Ugh… Silverfish… Is there a more disgusting thing in all of creation? Probably. But, at the moment, I’m not capable of thinking of one.

You know what a silverfish is, right? They’re those bugs that basically look like pocket sized alien monsters. I’m sorry, something with that many legs is just unnatural.

Last night, prior to going to bed, I headed into the bathroom, as is my custom. See, I like to go to the bathroom before I crawl into bed because it lessens the chance that I’ll have to wake up multiple times in the middle of the night. Lessens… doesn’t eliminate…

Anyway, I’m standing there, losing weight, when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see something shoot across the bathroom floor. It came from behind me, ran by my left foot, then made its way behind and around the toilet base.

I screamed like a 12-year-old girl.

To be fair, in that first instant, before I got a good look at what the thing was, I thought it was a mouse. And I make that distinction because screaming over a mouse is definitely more manly than screaming over a large bug.

Y’all, this was the biggest friggin’ silverfish I have ever seen.

The incident disrupted my urination. My scream was something of a full body event. So I kind of missed the mark for a second there. Too much information? Deal with it. Everyone pees.

The silverfish in question decided to take a break from its marathon across the floor on the baseboard behind the plunger sitting between the toilet and the sink. I finished doing what I needed to do and then decided I’d try to use the plunger to kill this abomination.

I was nowhere near fast enough. As soon as it felt the vibration of my hand touching the top of the plunger, it took off. I’m pretty sure it ran under the rug in front of the toilet. I can’t be sure because my eyes were not made to focus on things that move that quickly.

I made a mental note. I knew that there was a very good chance that my stomping on the rug over and over again did nothing to deter this monster in its quest to torment me and that it was likely just intelligent enough to seek me out in my room during the night. I had no doubt that the next time I encountered it would be when, while I was sleeping, it decided to crawl onto my bed and devour my face. I assume that’s the goal of every silverfish. They devour faces. It’s an activity befitting an alien monster with 8,000 legs.

In case you were wondering, yes, I cleaned up the stray urine. But only after I made sure that thing wasn’t going to sneak attack me from under the rug.

Anyway, in spite of my effort to not have to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I still had to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Around 3:00 a.m. I did that very thing.

I was in that blissful state where you’re somewhere between awake and sleep. You know, that place where you still remember your dreams. Your vision is just clear enough to get you across that distance of floor you need to cross to get from your bedroom to the bathroom.

This time, my bathroom experience occurred without incident. But then I got back to my bedroom. My eyes readjusted to the darkness as I sat down on the edge of my bed. I was ready to lie back down and let sleep take me all over again.

But just before I picked my feet up to swing them over onto the mattress, something small and dark shot out from under my bed between my feet.

It was a silverfish!

Did I build the tension enough? Was there any doubt that this is what it would be? I feel like it would have been a nice twist to say that this time it was a mouse. But, no, it was another friggin’ silverfish.

Or was it the same one?

See, I like to believe it was the same one. This is the one that vowed revenge upon me after I tried to pee on it and then kill it in the bathroom earlier in the night. Its plans to devour my face must have been ruined when I got up to go to the bathroom again at 3:00.

I watched this thing quickly move toward my jeans, which were lying in a crumpled heap on the floor next to the closet. Well played, alien bug. Lie in wait for the next time I put my jeans on, then strike.

But I wasn’t about to let this thing outsmart me. I turned on the lamp next to my bed and went over to shake out the pants. Sure enough, it crawled out and headed toward the closet. And that’s when I grabbed a shoe and crushed it. I gathered its remains in a paper towel and buried it deep in the trash can.

Now, if I’m being realistic, I understand that the silverfish I killed is probably different than the one that was in the bathroom. But I would love to just take some time to savor my moment of triumph.

Know this: I will destroy every silverfish that I am capable of destroying. And I will do so with extreme prejudice. I will do so without reservation and without remorse.

Seriously, what purpose do they serve? Because, at this point, testing my reflexes is not a good enough argument to maintain their species’ survival.