Last night, was possibly the scariest night of my life. Why the melodrama, you ask? I'll tell you.
There I was, minding my own business, reading a book before slipping into a peaceful slumber, when all of the sudden, something in the corner of my eye catches my attention. My head jerks to my right to see what it is, and there, standing proudly on a pillow
right beside me, is a spider. And not just any old tiny, clear, jumping spider that you find in your shower. No, this one was huge, dark brown and hairy, with big vampire teeth and the demeanor of a werewolf during a full moon. And it wanted me. It was hungry, and I was on the menu. For a moment I sat in pure stillness, in fear that if I moved too much, it might jump on my neck and start sucking my life away, but then I worked up the courage to attempt to smash it with something. But the moment I got near it, it jumped to life, and with some fancy tactical maneuvers that a ninja would envy, it escaped me, stealthily sliding away into the crack between my bed and the wall. I tried looking for it, worried that it would come back for more later, but could not find the little bugger, as it had put its camouflaged body-suit on during its escape, therefore disappearing into the background. I sat back against the wall once more with my book in hand, deciding that it was just a stupid, tiny little spider, and what harm could it cause? It probably got distracted with something else down that crack that spiders like, so why would it come back up just to get revenge on me for trying to smash it? So I continued to read, and Joey (the cat, not the character from Friends) began to clean again, apparently finished with giving me strange looks for spazzing at seemingly nothing a moment ago. However, after a few minutes of blissful reading, all homicidal thoughts forgotten, the nightmare returned. Only this time, the ninja-spider was on, my
arm. I spazzed immediately without conscious thought, waving my arm about, trying to get the beast off me. I paused in my frantic waving as the spider in question dropped off my arm, somewhere onto my blanket instead. I froze, staring at the place where I could have sworn I saw it land, but I did not see it on my navy-blue blanket. And then, to my horror, the reason for its absence on my blanket revealed itself.
It was on my arm again.
This time my instinct to kill set in, and instead of spazzing like an idiot, I began to swat viciously at my own arm like an idiot, trying to vengefully kill the damn thing once and for all. I then proceeded to jump out of bed, and with careful precision, I smacked and banged on my bed as a monkey might. At this point Joey had obviously had quite enough of my spazzing about, so he jumped of my bed and went to casually lay on the ground in front of the little heater in my room. Finally my brain kicks in a little, and a thought breaks through my murderous fog of panic.
"Eh, maybe I should do something useful and try finding the little bugger..." I thought, and my body responded by ceasing the embarrassing swatting-of-the-bed. I paused, breathed, and recovered my pride enough to calmly reach to my covers and peel them back, searching in between each blanket for the beast of a spider. Now, this may seem like an easy task, however, I have like, eight blankets
and a sheet on my bed due to the very cold conditions of Southern California in January. Alright, that sounded completely ridiculous, but hey. It's very cold in my room this time of year, okay? Anyways, where was I? Ah right, searching for the demon with eight legs. Okay, so I peeled back every single one of my blankets, one by one, twice, just trying to find that damn spider. I would have just let it go, because really, how much damage can a tiny little spider cause? It worked the first time thinking this, when it had escaped through the crack beside my bed, so why wouldn't it work again? Why couldn't I let it go? Well, maybe because it came back last time on my arm,
so why wouldn't it do it AGAIN? This reasoning seemed perfectly rational at the time. So, I continued to search. Finally, after a few more frantic flippings of my blankets, I spotted it, sitting quietly and unharmed on the side of my mattress, waiting to strike. I froze, afraid that it would escape once again. Then, very slowly, I reached over to my desk, grabbed a paper towel that I had been using with my paints the other day, and I approached the creature. It sat perfectly still, daring me to do something. Daring me to even
try and kill it. At that moment I summoned all my courage, reared my hand back, and swiftly and efficiently smashed where the spider was sitting. I then carefully pulled back the bundled paper towel, trying to see if I had indeed smashed it, and I found remnants of spider guts on the murder weapon in question. However, there was no body. I glanced down, wondering if it had somehow survived, or, perhaps, maybe it had just fallen to the ground under my bed. I weighed my options: Either I could take the guts on my paper towel as a sign that it was now dead somewhere underneath my bed, or, I could continue to let the horrible thoughts run through my head, telling me that it was now under my bed bleeding to death somewhere, and that in its last breath it would jump up once more and come after me again, so at least its last move in life would be to eat the human who had killed it. Let's just say that I chose the latter option, thus, I knew that I had to find the body before I could ever even
think of trying to sleep again. So I carefully pulled a few things from underneath my bed, using a paintbrush to pick through some of the things. And finally, as if God had decided to give me a break on this one, I found it. A tiny, twitching, grotesque carcass on the carpet, clearly either seconds away from death or, hopefully, already dead. I disposed of the body using the murder weapon, and it was as if a weight had been lifted. I could finally sleep. I could finally lie in my own bed, without the fear of a hairy little monster eating me from the inside out in my slumber. I laid back in bed, in the peaceful darkness of the night, cat deciding that I was sane enough to sleep on again, thus jumping up and lying on me. I was warm, comfortable and ready to relax and sleep.
And I thought, at that moment, "what if it wasn't alone? What if spiders are like rats, if you see one, fifty more will be hiding in the shadows, waiting for you to kill one of their own so they can avenge their soldier with malice...?"
...Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite...Muahahahahahahaa...
-Miss Eccentric.
BTW: Notice how I added that the cat was basically disgusted with my behavior? Yeah, well, I'm a little peeved that fatty didn't pull his weight last night! His job as a cat is to kill the critters that get in their people's way! But no, he just sat around like, "what, Mom? I'm not getting that spider. You can get the spider, I'll just sit here and watch with a look of amusement on my fat little face."
...Yeah...Just a tad annoying...
