Spider Sense
I am standing on a kitchen chair. I am crippled by fear. I am alone in my house. I am sweating madly. One of my hands holds a broom, and the other is wearing one of my shoes. I am without my glasses…which mean I am pretty much blind. The room is spinning around me…and my ears are ringing bells of terror.
I am so very afraid…like Richard Simmons standing nude in front of a room of Krispie Kremes. The time on the oven clock informs me in its green light that it is 9:06 p.m. Which means that I have been standing on this chair for at least twenty minutes now. I can't move, because if I do the monster in my kitchen will rip my leg off that then beat me like a piñata bought on sale at Target. The only reason that the beast had not yet turned me into a John Taco Salad is that it was sleeping on the floor of my kitchen…I knew that any sudden movements would cause it awaken with an appetite for a 5'2 Capricorn. So I just stand there on the chair, hovering over what was the largest spider I have ever seen in my life. Its skin is as black as coal with a layer of sinister fur that clings to its demonic body. The size of this mega-spider is absolutely supernatural. It is half the size of a dinner napkin and it was really tall for an arachnid. Using my psychic powers I give the creature a quick read of its aura. After connecting to its heart I can tell that there was truly evil in its heart…which means that as I stand on the kitchen chair at 9:07 that I can hear my own doomsday clock ticking its final ticks.
I wonder aloud how in the heck this could have happened to me….
Just a few hours ago I was celebrating the fact that I had the whole townhouse to myself. This is a rare occasion. My family had left town to attend a family reunion that morning, thereby leaving me alone. The day was going spectacularly….I had spent some serious time reconnecting with my fourth child named Xbox 360. I had the chance to sample the many yummy foods that are not typically allowed in our home. I had taken an unprecedented two hour nap. It was a day that was on its way to the John Kennedy Roedel hall of fame. I was in a state of peaceful, self-centered, hot n' spicy pork skinned nirvana. Then 8:15 p.m. rolled around and everything went to the stink pot…
I briefly interrupted my marathon session of 360 when I heard it started raining outside. I was in the basement and I could hear the rain splashing into the bathroom in the adjoining room. I went inside the bathroom to shut the window when across my foot scurried a fast, but sizeable brown spider. My body rocked with a case of the severe "heebie jeebies" due to the fact that I still feel the little feet of the bug on my foot long after it had jumped off.
Regaining my senses I saw the spider cruise its way under the plastic garbage can. You should know I like spiders as much as I like getting my hair cut with a flamethrower. As our VP might say they scare me "big-time". I ran into the other room and crafted a brilliant plan of how I would destroy the spider; I put a shoe on each hand. I was Johnny Shoe Hands – Spider Killer. I was going to squish this buggie into spider-limbo. (Note: I am not an advocate of killing bugs, unless of course they pose a threat to the tranquility of Johns Special day) I reentered the bathroom, shut the door behind me and began what ended up being a ten minute cage match between me and the spider.
I won't go into much detail to how the battle unfolded out of respect to my fallen adversary. I will, however tell you that at one point early in the brawl the eight legged creature had the upper hand. During the fight I managed to smack my head on the side of the bath tub, scream repeatedly like a 14 year old girl who gets invited to a Justin Timberlake pool party, and had my glasses break into their own little unfixable puzzle. I emerged from the bath room feeling like a gladiator who had defeated an east African lion in front of a coliseum of toga-wearing psychos. I was sweaty, now blind ( due to my glasses paying the price for my lack of hand eye coordination) and wearing a shoe that had the body of my defeated enemy smashed into it on my right hand. Tired and shaken I made my way up from the basement to the kitchen in hopes that I had stashed an old pair of glasses in a drawer just in case of this exact situation.
That's when things time stood still. As I made it into the kitchen my sixth sense was screaming at me, but I thought maybe that was just the byproduct of the salami pizza I had consumed at lunch. With my bare feet slapping on the hardwood floor I stomped my way around the kitchen digging through the little drawers built into the counter. That's when I saw the most foul spider-beast-agentofthedarkone standing in front of the fridge. Since I was most likely legally blind at the time, I was not exactly sure what it was that my eyes were looking at. It sure looked like a spider, but noooo I thought it was way to big. This blackened mass must be some sort of trash or something…so I leaned down to take a closer look at the mysterious something.
As my eyes focused in my pulse rate began to speed up. If this was a spider than it would be the biggest one I have ever seen in my entire life. If this ended up being a spider than it should probably be paying taxes….
The fog cleared, my computer analyzed the data my eyes sent in, and my balder unloaded! It was a spider! A monster spider that I am sure I heard grinding its teeth.
I shrieked like a scream queen and headed as quickly as I could out my front door. I would have to get a hotel room. There was now way that I could stay in my home while this plate sized poison bag roamed my home. My wife was usually the one who handled situations like this…I was a role player…I was Frodo Baggins in a situation that needed
Holy crap it was big. If you had seven more just like it, then you would have a sleigh team. I backed away with a new wave of pure white hot terror pouring from the crown of my head to my freshly clipped toe-nails. I had to do something. If it moved and hid under the fridge then I would never be able to sleep in my house again. The knowledge that a beast like this freely moved about in my house had shattered any sort of security I had. I would have to do something in defense of my family! This guy could easily abscond with one my children in the night. I had to be the hero. So I grabbed one of my dinning room chairs, an old broom, and I made my way back into the realm of the monster. I entered the kitchen…
I slid the chair as close as I could behind the spider, trying not to alert it of my activity. Then I climbed the chair, and stared down at the horribly large, no good spider. It came to me then that this was probably the angry lover of the spider I had just killed in my basement. It was out for revenge like the man with a hook for a hand who lived in all the campfire stories I remembered growing up.
This is where I find myself now at 9:08 p.m. in the evening. Standing, nearly blind, with a shoe on my left hand, and clutching a broom in my right. I want thrust the broom straws violently at the ultra spider, but I know that if I missed it could easy devour me in two chomps. The broom is not going to work! I need something with some serious mass to do in. Looking to my right I see a large text book from my wife's online class. I quietly drop the broom and the shoe onto the carpet behind me and grab the heavy tome. A small part of me knows that this book would be forever "yuckified" after slamming it into this monolith of an arachnid. The mess this buggy body will leave is going to be unprecedented…but this is going to be my only play. I will have only one shot, if I throw the book and miss the creature will either hide in the shadows, or take me down. My hands are trembling as I hold the textbook out in front of me. I can't miss…I can't miss…I let the book fly.
SLAM!
I don't miss. The book lands square on the spider. Which is amazing because I really can not see to well… This had to have killed it. I am still too scared to climb down the safety of my throne to check. I notice that this spider was so large that the book is not lying flat on the floor. The spider's body is so enormous that it is propping the book up a bit. The only way for me to check if it's dead is to lift the book up. I don't want to do that unless I am sure of it…I have seen waaaaay too many horror movies to know that the bad guy is never quite as dead as you might think it is. With the grace of a ninja I slide off of the chair and grab the phone book, and the latest Oprah mag. From back atop my chair I hoist and successfully land each of these manuscripts on top of the text book which has entombed demon spider. Still, this did not quite completely smash the bug to the floor.
I find myself now with a frying pan in hand smashing the pile of books! With each bang of the pan I am grunting like tennis pro at The French Open. My heart is racing, my nerves are all on code red, and my brow now completely damped with terror sweat I am now sure that I have killed the spider.
There is no way that I am going to look under the book until the morning.
With my special day ruined I crawled upstairs and went to bed extremely early for me. Exhausted, tired, and shaky I needed to recover from my first hand to hand encounter with an agent of the devil. I did lock my door just in case….
Morning comes. I find a pair of my old glasses..and I go back to the kitchen to look at the monster under the textbook. Using the broom I push off all of the murder weapons I used to break the body of the paranormal bug. I gasp aloud and crumple backwards as I move the textbook to find that the spider is in the exact same position that it was before I had thrown the book. It's not dead, it's not hurt, and it's not unfazed by what had happened. Could this be an undead spider I heard about on Art Bells radio program years ago?
Um, no…
The light of the day and my newfound glasses had revealed the horrible awful truth.
It was made of rubber…
Toy spider.
Dang. In my defense it looked real…except for the fact that it had like little pink polka-spots on it.
Double Dang.
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