Warm, Dark Places Are Best

by Mike Duke

  Which, by the way, I suggest looking up these legit little monsters online. Holy crap are these things brutal. Do a YouTube search like I did for “Giant Centipedes vs” and see what you get – lots of videos of people who have caught them in the wild or bought them online and now pit them against other insects, scorpions, small to medium sized snakes, frogs etc. just to see who will win.

  The centipedes pretty much entangle the prey with all their legs and try to lock all their movement down, bite them with their poison filled mandibles which can paralyze most prey and then they just start eating a friggin hole right through their victim. Doesn’t matter where – midsection, skull, neck; it don’t matter. They just chew through it. They’re like the honey badgers of the insect world! Giant Centipedes don’t give a fuck!

  Hell, they’ll even crawl right down the mouth of their victim and eat them from the inside out. I found a picture of where a 14” long giant centipede did that to a snake that was about two feet long. He was exiting near the tail when the picture was taken. Then they killed him and laid them both out next to a yardstick for another picture.

  For two of the best and scariest pictures of giant centipedes I found, do the following. Google search “giant centipede Vietnam soldier.” The first picture will be an old pic of a young soldier holding one up that is well over a foot long. Nasty. For the second picture, copy/paste this link: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/328973947761767448/ This is the best, and clearest pic of a giant centipede I found anywhere, I think. It also gives the size of centipede some nice perspective with the piece of wood it’s stretched out on, plus a man’s hand in the picture along with the mouse it is eating. Wickedly impressive, detailed and scary. (Shivers! UGH.) Moving on.

  Well, having read the story, you may be wondering why I would write this tale. Funny coincidence, because a few of my beta readers asked me, with what appeared to be an honest sense of sickened perplexity, “Why?!?!? Why would you choose to write about these things?” To which I initially answered “Because something in my brain is squishy.” ;)

  But the real answer is that this story was a true epiphany. I had the idea, plotted the basic story outline and wrote over 9,000 words all in the first day. I was in a major freakin’ Zen Zone and the spice was flowing from some Bene Gesserit muse, to mix metaphors. I swear, I wouldn’t have stopped at 1:00 am but I had to be up for work at six in the morning, so I made myself go to bed.

  “From whence came this epiphany?” would be the natural question one might ask next.

  Well, it's pretty much a three-fold answer.

  First, about a week before the epiphany, I shared a video on Facebook where someone had gotten a centipede in their ear and had to have it removed. They used the water trick just like I did in the story. (In fact I’ve seen another video on YouTube a year or so ago where they did the exact same thing to get a decent sized spider out of someone’s ear.) People were freaking out, gagging, wanting to vomit, asking why I would share something like that and just all around extremely wigged out and disturbed by it. Which to any good police officer (or fairly observant critical thinking person) would be called a clue.

  Second, going back to my youth, I watched the first Creepshow movie when I was 9 or 10 and in the last story, there’s an older man who ends up with an apartment infested with roaches. Eventually they overwhelm him, eating their way inside his body. In the final scene his body is laid out on a tabletop or counter. Suddenly pinpricks of blood appear on his skin and show through his clothes. Then, without any further warning, hundreds, if not thousands, of roaches begin bursting out of this guy’s body all over. I literally had nightmares for a month.

  Now, before I reveal the third source of inspiration for my epiphany, indulge me and let me set the stage a bit.

  I’m a tough guy. Not something I simply claim to be but something many people I have trained with and taught have said over the years.

  I can fight. I have a heightened pain tolerance and can take a hell of a hit. In all my years of martial arts training, sparring and teaching (including being the bad guy and letting students hit me) as well as all the altercations I got in with criminals on the street as a cop I have never been knocked out.

  I voluntarily got shot with a Taser, and I stayed standing and ripped out the metal barbs.

  I flew off of an ATV several years ago at about 35 mph and hit face first in the side of a ditch bank – instant stop. I crawled out of the ditch and walked away from it, a little sore for a few days, but unharmed otherwise. My coworkers all said “Dude…you’re a fucking Neanderthal; if that had been one of us we’d have died or broke something.”

  When I had the total knee replacement surgery back in September I actually got medical / scientific verification that my bones are far denser than the average person, according to my orthopedic surgeon (bone fibers are more tightly knit and it took him twice as long to saw through my femur and tibia as it normally does).

  In other words, at 6’4” 300 lbs. and able to move with the fast twitch hand speed of a lightweight in addition to all the other stuff above, I’m a bit of a freak of nature. I have friends who are probably more so than myself, but I think I squarely fit within the category based on my resume. And most people who know me or have seen what I can do empty handed or with a blade all swear they will shoot me or run me over with a vehicle if I ever come at them with ill intent.

  I say all the above to draw this comparison - that despite all these badass traits, I am not a fan of certain insects.

  I’ve always thought spiders were super cool…somewhere over there. (waves hands like shooing a child away). I love to look at them, watch them spin webs, catch prey and cocoon and sip on ‘em, but I’ll be damned if I want one touching me in any way much less crawling on me.

  When I was 17 years old I wrecked my dad’s Honda 3-Wheeler riding on the paths back in the woods on our property. There were these big round-bodied spiders that would spin webs that covered the entire path, which was wide enough for a pickup truck, and then sit right in the middle.

  So one day I’m running and gunning on the 3-Wheeler when all of a sudden I felt this wispy crap hit my face and hair (long hair, I was a metal head and had hair past my shoulders back then). And ALL I could think was that one of those big ass, big bellied spiders was in my long hair. I let go of the handle bars and immediately grabbed my hair and started slapping at my head. The wheel snapped sideways and the bike started flipping.

  I stayed connected, hugging it with my thighs, for about three rolls and then I let go. I tumbled about three more times on my own, popped up and my legs gave out. I melted to the ground, still slapping my head and shoulders and checking my arms to make sure I didn’t have one of those spiders on me. I walked away, pushing the ATV because it wouldn't start.

  I also don’t like hornets, wasps or yellow jackets. Let one of them get too close and you’ll see my Kung Fu come out. In my younger days I ran like a bat out of hell, but with the total knee replacement, not so much anymore.

  Despite all this, like I said. I think spiders are cool. I even think wasps are badass critters. I find them all interesting. Except roaches. Roaches are just nasty and disgusting. I hated walking in a rundown apartment or house, as a cop, that was full of roaches, especially when those bastards were on the ceiling and would drop down on you sometimes. Ugh! Nasty!

  But worse than any other insects, are fucking centipedes. I fucking HATE centipedes. Even just the normal ones. Besides the fact that God made those bastards so vicious and ugly that by nature they tap into some primordial, instinctive fear inside us, He compounded the problem exponentially by enabling them to hide so damn easily.

  I mean, think about it. When you see a spider, for example, you generally know exactly where that little sucker is going to be later on - in a web or a within a particular little area. But frackin’ centipedes will move from room to room in your house and are very hard to find.

  Which brings me to the third part of my epiphany: my own persona
l experience with centipedes. How things start out going bad for our main characters in ‘Warm, Dark Places are Best’ is completely based off what happened to my wife and I several years ago. Carl waking up to one crawling on his shoulder, slapping it off and then being unable to find it? Yeah, happened two nights in a row to me. We were sleeping with the lights on, ear plugs and underwear. Luckily I spotted the bastard in the kitchen, just like Carl, a few nights later and stomped his ass to death. Building on that, I just ratcheted up the level of violation to, apparently, based on my beta readers’ feedback, some ungodly levels. (Innocent look)

  All in all, I realized that by writing a story with these centipedes that I could tap into a very deep-rooted, instinctive fear that is common to most of mankind and by making it plausible and potentially close to you at any time, even in your home, I have managed to evoke a loathsome and lingering paranoia in many of my beta readers (some of which are even avid extreme horror veterans).

  And my hope is that I have done the same thing to you. (Sweet smile)

  Now you can suffer with me, like when I was a child; waking up sweating, with visions of crawling things not only on me but inside me.

  Well, they say shared traumatic experiences bring people closer, sooo…I think this might make us friends now, if we weren’t before. I sure hope so. :)