Because of that, in the short amount of time that it took him to get to Tabby’s to get the keys and then get to mine, I went through a list of things I needed to buy ASAP. I was going to get weaponry so I could fight back at any beasties that broke in, and I was getting the best exterminator in America to exorcise the nasty demons from this house so I wouldn’t have to fight back to begin with. The weaponry was just an added security just in case. Maybe spiders were like those infections that had mutated and become immune to antibiotics? What if they became immune to poisons and whatever else was used to get rid of them? There was also the possibility, if that was the case, that the chemicals they used to fumigate could make react with it and make it mutate instead of die. Arachnahypochondria, it was now an official diagnosis, but I’d be damned if I could stop it happening.
I was just deciding that I’d never sleep again in case one of these crawled over my face, when the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard – aside from my daughter’s first cries – reached me. “Jose, what’s…” Ellis asked quickly as he ran through my bedroom door, stopping when he saw me standing in the corner in only a bra and my jean shorts. Taking another step in, he went to speak again and then looked where I was pointing. “What the fuck is that?” he yelled, jumping backward. By this point, the spider was getting a hair trigger (no pun intended) and was twitching its legs in my direction, giving me palpitations. And I swear to God, if anyone said to me after this that spiders didn’t grow that big here, I’d lose my shit and go psycho.
“Shoot it,” I squealed, covering my mouth with my hand when it took two steps again toward me. “I can’t shoot it,” he snapped, but took his gun out, anyway. “If it ricochets off the floor, it might hit you.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but I was willing to take that chance and risk it – which is what I told him. It beat having to go in with that thing attached to my crotch, or half of my poor cookie eaten away by its venom, and then living the rest of my life with that being how people introduced me to others. Taking a deep breath, Ellis came a step closer to me. “Look, let’s be rational,” he suggested, waving the hand that wasn’t holding the gun to calm me down. “All we have to do is…” he began and then accidentally kicked the table my phone was on, making the spider run toward me. Just as it cleared the corner of my bed furthest away from me, there was a bang, and my head hit the wall behind me just as my hand hit my eye. Oh, and I screamed. Obviously!_______________
“Sorry about your floor,” Ellis mumbled, chewing nervously on his lower lip as I looked at him through the eye that didn’t have ice on it. Ignoring Tabby, who hadn’t stopped laughing since she’d gotten here, I shrugged and tried to glare at my sister with one eye when she made a choking noise. “It’s fine.”
Unable to hold back, not that she’d truly been trying, she started laughing her ass off. “Oh shit, we got here just as he shot the spider. I thought someone was holding you hostage, I just didn’t think it was a spider,” she wheezed, holding her side.
“Um, babe,” Dave called from where he was standing in the doorway to my bedroom. “You might wanna see this.”
Still laughing, she walked toward him. She was only back there for a matter of seconds when we heard, “Holy shit, what the hell’s that?” Dave must have filled her in, because then she let out a squeaking noise and ran back out to us. “That wasn’t a spider, that was a freaking chicken.”
She was lying, it had totally been the love child of some perverted one-night stand between a spider and a horse. Hearing Dave calling his name, Ellis turned and walked back toward the scene of the crime – literally – leaving me with my sister.
“Big wasn’t it?” I asked unnecessarily, but I didn’t know what else to say. I was pretty certain that what we’d dealt with tonight would end up in some sort of Hollywood movie at some point.
“Sister, you’re not lying. I only saw a couple of its legs,” she shuddered, moving over and picking up a sleeping Liv.
My daughter, bless her heart, had slept through the whole thing. After checking her over for any bite marks that might have rendered her unconscious and necessitated emergency medical treatment for spider envenomation, I’d clipped her back into her swaying baby seat while Dave investigated, and Ellis and I recovered. Somehow, she was still asleep, and remained so even after Tab picked her up.