Dead centipedes everywhere.
The long red kind with the yellow legs. The women in the house are screaming bloody murder, as if the end of the world came earlier than expected. In a sense, they are entitled to do so. I walked up the small steps to where a screened-in porch greeted me, beyond that, in the home somewhere were the origins of the screams. I knocked several times, but the screaming muted it out. To my surprise, the old Hawaiian plantation home had a brass bell above the screen door. On a hook next to it was a wooden mallet. I took the mallet off the hook and rang the bell. What deep, sonorous sound that vibrated right through you like a death knell forboding your end. The screaming ceased suddenly, and someone came to the front and stood on the other side of the door."Can I help you?" The tall, athletic woman asked. She covered her arm with a wad of wet paper towels that smelled of witch hazel.
"Someone called for a blessing?" I said. "It seems like you're preoccupied. I'll come back later."
"No, no," the woman apologized. "I'm the one who called, please come in. Come, come."
She opened the door and stood back, giving me a wide berth. I stood to one side and gestured for her to lead me into the rest of the house since I wasn't the one who lived there. I followed her into a large, spacious kitchen where the rest of what I could only assume were her family members gathered. The atmosphere was very much more than tense. It appeared that every person in attendance was about to come apart at the seams. "So," I began while placing my old leathered bag on the kitchen counter. "What do you need from me?"
"Just a few minutes before you rang the bell, I was bitten by several centipedes," the woman who let me in said. "We were all gathered here in the kitchen talking since we had time to kill before you arrived, and suddenly I was bitten by centipedes." She was very calm about what she shared, considering the circumstances.
"The long red ones with the yellow legs? The ones I saw on the grass outside?" I asked.
"I'm sorry," the woman said. "I'm Kerry, this is my sister, Loughlyn, my other sister Merris, and the youngest, Petal."
I nodded, "It's nice to make your acquaintance."
"I called you for a house blessing, but we had this incident all of a sudden," she said, embarrassed.
"Those centipedes outside, they're not dead," I told the sisters.
"They're not?" Kerry was shocked. "We killed them ourselves, we put them in a bowl of kerosene."
"Centipedes like those are sent as a curse. You can't kill them no matter what you do." I told them. "It's female jealousy."
I reached over to my old leathered bag and got out a small bottle of kukui nut oil and gave it to Kerry. "Here, take this and follow me outside."
"Can my sisters come too?" She asked.
"If they wish," I looked at the sisters one by one. "If they wish."
We went back outside, and the once dead centipedes were now coming back to life. "Pour a little drop on each one, then light it afire." I handed Kerry a lighter from my old leathered bag. She flicked the Bic to life after carefully dropping a dab of the candle nut oil on each centipede. Then she applied the flame from the lighter. Two things happened at the same time. The three centipedes were burned up in the fire, completely immolated. Then the three sisters suddenly screamed when each one of them was bitten by a centipede, which manifested out of nowhere.
"Female jealousy," I pointed to Loughlyn, Merris, and Petal. "Can't choose your family, but you can certainly choose not to be entangled in family drama."
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