat me if the time came.

So we waited. An hour passed, and we just sat anxiously, listening to the endless clicking of the centipedes outside. Harry would occasionally poke one of the dead ones with a spoon.

"They should be cold enough now," I said.

Harry opened the freezer and took the cans out. Each one was bulging, looking like it was going to burst at any second.

"They are," he said. "Now..."

"Now what?"

"Well, now we need someone to run out there and throw them at the things."

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds, the kind that is usually reserved for when your friend eagerly switches the radio station to a One Direction song. "Hold up," I said. "None of us should have to risk that. Maybe we can-"

"No, it's okay, Diego," Harry interrupted, trying to speak with a ridiculously deep voice. "It was my idea. I should be the one to-"

"I'll do it," Roger said simply.

We both looked at him. He wasn't flinching.

"Dude. You could die. Painfully, by the looks of it," I told him.

"It's cool. I can do it."

Harry and I traded glances. I didn't think this was a good idea, but we didn't really have a choice. The smell was fucking ghastly, and we wouldn't be able to hide there forever.

Harry handed him the cans. "Aim true, my friend. Falter not before yonder evil bitches."

"Whatever."

Roger took the cans, opened the side door that connected the kitchen with the living room, and ran out.

There was a horrible uproar of hissing, all at once, and three loud pops, one after the other. Then silence.

Harry and I held our breaths for what felt like an eternity, every second a torturous drum roll for what the next would hold. Silence.

"YEAH!" Harry suddenly shouted, punching the air. "Fuck you guys! Suck our dicks! We made you our BIT-"

He was cut off by a deafening unanimous hiss, followed by a piercing sequence of mushy ripping sounds that I could only assume were Roger. That was when I realized that Roger had left the door open when he left.

Before either of us could think to close it, three of them slithered in, two on the walls, one on the ceiling. One was shinier than the other two. One was swaying a bit. And one smelled like fucking Sunset Lavender.

I turned to Harry.

"Fuck you for inviting me over today."

JustAnotherScarecrow