Silverfish

Silverfish: nothing are scarier, and in our complicated modern world, nothing are more capable of turning one's soul to gelatinous rubbish. We've all had this experience: you come home, after having spent a night on the town with one's sophisticated friends, discussing the state of the federal judicial system and the overloaded ninth circuit. You stroll into your room, strip down to your shorts, and flip on the light. Suddenly, you notice it: a huge, terrifying silverfish! With an amazing burst of inhuman speed, the hideous monster from a nether realm dashes under your keyboard.

And then there you are, standing only in your boxers, using a glow-in-the-dark trident from an old Halloween costume as a crude poking stick, trying to get the nasty thing to emerge from under your computer. At once, everything you know is threatened: your dignity, your livelihood (the keyboard) and your sleeping habits, as your choice of a low-to-the-ground futon suddenly seems like a terrifying invitation to let the huge, primitive insect-creature crawl into your mouth and suffocate you.

Silverfish do this. Your mouth is warm and humid. They crawl into your mouth and suffocate you. OR INTO THE MOUTHS OF YOUR LOVED ONES.

Suddenly, you've knocked everything off your desk in your haste to expose the thing, which would only terrify you further if you had easy access to it. It belongs in a museum, clearly; a museum for creatures brought out of Hell itself and successfully preserved.

Another exeedingly troubling thing about Silverfish is their ability to remind oneself of one's father, who, rather than being the macho type who might openly mock one's embarassing inability to deal with what is techincally a minor household pest, would actually be quite calm and mature about the situation. This is a wild contrast to your own frantic scramblings.

Dad would be careful and measured, and have the pest bottled and thrown outdoors in moments. You, on the other hand, would spend twenty minutes knocking things over, and then write a frantic outporing of your silverfish-related neuroses, pausing only momentarily before electronically publishing your ill-conceived essay on the nature of fear.

Silverfish are very, very, very bad things.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)

— graphic by Mike Fisher (crspeedy@crspeedy.com)