The Human Centipede

Excerpt from Waiting for Karl Rove
(FOOTNOTES BELOW)

“Jeni, this is the worst idea since I rolled over in bed that night and said to South-of-the-Border. 'Are you gonna marry me or what?'” (1)

Jeni turned on the blinker—about thirty seconds too late in my opinion—and eased off the highway into the rest area. “You are such a chicken-shit. Consider this another adventure.”

“Another adventure? Sure why not? It’s not as if anything exciting has happened to us so far on this trip. I still have most of my motor functions and my spleen.(2)

“Listen, Kat. I can drive in my sleep, but you’re such a whiner about making sure nothing happens to your car, (3) it’s best we stop for the night.”

“I’m not arguing that point. I’m arguing about where you’ve decided to stop.” I looked around at the rest area on the side of the highway where we sat parked next to a large horse trailer hitched to the back of a double-cab pickup. I lit a cigarette off the one I’d been smoking, looked out my window and squinted in the light provided by the squalid mercury vapor lamp attached to a twenty-two foot metal pole. The driver’s side door of the pickup read BAR-NONE QUARTER HORSE RANCH.

“We’re surrounded by truckers, Kat. What could be safer?”

“Gee, let me think. A mall Santa Clause’s lap? (4) My bed at home? A public library? The back seat of a police car?” (5)

She laughed. “You’re funny, Nove.”

“Yeah, I’m funny. And my corpse will be funny-looking once the cops piece it back together. If they ever do,” I added darkly. “Do you watch horror films, Jeni?”

“Not usually. I’m not about to let my kids watch them and by the time I wrestle them to bed, I’m usually too tired to take a shit.”

I winced and ignored her three hundred and twenty-fourth scatological reference.

I rolled my eyes at her and said, “Fine. Let me fish my pepper spray out of my purse. No way we’re entering that restroom this late unless we have a way of defending ourselves.” (6)

“Go on with your delusions, Kat. I find them fascinating.”

“My point is, that no victim expects to be murdered, just as none of the characters in those movies expected to be stabbed, bitten, run over, chain sawed, decapitated, or torn in half. Otherwise they’d have stayed at home. But the film characters’ misfortune began because they took to the road. And spending the night here with a broken car window, without a sawed-off shotgun and a S.W.A.T. team in the backseat is a terrible idea.”

“You’re overreacting to a hypothetical and highly improbable situation,” Jeni said, trying to fake me out into thinking she’s a rational human being. “There’s no way we’re getting killed by a serial killer because we’re spending the night here.”

“Not just killed. Turned into a human centipede.”

“You keep saying that,” Jeni said, right at the moment the trucker exited the restroom. “What the fuck is a human centipede?”

“A human centipede is three people sewn together. There’s a Dutch director named Tom Six who wrote and directed the most revolting horror film ever made. The Human Centipede. Six is an AK-47 enthusiast who once said he gets a rash from too much political correctness.”

“So do I. What’s wrong with that?”

“You own an AK-47?” I asked.

“No, doofus. I get a rash from too much political correctness.”

“Jeni, you’d get a rash from a baby’s diaper rash cream.(7) Anyway, can we get back to The Human Centipede?”

“Why not?”

“Many horror fans loved the movie.(8) But Roger Ebert didn’t even give it a star rating. Do you know what he did?”

“How could I?” she replied, smirking.

“He told his readers the review was not only a spoiler alert, but a public service announcement. Then he revealed the entire plot AND drew a diagram of the human centipede.”

“Oh, come on. I doubt it’s that bad.”

“Really? He said what happened to the victims is the worst thing he’s ever seen done to human beings.” (9)

“Worse than Hostel?”

“Jeni, the victims in this movie saw Hostel and begged the killer to do the disgusting things in that movie rather than turn them into a human centipede.”

I pulled my notebook and a pen out of my purse and began to sketch a crude drawing. After I finished, I shoved it in Jeni’s face. “There! There’s what’s going to happen to us if we spend the night here.”

She said, “What the fuck is that?”

“That’s what the insane German doctor in the movie created. He kidnapped two young American women and a Japanese man. He was a retired surgeon who specialized in separating co-joined twins. In the demented mind of Tom Six, this doctor had a hankering to attach people.(10)

Jeni peered intently at my sketch. “Am I understanding this correctly?”

“If you think each person is attached by sewing mouths to anuses all in a row, the answer is yes. But it’s worse than that.”

“How could it get any worse?” Jeni said, clearly horrified.

“The psycho doctor also attached their digestive tracts.”

“No!”

“Yes! So that means the first person eats, then the digested food passes from his asshole into the mouth of the second person, then the third who eventually evacuates.” (11)

“You saw this movie?”

“Hell, no! But I heard it from my corner while playing Peggle on the computer. The Remote Control Terrorist watched it.”

“And you live with this guy?”

“I did ask him after it ended if he got emotionally involved with the characters.” (12)

“What did he say?”

“He scoffed at me and said of course not, it’s only a movie.” (13)

“Why are you telling me this? I might have nightmares,” Jeni whined.

“Because I can’t believe a writer could come up with something so vile out of his own imagination unless he’s creating human centipedes in his garage or attic. Tom Six is douche bag who must be destroyed for thinking up such crap. When a movie is made of our adventures,(14) I shall insist that in this scene he is played by Steven Seagal.” (15)

“Well, that’s a relief. I thought you were really worried about being turned into a human centipede.”

“Of course I’m worried about it. My luck, you’d be in the front and I’d be in the middle. With your ass situation, I’d rather go skinny dipping with Freddy Krueger.” (16)

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1. My ex-husband’s family came from Monterrey, Mexico and are millionaires. Know what I got in the divorce? Can you spell J-A-C-K-S-H-I-T?

2. I didn’t expect that to last long the way Jeni drove.

3. Not to mention the aforementioned motor skills and spleen.

4. Unless he happened to be a pedophile and even then what’s he going to do with all those elves as witnesses?

5. Where I predicted I’d soon be sitting because three years ago I made the mistake of joining a writer’s website – thenextbigwriter.com. It’s frequented by a high number of crazies, Jeni being the Crazy Queen of the Forums.

6. My spur-of-the-moment plan didn’t really include wasting my expensive pepper spray on a rapist or serial killer, but rather shoving Jeni into him and running like Marion Jones on steroids while he bounced off Jeni’s tits into the cinderblock walls. I call this the Trampoline Defense.

7. But I wouldn’t put it past her to mug the Gerber baby if she thought his diaper rash cream might be the solution to her ass issues.

8. I picture anyone who loves this movie never leaving his room in his parents’ basement and looking like Jabba the Hut existing on a diet of maggots and pizza.

9. And he watched Hannah Montana: The Movie so he should know.

10. A little hobby to pass the time in his retirement. More creative than crossword puzzles and less tedious than gardening.

11. Who knows where. Under these circumstances, it seems a toilet would be difficult to manage.

12. Keeping my fingers crossed he wouldn’t tell me he wished he could be more like Dr. Crazytown.

13. Same thing he says about romantic comedies.

14. Alternative title – Waiting for a Plot.

15. Check out my Steven Seagal rant on katnovian.com.

16. Not-so-thinly-veiled reference to Jeni's 'roids, which she talks about ad nauseum.


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As it turned out, we did run into some trouble that night, in the form of Gollum the rest-stop masturbator yanking his way to crazy-town on the hood of Kat's car. But we got the upper hand. The police later found him bound with duct tape and a little message written across his chest in lipstick.

I MAY BE A SERIAL KILLER
I MAY BE A RAPIST
I HAVE A PUNY PENIS
ARREST ME!

Don't screw with a menopausal woman and her erratic sidekick... Just sayin'.