I caught a centipede in the house today. It was crawling across the living room floor, and as soon as I saw it, grabbed a pair of scissors and trapped it between the blades.

Normally at this point, I take it outside and cut it into pieces until it is dead. But this one gave me a rotten feeling, an impression of malicious intent. It was black and shiny, and I could actually hear the clicking noise of its mandibles attacking the scissors. So I carried it over the sink, lit a match and set it on fire.

The fucker screamed.

Growing up, my dad taught me that if someone is trying to send negative energy at you, a sign of it is a centipede in your house. The way you can find out if it is a regular centipede or a cursed one is to set it on fire. If it screams, then it is a bad one. We’ve found numerous centipedes in the house before (hello, we live in a desert), and my dad has torched the really scary looking ones. But not one has ever made a sound.

This fucker screamed.

It wasn’t loud, but was still very distinctive. It was like a sharp squeek that lasted for nearly a second. It stopped, and the insect went still. Chicken skin ran up my arms, and I felt sick. I had no idea what to do–what was the protocal when you actually came accross a screaming centipede? I ended up taking it outside and lifting out a half-buried rock to make a hole. I dropped the centipede in and covered it with Hawaiian salt, then repaced the rock over everything.

Afterwards, I went to my dad’s shop and told him what happened. When I came to the part of the centipede’s scream, he became very still. He told me, “I was kind of expecting something like this.”

For the past several days, he went on to explain, he’d been feeling some bad vibes and his sleep has been broken and restless. He was wondering if someone was wishing evil on us. Dad was told by a close friend who is well versed in local mythology that if something negative comes at us, we have to tell it is not welcome.

Hell, yeah, it’s not welcome. My own sleep has had its share of weird dreams, but nothing too terrible. I wonder if the bad juju hasn’t bothered me as much because I had warded my window and door with salt when I first moved in. Hm. Might do that for the rest of the house.

Fuck. Goddamn screaming centipedes. Stay the hell out of my house.