After I finished this cartoon I realized it deserved to be explored a little deeper, and wrote this short story to go along with it.

NEW ORLEANS--Mardi Gras. The monster is unleashed. A giant centipede appears seemingly out of nowhere. The first sighting was at a Texaco in the suburbs. He killed and ate a customer after crashing through the door. The clerk fired shots, but they did no good--they only enraged the beast. It destroyed the store and killed everyone in it. They couldn't get away. It was too large.

The centipede was black, about five feet high, and twenty to twenty five feet long. Evidence showed its pincers contained a venomous acid, which it used to digest its prey during the very act of eating it. This meant a short but painful death if it caught you by the head and a long and painful death if it caught you anywhere else. To encounter it and survive was not a possibility.

It tore through Mardi Gras, eating everyone and destroying everything. More than a simple insect intelligence was driving this thing. It seemed to have a brutal uncompromising hatred for everything in the world. When it got full, it would simply kill whatever was around and leave it to rot.

There was nothing anybody could do. Bullets only enraged it. It was impervious to fire. The National Guard was called in and no weapon could even slow it down. Attempts to trap it failed miserably when it was found it's venom could eat through anything. Tanks were brought it. They fired at it, thought they had killed it. When the smoke cleared it crawled out of the crater unharmed and tried to destroy the tank. It succeeded. Finally they just declared New Orleans a disaster area and evacuated everyone, hoping to figure out a way to kill it or at least deprive it of food and let it starve to death. Assorted vigilantes stayed to fight it, but they didn't last long.

I was assigned to retrace its path to the beginning. We knew that was the only way to get to the end. I tracked it to a remote house in the woods. A slapped-together maze of barns near it caught my attention. They were in ruins now. I knew I had found what I was looking for. The house itself was expensive but had also been ruined, though not to the extent of the barns. It was obviously the centipede's doing.

Inside the house was a mess. It looked like the aftermath of a scientific experiment involving elephants and PCP. Papers and equipment were strewn about and instead of doors there were huge holes in the walls.

It was behind the only door in the house left intact that I found Doctor Lymon. The first thing I saw was a Rube Goldberg-type weapon aimed at my face. The doctor was in mid-scream when I noticed him behind it.

Then: "Oh," he said, and put it down. He sat in a leather chair with its back to me--it seemed like he'd forgotten me already.

"You created the centipede, didn't you," I said.

He was drawn out of his brooding reverie. He looked at me. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Why?" he repeated--the question seemed to have no meaning for him.

"Do you know what it's doing out there?"

"I can guess."

He didn't say anything more. I didn't know where to begin, for Christ's sake--would you? Then he started talking again.

"It was me, yeah. It was all me. It's not really a centipede, you know. Just based on it. I made a few modifications."

"No kidding."

"It's shell is a new metal alloy I've created. Indestructible my conventional weapons. It's venom is my own creation also. Based on hydrochloric acid. 50 times as powerful. It's really only about 65% organic, and I had to devise a new respiratory system for it. Too big for normal insect breathing, you know."

"What happened?"

"It escaped."

"From the barns?"

"Yes. It was too powerful, too angry. I tried to introduce an obedience component but--well, it's an insect, still, really. It just wasn't compatible with that type of thinking."

"How did you survive?"

"This room. It's made of material even the centipede can't eat through. You may have noticed I didn't lock the door. It doesn't have hands." He tried to laugh. "It hung around for a while while I hid in here. Then I guess it got hungry."

"It's destroyed the fucking city! It's eating everybody!"

"Yeah--yeah, that's what I figured."

"Can you kill it?"

He looked at me like I'd anally raped his mother.

"Kill it? I have the tools, yes, but I'll never do it--NEVER! I spent twenty years creating that thing! I poured my life into it! I built it from scratch I created it from nothing! How can you expect me to destroy it!? No--NO, I won't kill it. I'll kill you!" He pulled a gun on me. "I'll kill YOU!" That's when I saw the centipede behind him. In his excitement he had moved close to the open door, his back to it. The centipede had crept up like it slid in on butter--totally noiseless. Lymon clicked his gun and that's when it got him. He fired a shot, which hit the ceiling. His screams were quick--it had got him by the head. I picked up the weapon he'd aimed at me when I came it. Buttons and dials covered it, and it had no trigger. I hit the buttons at random--none of the were marked. Nothing was happening and it was finishing up on Dr. Lymon. My only chance was to escape, but it was blocking the door. I threw the weapon over it into the next room. Then I took a straight run at it, jumped on its back, rolled off and fled, picking up the weapon on the way.

I hid behind a tree and tried to make sense of the weapon. I couldn't. The it came crashing out through the wall of the house nearest me. Apparently obedience was beyond it but a super sensitive innate tracking system wasn't. That must be how it appeared here almost as soon as I opened that door. That means it can go faster than we ever suspected. It also means it has enough intelligence to hold a grudge. It was after Dr. Lymon. Oh, shit.

These thoughts flashed through my brain in a matter of seconds, and I began climbing the tree as best I could with the weapon. I know it could fell the tree with its venom, and my only chance was to shoot it, or whatever this thing did, before it got to me. I

I was twenty feet out of its reach when it got to me. That's when I found out it could climb. It got my leg. I was doomed.

We're all doomed.