I’ve alluded to this before, but I don’t believe I’ve ever told the whole story.
I was 14. I was upstairs in the den, doing homework. The door was open, and I gradually became aware of a scratching noise in the hallway. Curious, I get up, and find that it’s coming from the linen closet. I open the closet door, look inside and see nothing. I go back to my work, leaving the closet door open.
Before long, I hear a whirring noise. I look around, then up.
The den has a ceiling light, a frosted-glass casing, round and flat on the bottom, over two light bulbs. Clinging to it upside down, and nosing around, is a fly, or perhaps a locust, the size of a ten-pound turkey. No, I’m not kidding.
I get up, turn off the light, and go into the bathroom. I didn’t really see that, did I? I wash my face and return to the den. No giant bug to be seen. But…there’s more rustling from behind the sofa. I tiptoe over and look behind it.
The giant bug is behind the sofa, clinging to the fabric. It has eyes about the size of young tomatoes. I swear I’m not exaggerating any of this: I recently asked my mom about it, and her memory matches mine. It turns its head and looks at me. I wonder vaguely if this is one of those bugs that sees twenty of what it looks at. I also notice that its wings are folded. I would like them to stay that way.
I go downstairs and inform my mom (dad’s out of town) that there’s a bug in the den. A giant bug. I spread my hands to indicate size. Since I was not known for pranks, she believed me and followed me upstairs.
It’s still behind the couch.
Her: Oh. My. God.
Me: Should we call an exterminator?
Her: Not yet.
Me: Should I get the Polaroid?
Her: No, the flash might…agitate it. I’m just gonna open the window and close the door.
Which she does. A few minutes later, we go back in the room. No bug anywhere, so it must have flown off into the night.
To this day, I don’t know where it might have come from. Down from the attic? My mom theorized that since we also kept cleaning products in the linen closet, it might have consumed something and mutated. I don’t know how plausible that is. At any rate, he didn’t seem to have any friends or relatives, and we had already made plans to move, which we did about two months later.
What’s especially remarkable is how calm I was throughout the whole thing. Which is good, really: panicking and raising my voice or making unnecessary movements might have…well, I’d rather not even think about it. But that bug haunts my nightmares to this day. At this stage of my life, I think it’s safe to say that I will never get over it. The only benefit is that it’s made me far less squeamish about normal insects, because nothing, at least in America, could be anywhere near that horrific.