Some Advice from a Centipede

Melody stood with her back to the wall with the stench of freshly cut durian spoiling the thick hot air, and knew that this then was Hong Kong.
Leering doorways called to her from across the street.
“We are dark. We are dirty and our humidity is high. Enter us, enter us.”
A dark blush started low on Melody’s chest…spreading upwards like ants to her neck and her cheeks. I have those fat cheeks that fat people have, she thought, those fat cheeks with little veins on the surface that swell when they blush so I look like a map.
In fact Melody was very thin but she was very unattractive. She was right to hate herself, she was right.
She pulled a giant pin from out of her belly and flopped off the wall where she had been for the last half hour. She saw with some relief a man on the corner, and she made her way towards him.
He was very carefully spitting into a cup. He was very old.
Is it spit or is it vomit? thought Melody.
The man coughed and spurted a thick yellow bubbly fluid from between his chaffed lips into the plastic cup, already three quarters full. He then looked up at her, eyes sly, and hissed.
Ssssiiiiisssssssssssshh!
Then he nodded at her smiling, only not with any part of his face. He carefully put the cup down, almost proudly, and reached into his grubby nylon tracksuit bottoms. His foul hand came back out with a little brown package, which he thrust at Melody.
“Take it, take this! It’s from in my foul! It’s from my not good!”
You can’t talk English! Melody thought, You can’t!
She ran away.
“Mmmhmm yes…trickly trickle down…we’re deep inside.”
The doorways were back…she was back on her wall. She felt the pin jump at her soft belly and penetrate her skin…forcing her rigid against the wall.
What is in my pocket?
Her tender fingers, shaking with shock burrowed into her cardigan pocket and touched crinkly brown paper. It was the package from the man.
Did I take this? She sobbed and her tears helped her slump down into a squatting position, the pin forgotten.
Her fingers were bone white now as they opened the small parcel. It looked like it could contain no more than a small packet of coins, or perhaps some dried rice. Carefully each corner was folder out, and she gently tore all down one side. She tipped the contents onto her hand so suddenly that she did not have time to scream as the large red centipede slid out and lay, curled up, on her palm.
The centipede moved.
His red shiny head pulsed out from the coils, and his mouth opened into a smile.
“One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter” he seemed to say…but then, did I just think that? Melody was feeling dizzy…I’m not in Wonderland for christ’s sake…I’m in…Hong Kong…
The doorways seemed to be growing around her like huge black teeth…Melody glanced up in fear.
The sky is getting further away!
With horror she glanced down at her hand and saw only half a centipede…writhing and bleeding onto her skin.
She gagged and spluttered, falling onto all fours as she retched, coughing up a few red legs.
But no head.
Without any more control she felt herself crawling along the dirty pavement.
Her dress was ripping and now so were her knees.
Everything was getting dark she noted, everything is getting wet.
The doorways! She screamed inside her head, They’re eating me!

“IN! IN! IN! IN!”


And then silence. An almost empty street but for an old man with a cup, half a centipede, some brown paper and a pin.