Bed Buddies

I stared up at a mosquito above me as he tried to poke his way into the netted canopy that draped over my bed in the little room I was renting. I tried to digest the thought of yet another major haulout repair. The heat of mid-summer had shortly followed the rain, and without a fan in my room, I had to sprawl out on the bed and keep perfectly still so as not to break a sleeping sweat.

I fell into light dreaming…there I was standing under Swell in the boatyard. People were running and shouting. A hurricane was coming!…Just as Swell nearly tipped over in the ferocious wind…

My eyelids flashed open to the black of the night…was it the dream or had something just crawled across my hand. I sat up instinctively, in time to watch a 7” black thing slither out from under my pillow!!!!!!!

I let out a sort of gargled yelp and flung myself the other direction, landing in a tangled mess on the floor draped in the mosquito net that I’d yanked from the ceiling. I fought free of the mess of mesh and hit the light switch. Tiptoeing over to the far wall, my eyes confirmed: a centipede!!! I looked over my hand, no sting? Lucky…

I chased it around the room a few times before cornering it…where it befell the same fate of the rats…How it got inside my bed, I don’t even want to know…

Following a pitiful night of sleep, I staggered down to Swell to arrange my forward berth for sleeping…somehow rats seemed dreadful than centipedes.