“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the Spider to the Fly; Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.”
-Mary Howitt
“You gotta be fucking kidding.”
-Palmer (to MacReady after Norris’s detached head sprouted eyes & spider legs and scurried away in The Thing)
This was not a blog post I was expecting to write, but something happened recently that turned my world upside down. It was so traumatizing that I feel the only way I can cope with the horror I experienced is to share the tale with you, Gentle Reader. It seems like it happened only yesterday…possibly because it did in fact happen yesterday.
Spiders (from the Latin, AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!! KILL-ITKILL-IT!!!!) and I have a rather tenuous relationship. It all started when I was a wee lad of 7. I was outside at twilight catching fireflies and possibly breakdancing and solving a Rubik’s Cube while singing Pac-Man Fever (it was so the goddamn ‘80s).
The ’80s were basically this all day every day. They were simpler times.
As the day’s last light slowly faded and twilight became dusk, I saw a large spider descending from a tree on a gossamer thread. As I was in my firefly nabbing reverie and coming down from a pretty decent Coke high (That’s Coke, not coke. Although you’d be forgiven for making that mistake. I mean, sure I was 7, but it was the ’80s), I thought to myself, “You know what? I think I’ll grab the fuck outta that spider.”
You see where this is going. Spiders bite shit. That is the one and only thing that they do. Well, that and look and act terrifying.
WHY GOD?? WHY WOULD YOU MAKE THIS?!?
So why did I grab it? I have no idea. Spider-Man has always been my favorite superhero, so maybe I was thinking super powers?
Naturally, the spider bit my hand and I dropped the black-hearted son of a bitch in an instant. Did it imbue me with any super powers you ask? Hell yeah it did! It gave me the power to scream super loud, secrete saline solution from my eyes, and bolt into the house calling for my mother. Apparently, only radioactive spiders dole out the awesome super powers.
On that day I declared a vendetta against all spiders. Admittedly, it wasn’t the best reason for a vendetta. It’s not like a spider killed my best friend in a knife fight, but it still pissed me off.
See, spiders are assholes. They lurk in the darkness waiting for unsuspecting prey to stumble into their invisible asshole trap. Then they stab it with devil teeth and turn it into the equivalent of the worst Jamba Juice smoothie ever…well, other than wheat grass. That’s just liquid evil.
Pictured: concentrated Beelzebub
And have you ever wandered into a spider web? It’s a fucking nightmare. The threads melt right into your skin; you can’t get it off of you. I freak right the fuck out whenever I do. One minute I’m walking through air, the next, some horrible cotton candy-like fuckery is upon me and suddenly the world is ending. My brain immediately starts screaming, “What about the spider??? I don’t see the spider! He might’ve been in the web! He could be walking on my body or nesting in my hair!! STOP DROP AND ROLL!! STOP DROP AND ROLL!!!”
Spiders are seriously creepy and they like to hide. In things, it turns out. And that brings us (finally) to yesterday.
I’m a pretty oblivious motherfucker in my day to day life, but I’m truly unaware of my surroundings in the morning. Mornings and I don’t get along. I need about a gallon of coffee before me and Morning can even be in the same room.
The alarm sounded. Enraged, I stumbled out of bed, took a shower, and dressed for work.
I then sat on the bed, miserable, needing only to put on my shoes before I could leave the house. I put the left on with no issues, but as I eased my foot into the right shoe, something was…off. There was something in there up by the toe. Something soft.
It was the damndest thing. My mind didn’t know how to process it so it broke and I became two people. I had the following conversation in my head in the span of about 1/8,000th of a second. (I’ve helpfully labeled my two selves, Me and Brain. I have no idea who is who.)
Me: The fuck am I stepping on?
Brain: I don’t know, sock lint? Fuck it, jam your foot in there.
Me: I don’t know, man. Feels a lot bigger than sock lint. Even if that’s all it is, I need to shake it out or it’s going to drive me insane as the day wears on.
Brain: Okay, so it’s bigger than sock lint. It’s probably a cotton ball or some such bullshit. Jam your foot in there.
Me: Cotton ball? Even more reason for me to remove my foot and…holy shit – did it just move??
Brain: Are you fucking stupid? Cotton isn’t sentient or motile. Jam your fucking foot in there now!
Me: Fuck you, Brain, it did move! Evacuate the foot now!!
Brain: Fine you big baby. You’ll see: it’s a cotton ball.
I yanked my foot out of the shoe, turned it over and shook it as hard as I could. It hit the floor with an audible *PLOP*: a massive wolf spider. It looked like a racquetball with legs. You could’ve put a small saddle on its back and had a guinea pig ride it. (Can guinea pigs be trained to ride spiders like rodeo cowboys? Because that would be awesome.) My eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Every ray of light in the universe felt like it was flooding my skull. I used all of my new superhuman eyesight to stare in abject horror at the beast. It was blacker than a crude oil spill in Dracula’s asshole at midnight and hairier than Ron Jeremy’s back and the Wolf Man’s ass cheeks combined.
Dark and fuzzy are the pertinent descriptors to take from this.
My mind fused itself into a single consciousness once more as if it knew it was going to need full power for all the screaming. And so I screamed. And I screamed. Then for a change of pace, I screamed some more. I cursed at the spider, called him a dickhole, and demanded that he return to Satan’s ass from whence he was shat. These were hurtful things. If the spider’s self-esteem was damaged by my tirade, he didn’t show it. He just sat there and took it. What a seriously cool motherfucker. If John Shaft was a spider, this spider would give him wedgies for being such a dork.
Shit. Is my audience too young to get a Shaft reference? Do I even have an audience? Well just in case I do have an audience and they’re in that precious under-65 demographic, you kids just go ahead and picture someone really cool. Who do you guys think is cool, Neil Diamond? It’s Neil Diamond, right? Okay, so this was the Neil Diamond of spiders. Better? Moving on.
You’re welcome, ladies.
I almost felt bad about raising my shoe and slamming it down upon his back with the force of a car hitting a brick wall at 300 MPH. Cool spider didn’t survive; my shoe was all right though.
I know what you unwashed hippies out there are thinking: “Why couldn’t you catch and release him, man. What’d he ever do to you? You think it’s cool committing hate crimes on Mother Nature like that, you fucking fascist?” To you I only say this: it touched my foot, man. What would you have done? Somehow I went to work, shattered. I don’t know that I’ll ever be right again. And sorry for calling some of you unwashed hippies. I’m just all out of sorts.
Prior to this, here was the list of the top three things that scared the living shit out of me in order of scariest to least scary:
- Mean ghosts (‘cause some ghosts are actually pretty chill and nice)
- Tall things (buildings from which I can plummet to my death, mainly)
- Motherfucking clowns (because obviously)
The updated list (as of yesterday morning):
- Shoes stuffed with spiders
- Mean ghosts
- Tall things
Shoes brimming with spiders shot right to the top of the charts. I don’t even think Thriller hit number one that fast. I didn’t think it would ever be possible to knock clowns off the charts, but here we are. And then there’s this bit of nightmare fuel:
This is a clown spider. Somewhere, a sadistic God is laughing manically.
There are no words. Fuck spiders, man. Just fuck them.
Rants & Anecdotes 