The Centipede is a short story in English by Filipino author Rony V.

Diaz, a writer who hails from Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija. The story was
first published in 1953 (some say 1952) and it won the Carlos Palanca
Memorial Awards for Short Story.

The Characters:
1. Eddie - A teenaged boy who is confused as to why his older sister is
always mean and hateful towards him.
2. Delia - Eddie's older sister. Delia was 8 years old when Eddie
was born. The events in the story occurs around when Eddie was 13
years old. This means Delia is around 21 or 22 in the story.
3. Berto - A member of the family.
4. Eddie and Delia's father - A loving father who only wanted what's
best for his son and daughter.

Themes:
The main theme of the story revolves around sibling relationship.
However, in this particular story, this relationship is made
complicated by a few moving parts - the death of the mother, the
huge gap in years between the brother and sister, and a seemingly
neutral single father.

Plot and Summary: EDDIE sees his sister Delia beat up his dog Biryuk
with a stick. This makes Eddie very angry and he wants to run over
and help Biryuk. But he can't for the simple reason that Delia has
some kind of a heart illness. Suddenly confronting her will surprise
her and cause her weak heart to react. If this happens, Delia will
be in a lot of physical pain. In a flashback, Eddie tells the story
of how he got his dog Biryuk. He was thirteen years old when his
father took him to go hunting for brown pigeons. While scouting for
pigeons with his hunting rifle in the ready, a small dog appeared
out of the woods and dispered a flock of feeding pigeons. This
afforded Eddie full sight of the fleeing pigeons. Eddie fired and
three of the pigeons fell to the ground.