I was 16 going on 17. (First person who breaks out with the Sound of Music gets it.)
My parents, taking the advice of my counselor, decided to do some remodeling to my room. This house was pretty old and the upstairs, where my room and my parent’s room were, used to be the attic. Therefore, not only was my bedroom really small, it had built in furniture that I could never re-arrange and a wardrobe closet that scared me. (I do believe I have pointed out several times that I have quite the overactive imagination.)
Not only was I going to get new wallpaper, new carpet, new paint on the fixed furniture, (dresser, desk and vanity), new matching drapes and bedding, my dad was also going to knock a hole in the wall and turn my closet into one with sliding doors.
My job that summer was to strip the wallpaper down and the rest was going to be done by my parents. I was excited! I got to pick out the color, the wallpaper and my new bedding. I could hardly wait and even though stripping wallpaper is absolutely zero fun at all, knowing what was to come from my hard work was incentive to keep me going quite happily.
Because so much was being done to my room, I was unable to actually sleep in it as my bed and most of my things had to be taken out of there. We had a family room in the basement of our house that was partially furnished. The walls were cement as well as the floor but my dad had thrown down some carpet that didn’t quite cover the entire floor. Nonetheless, it did the trick of holding some heat and making the place look a little more inviting. One of the televisions, (the big one), was in the family room and my mom, as she was a teacher, had an “office” in there for her to do her correcting and lesson plans for the next day.
The rest of the basement included a “computer room”, our pool table, a separate, small fruit room and the laundry room. These rooms were actually not divided in any way except the fruit room, (where my parents stored all of their canned fruits and jams and our kindergarten lunchboxes), which had a door. Everything else was merely distinguished by archways.
Anyway, the basement was not an uncomfortable place to be, (provided I was not alone in the house at night time), and I spent a considerable amount of time down there watching movies, playing video games or learning how to program games and such on my dad’s computers.
So when my parents whipped out the Army cot and informed me I would be sleeping down there while my room was being worked on, I actually looked forward to it. It was like a camp out and I was thrilled.
I have been petrified of paooki ever since I was a tiny tot and have done “paook checks” every night before going to bed. The last thing I needed was one falling onto me from the ceiling so I ensured that there were none on the walls, floor or ceiling before I went to sleep.
One night, as I was on my way downstairs to do my mandatory paook check, I saw something to my left, on the wall surrounding the stairs.
Holy mother of pearl. It was a fat, juicy paook.
I flew up the stairs and begged my brother to come get it. This thing was too much for me. He came out of his room and I pointed him in the direction of the paook while turning my head away in disgust. After a few times of, “I don’t see anything” and my insistance he try a little harder, he finally saw it.
To have him tell you, he didn’t see a need to do anything and was going back to his room, (to resume being a lame ass brother). But I know the truth. He was scared. He took one look at that thing and said, “I’m not killing that. You kill it” in an attempted even, steady voice and back up the stairs he went, leaving me there to face the deadly paook on my own. Bastard.
I gathered up about half a box of tissue and went down to face my hell. I stood on a step, working up my nerve for a good 5 minutes and then went in for the kill. I missed.
The paook scurried down the wall of the stairs, beyond the point where it wrapped around and became the wall of the living room, raced behind the television set and disappeared. I ran to the dresser that the t.v. sat on and began ripping out the drawers in a mess of fear and anger just positive that each time I did so, the paook would come springing out at me. I checked inside and underneath the drawers I had just removed, I checked in the slots where they once rested, I checked behind the dresser, under the t.v., the floor around the whole area....
I couldn’t find it.
At this point, I lost my nerve, freaked out and hurled myself onto my cot which was sitting just 10 feet away to the left. I laid there, refusing to turn out the lights and go to sleep. I would not sleep until I found this thing and killed it. I watched and watched and watched. The next thing I know, I woke up. It was morning of a brand new day, paook long gone from my thoughts.
I began to get dressed to continue working on my room and sat down on the floor to put my shoes on. I pulled one off the floor, out from underneath the cot where it had been resting all night and put it on. I then grabbed the other one, tossed the shoe into my right hand and out flew the paook.
I bolted to the recliner, scrunched myself up into a huddled ball and watched as this bastard landed, got its bearings and turned towards me. The paook in question was large, light brown, had antennae with balls on the end and in the center of each ball was a black dot.
Like eyeballs. Extremely unsettling.
Then it started to crawl towards me. I have no idea if I screamed out loud or just in my mind but I know that it was coming after me. I panicked not knowing what to do. Finally I reached down and grabbed my shoe and then leapt back up into the chair as any braveness I had accrued gave out again. The paook kept coming. I had very little time to work up my nerve but I mustered up what I had in my emergency reserves and with the cry of a banshee, I jumped down to the floor and wailed on this paook with my shoe, over and over, as hard as I possibly could.
Because of the texture of the carpet, the paook merely bounced with each strike from my shoe and did not die. Naturally I lost my composure again and fled back to the chair to sweat, shake and cry.
The paook regained itself, turned around, spotted me and started coming at me again. It would crawl an inch and then stop. Crawl two inches and then stop. Taunting me. Laughing at me. Torturing me.
Now, I have felt immense fear in my life and I think that what I went through that day ranks right up there with some of my most fearful days from my childhood. This was absolutely the most horrid situation I could imagine being in. I knew I had to destroy this thing before it destroyed me.
I took in a deep breath and with cat like quickness, leapt to the floor once again, slammed my shoe onto the body of this thing and I didn’t stop for 10 minutes. It bounced at first, threatening my resolve but I knew that this was it...it was now or never. So I kept at it, cursing and screaming and eventually it became a sticky, crumpled mess of splayed legs and broken antennae eyeballs. Even after I knew it was dead, I continued to beat on it for good measure and to get rid of some of the adreniline that was coursing through me.
After awhile I became exhausted and retreated to the recliner once again to catch my breath. You see, the next ordeal was the clean up. Eventually I was able to get up and grab the remaining half of the Kleenex and scoop up the remains, fly up the stairs and flush that nasty thing down the toilet. I then sat in a corner, in a tight ball and rubbed away the mountain ranges of goosebumps that had developed on my arms.
I have no idea what kind of paook that was and I have no intentions of ever looking it up. That was the first and so far, last time I have ever seen one with antennae and what appeared to me as eyeballs and I hope to everything I never come in contact with one again.
I aged about 10 years that day but I was victorious and that, ultimately, is what matters. Well, that and the fact that my room turned out really cool.
I earned that one.
<--- Here Endeth The Lesson
