Four months ago, if you had told me that the greatest struggle I would endure would be in combat against a spidery menace, I’d have issued you a mocking chuckle and then returned to my unpacking. Indeed, my first encounter with these creatures was harmless enough, to myself anyway: a quiet reflection on life’s hardships which ended joyfully with the little bastard’s demise. Later, perhaps as retribution from the Spider Gods for my sin, the situation grew far more serious. Oh yes, if you’d tried to warn me of the epic saga that awaited once I moved in, I would indeed have laughed. What a naïve fool I once was.
This afternoon as I relaxed in the air-controlled comfort of my apartment, sipping a crisp soft drink from a can, I completed a new paragraph for my novel and sat back in my chair feeling relaxed and content. The words were flowing as freely as the beverage, but now the latter of these was running low. I tipped my head back to empty the last few drops into my yawning throat, and froze.
I gazed down the barrel of the soda can and beyond, to a spot just below the ceiling. That which commanded my sudden attention descended slowly, little legs twitching in silent anticipation of its imminent landing…which in mere moments would take place upon my head. My eyes goggled with panicked recognition.
How could I fail to recognize it? It was the very same spider I had snuffed out time and again already using countless methods, each annihilation more morbidly complete than the last. Through either an unprecedented mutation or a divine gift from those Spider Gods, it had gained the ability to come back from death each night to continue its campaign of terror against me. This was the Rasputin of spiders. It had ceased to appear awhile back, no doubt realizing that it had no chance while my guard was up. Now it had lulled me into a false sense of safety, allowed me to think I had been victorious, and this was the hour of its surprise attack. Only out of sheer dumb luck had I run out of Coke Zero at just that moment.
Instinctively I sprang out of my chair and made ready to dispatch the tiny menace yet again, when a sudden revelation stayed my hand. Clearly death was no obstacle to this monster, whatever it was and wherever it came from. It would simply respawn itself once more, and would go on to haunt me until my end of days. Was it possible that if I got rid of this spider without killing, it could not return to haunt me?
So this time, I did not reach up and squeeze it to a pulp between the folds of my palm; nor did I set it ablaze with a safety lighter and watch as it evaporated into cinders. I fled to the kitchen to retrieve an empty glass, then returned and held it beneath the spider until it dropped down inside. Then I placed a thick book on top, severing the delicate strand on which it had descended, and placed the glass on the desktop. The grotesque octoped within scuttled in circles along the inside of the glass, unable to comprehend its invisible prison.
My first impulse was to chuck it out the window, so I pulled the string to raise the window blinds and was bathed in sunlight. But I found myself staggering backwards in shock. Grim realization spread across my face as I for the first time understood the horrific seriousness of this spider situation.
There was a film made during the “nature gone berzerk” horror fad of the 1970s called Kingdom of the Spiders. This film is only “good” to the extent that any picture with William Shatner as the star can be considered good, and it shouldn’t surprise you that he ends up being out-acted by the horde of killer tarantulas who lay waste to the town. However, the movie does have a redeemingly memorable ending which, for those who have not seen it, I don’t feel bad about revealing. You see, Bill and his co-stars end up inside a lodge house besieged by the murderous spiders, trying to shutter every possible entrance into the building and avoid being devoured by the hairy little creepers. The survivors awaken the next morning to find that the attack has ceased, and they begin to wonder if the spiders have given up and gone away. Bill gently removes one board from a window and peers out…but all he can see is cloudy whiteness. Switch to an aerial shot of the lodge, which has been smothered in a coccoon of spiderwebs. The camera zooms out slowly to reveal that the entire town has been similarly enmeshed. The End.
It was that scene which sprang into my head as I gaped through my own window. The sunlight glinted off of a gruesome latticework of weblines, joined at odd angles and forming a loose barrier across the outside of the glass. But these were no ordinary strands of spiderweb; oh, no. These were more like cords. Cables. Impossibly thick. You could hang a fucking suspension bridge with these things. Before I could stifle the thought, my mind skipped from the proportions of the web to the proportions of the spider that must have spun it, and I suddenly felt ill.
I reached tentatively forward and jerked the cord until the blinds fell back down across the window like a guillotine blade. Then I backed slowly away, turning my head in all directions as though I could see through the walls to where arachnid avengers the size of my cat waited to prey upon me. “I didn’t kill it this time! See?! It’s still alive, I swear!!” I shouted to the droning hum of the air conditioner.
My mind raced, grasping for any possible escape from the doom I now saw lingering ominously above my horizon. Flinging the spider out the window was no longer an option. Then it hit me. I grabbed the glass, taking care not to let its occupant crawl out, and snatched my car keys.
I don’t remember the exact spot, and I don’t want to. I would never be able to drive past it again without shivering. It might be a mile away or it might be three. All I know is: whatever supernatural abilities it may possess, that little spider has a very long way to go if it wants to get back here again.
Tomorrow creeps closer, and along with it that moment of truth when I discover if my theory is correct. With luck, that otherworldly fiend will still be somewhere far from here, crawling along in search of my building. If it reappears in spite of having its life spared, I will know beyond doubt that all hope for me is lost. Let these stories be a chronicle of my last days, and serve as a warning to any who would challenge the will of the Spider Gods.
