Mickey noticed the first centipede crawling on the windowsill. He eyed it closely, a minor tingle of unease drifting across his subconscious mind. He reached out with his debit card and cut it in half. The creature wriggled its two ends upwards before falling dead.

“Did you see that, man?” he asked.

Jeremy stopped moving his hand in front of his face to look at the bug’s corpse. “That’s totally rad, dude. Now I’m hungry.” He shot up from his chair and grabbed a set of keys. “I’ll be right back. You want anything at the store?”

“I’ll take a big gulp. Mountain Dew.”

As Jeremy left, movement on the sill caught Mickey’s attention. The centipede was not dead after all. Mickey moved closer to it.
“What the hell?” he said into the empty room.

The bug had two heads. It had split into two separate, living beings. Mickey reached out again with the bank card. He hesitated for a moment and then cut both of the worms in half. To his amazement, the four segments all lengthened and sprouted more legs.

“I better stop doing that. Those things are too creepy to keep doubling.”

He turned away and picked up a bag of chips. He reached in and grabbed a handful. The chips tickled his hand with tiny legs and soft bodies—he dropped the bag and rocketed from his seat. Shaking his hand, he looked at the floor. There were dozens of centipedes crawling out of the snack container.

Mickey looked around the tiny bedroom for a weapon. Finding nothing useful, he started stomping the bugs with his sneaker. Each time his foot came down, he heard a satisfying squish. Green guts shot out from beneath his sole and reformed into more multi-legged worms.

He turned to flee the room in a panic and ran into the edge of the open door. His vision starred and he collapsed to the floor.
The rug was covered with centipedes. He rolled around, flailing to stand. He slipped on the green goo of insect innards and fell face down into the growing pile of slithering worms.

They crawled over him, their legs touching his eyeballs, squirming into his nostrils, and shimmying into his mouth.
He managed to get onto his hands and knees and he blew air from his nose and spit out the creepers from his mouth. He looked up and screamed.

In the doorway was a six-foot long centipede standing on its backmost legs. It held a plastic cup in one of its upper arms and a grocery bag in the other.

The floor stopped crawling as all the other centipedes vanished. The giant bug laughed.

“Ain’t LSD awesome, Dude?” it asked in Jeremy’s voice.