What Gets Me Out Of Bed In The Mornings

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According to something I looked up somewhere online, the centipede is the most "alarming" insect to humans, and the "most likely to be killed on sight". It doesn't have compound vision for the love of god, it can see you – remember that, the next time you wonder why it keeps dekeing your shoe-wielding ass like an olympian.

If it's one step ahead of you, then it's a hundred steps ahead of you.

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I'm lying in bed this morning within a warm nest, arms protruding out like tunas propped on ice in plastic lettuce leaves, like the tunas in the market's plastic leaves across the street.

The arms are a little chilly. Just give it a few more minutes, I assure them. Once we get up, we can turn the space heater on.

I lay, vaguely pining. I mentally weed through ideas and faces, for anything, anything that will light a fire under my cocoon - the imago to my pupal ennui, if you will. I pull at the window curtain to confirm the bleakness I suspect lay outside. Ugh. Definitely another day to pop a vitamin D, if there will be a popping of anything.

My subconscious simmers slowly, thick with last week's leftover impulses.

When I'm too impatient to analyze shit like my own consuming lethargy, reality sometimes just glazes over, whereupon my inner cinema flickers to life as if of its own accord. Today's matinee will be memories of centipedes, centipedes here in this very apartment. Don't ask me why.

Footage flashes across the screen inside. The clips are very short, but there is a lot of layering of images going on: long, light centipedes I've swept from behind shoe boxes; the lightning-fast one that snaked out of the vacuum cleaner crevice tool on Christmas Eve day; the teenage centy that has grown 25% lengthier since it first appeared from behind my bedroom dresser a few weeks ago.

*Sniffle* They grow so fast....

The little bastards really don't come out often. On the contrary - they stay in hiding exactly long enough for me to relax – at which point they promptly reappear with tophats on. I can't usually kill them because then I'll have to dispose of them afterwards, and I really can't stand the sight of those tiny, crushed, bloody tophats. There is no need for anyone to ask me why, or to point out that I am being irrational about this.

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A distant humming fridge draws me, but to-do lists have me stuffing more comforter between my knees. If the Matrix was a wake n' bake followed by six hours of the Sopranos viewed from under a Triscuit-crumb-laden duvet, I wouldn't wanna be the Chosen One.

Sinking motivation lunges weakly at the random dialogues floating down my stream of consciousness:

"Haha,"

"floppy feet like seals."

"did I finish all the Flax Plus?"

"schlumberfumuluk."

They are not good floaties.

But looky here! There's another film starting:

Moonlight on the pillow, I lay in gentle slumber. A long, dark centipede emerges from the crack where my blankets touch the wall. It will cross the bridge of my upper arm and traverse my ulna before I am even fully awakened by my own high, screeching horror.

CUT TO: For unknown and highly unlikely reasons, I am laying frozen in a trance. The hairy heathens, like living eyebrows, explore my arms, my torso; even my hair.

Uugh, they're beginning to weave around some woman's face now, god. Oh - that's my face…

I transport out of myself. My upper body has risen stiff and surprised from under fleecy layers, all very puppet-like. I cradle my vulnerable arms as my eyes roll oiled, like ballbearings, along the dubious wall crack. Hey, neat - I can hear my own heart, I'm so wholly suspended in the macabre.

I turn away from the wall and leverage my arms under me. I vault sluggishly up from there.

I stand and wistfully regard my warm nest, absently fluffing its folds, stirring the body heat still pooled in its center. My now wide-awake eyes scan the general floor area around me like antennae. Just in case, the willies whisper. A rising giggle loosens me as I am struck with the realization that maybe what gets one out of bed in the morning should be discussed with no one but one's therapist.

Sliding all these covers around, I cackle long, loud, and full of dry delight.


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