Dark and Quiet Night

It was a dark and quiet night in the old homestead...

I'd just finished a routine patrol of the house, making sure the doors were locked and the windows were shut. The premises were as secure as I could make them. I had just finished brushing my teeth and I was leaving the bathroom, my thoughts turned to my comfortable pillow and dreams of large breasted women, when I froze dead in my tracks.

A spider was slowly crawling up a web in the open doorway of the bathroom...

My adrenal glands went off like twin oil wells that simultaneously hit gushers, and flooded my bloodstream with rivers of adrenaline, epinephrine and natural opiates, the body's version of morphine. Fear flooded my mind and my body reacted like the millennium-trained war machine that it was, honed by generations of humans that crawled forth from the muck to stand proudly as one of the world's most adaptive and widespread life forms.

It was a fight-or-flight moment...

There was nowhere to go. I was in the bathroom. It was either hide in the bathroom til the spider went away, or dive out the window, and dammit, it was cold out there. There was only one thing to do.

I picked up the box of kleenex...

And dropped to the floor, belly-crawling my way out through the bathroom doorway, trying to move swiftly to avoid having the spider drop on my back while I was crawling through, crawling to avoid any dangling webs. Elbows and knees pushing me forward, using the box of kleenex to probe the floor ahead of me (you never know when they are working in groups or pairs, and I didn't want a trap-door spider to come bursting out of the rug and attack my face), I worked my way out from under the dangling monstrosity. It wasn't dangling anymore, it was feeling it's way along the wall and ceiling over the bathroom doorway.

I wasn't fooled...

That whole "I'm an innocent little spider making a web" thing doesn't fly with me. I will not suffer a house spider to live. The tables had been turned. The spider's plan to web me as I walked through the doorway and suck out my brains had FAILED. Now, the spider was the hunted.

I watched my target...

Like a predator on the hunt, I waited for the right moment. The spider was feeling along the walls and ceiling with his front 2 legs, trying to find a good grip, his second line of forelegs working beneath him. I couldn't see the webs, but I knew they were there. I knew he was secretly collecting webbing beneath him, readying it in net-form to throw over me in a cunning backup plan. His forelegs were as long as my pinky fingers, though much thinner, and they worked back and forth across the ceiling like an alien probe blindly looking for land mines in an earthen landscape.

Our eyes met, my two to it's eight...

I almost fell for it. For just a second, I thought "it's just trying to build a nest. It's so heavy it can't even cling to the ceiling without falling down, so it's using the webs so it doesn't fall and hurt itself." I wrested my mind away from this thought, my eyes never leaving the spider's. I knew the thought had been planted there by the spider's alien mind-control powers, but my mind was strong, and unwavering.

I waited for the right moment...

Waiting for the spider to get out of the corner, to climb down the wall, or across the ceiling, anything to get a better angle with my chosen weapon. I was squatting near the floor, my feet firmly planted, far apart like the stance of a sumo wrestler about to charge, the box of kleenex held between my knees with both hands. Eyes on my target, muscles tensed and primed.

The spider stopped moving.

"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" I screamed, leaping upward and hurling the tissue box at the ceiling, simultaneously throwing myself backward, landing on my hands and vaulting myself back onto my feet, dropping into a fighting stance with my fists at the ready, in case the spider still lived and meant to strike at me. I wouldn't go down without a fight!

The spider was nowhere to be seen...

The box of tissues lay on the floor, the corner a crumpled mass after hitting the ceiling like an accordion thrown at an oncoming fighter jet. My eyes darted everywhere at once, like a cat trying to follow a laser pointer aimed by someone with Parkinson's.

There, on the wall...

The spider was climbing back up. All subterfuge aside now, the spider moved with purpose and determination, moving easily up the wall, it's 8 red eyes glowing dimly in the reflected bathroom light. Rushing forward, I swept up the kleenex box and attacked, screaming my battle cry.

"MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!"

I hammered the kleenex box into the wall, dazing the spider and knocking it down onto the floor, but I knew the fight was far from over. The spider flipped itself back over, dropping into it's own fighting stance, but it was too late. I had the upper hand, now, and I raised the box high and brought it down onto the spider with a satisfying crunch.

"DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

Then again I smashed the box down, and again, screaming obscenities at the spider, calling it names, making rude remarks about it's mother, my cries degenerating into wordless gibberish. Slamming the box into the remains of the spider on the floor, over and over again, sweat pouring from my shuddering, heaving body. My fear had turned to rage, and my rage knew no bounds.

I may have even called it a poopyhead.

Finally, kneeling on the floor, spent and exhausted, the kleenex box a crumpled mass of tissue and cardboard, I staggered to my feet. The fight was over. I had won. I returned the remains of the kleenex box to the bathroom, and carefully scooped the spider's corpse into the toilet for a burial at sea. You never know when something like that is going to turn into a zombie spider and try and eat your brains. Better safe than sorry, I always say.

"What's all the racket out there?" my mother called from within her room.

I turned to her closed bedroom door, the steady glint of a battle hardened soldier in my eye. I had faced my fears, and won, feeling not unlike a young Masai tribesman who had just killed a lion with a spear. I was no longer a child, but a warrior, ready to do battle with anything life had to throw at me. I had won, I was the victor, and I knew at that moment that I would conquer life and death and make them my little crying bitches. A maniacal laugh pressed to my lips, thirsting for escape, MUA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAA!!! I wanted to guffaw at the heavens, daring them to try another assault.

"Oh, nothing, Mom." I said in a calm voice. "Just killing a spider."

I strode proudly into my quarters then, chest thrust forward, shoulders squared. I would sleep more soundly that night than any night in the past few weeks, secure in the knowledge of my manhood. I had won, and I would always win. There was nothing to fear anymore.

Except centipedes, those creepy, crawly little, bleh! (shivers)