Spiders

All night long he dreamed of spiders.

They were everywhere.  Above him, below him, in front of him, behind him.  If he turned to his left there was a spider.  If he turned to his right there was a spider.  If there was one spider he knew that there would soon be another and then a hundred more.

He knew what would come next.  He knew what always came next.

Big spiders.  Not tarantula big.  Not, “Holy crap did you see the size of that spider!” big.  No, the spiders were huge.  Some were merely the size of compact cars.  Others crossed mountains in a single step.

No matter where he went there were spiders.  They coated the ground in a writhing carpet of squirming legs.  The larger ones surrounded him, stretching from horizon to horizon in a terrifying landscape of compound eyes, hairy legs, and gaping mandibles.  And they moved ever closer.

Closer.

Closer.

He stood frozen in place, terrified.  The giant spiders blotted out the sky and completely filled every inch of the world around him. 

Time stood still.  He dared not move.  He dared not breathe.  He stood as still and silent as a statue.

Something brushed against his leg.  A single, whispering motion.

He leapt, screaming.

The spiders lunged.

Suddenly he was back in his own bed.  The gray, pre-dawn light mingled with the security light from across the way and soaked his walls in shadow.  His clock read 5:37.  He stared at it, willing the spiders out of his mind.

Such was the cost of a childhood spent with Tolkien and terrible 1960s sci-fi movies.  His subconscious mind conjured images of gigantic spiders coming to take him away in the dark of the night.  Not often, but just often enough.

In daylight hours he knew Tolkien’s giant spiders possessed no more reality than his hobbits.  Although he’d been less sure about the non-existence of hobbits ever since he’d had that one boss a few years back.  But at night anything was possible.  Still, in the gray morning hours after one of those dreams he’d awaken, convinced his room was filled with giant spiders.

“It’s okay,” he whispered to his clock, “There’s nothing here.”

His covers suddenly pulled against him.  Something behind him in the bed shifted, ever so slightly.

His entire body went tense.  His heart raced.  Blood began to pump his ears.  He slid his right hand up next to his head and took a white-knuckle grip on his pillow.

Whatever it was stopped.

He realized he’d been holding his breath and slowly began to let it out.

Something brushed against his leg.  A single, whispering motion.

He made his move in a single, impossibly fast motion.  He twisted up, out of the bed and away from whatever it was that was trying to get him.  At the same time the pillow came up and with a feral yell he brought it down on the lump underneath his covers.  Once.  Twice.  Three times.

The lump yelped.  It moved.  In an impossibly fast motion it leapt out of the bed.

“What the fuck?”

He stopped.  Blinked.  Stared in utter confusion.

“Seriously, Kyle, what the fuck is your damage?”

The threatening lump in his bed finally resolved in to a definable form in that grey morning light.  Jenny stood next to his bed, clutching the blanket to her chest, trembling.  Her eyes furtively shifted between him and the pillow he still held in striking position above his head.

He stared at her for a long moment, then looked up at the pillow.

Then he collapsed.  The pillow dropped out of his hand and landed on his face.

He pulled the pillow away and began to laugh.

Then a pillow struck him across the face.

Then again.  And again.  And again.

“What the hell was that?” Jenny asked, forcing the words out in staccato bursts between slugs.  “And why the fuck are you laughing?”

He grabbed the pillow, held it just away from his face.  “Okay, okay.  I’m sorry.”

“Why did you even do it?”

“I had a nightmare.  When I woke up I…” he paused, unsure of how to explain the rest of it.  “When I woke up I thought you were a giant spider.”

“A giant spider?”

He released his grip on her pillow.  “Yes.”

“A giant spider?”

“I believe we covered that.  Yes.”

The pillow landed on his face again.  “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It was a nightmare.”

“No.  You know what a nightmare is?  Waking up with your boyfriend, who you were pretty sure was kind of a moron in the first place, mind you, and who is totally lucky that you’re even willing to talk to him, let alone that you finally decided to spend the night with him, you know, that boyfriend, hitting you with a pillow and screaming like a goddamn chimp in the goddamn zoo.”

“I get the feeling you’re talking about me,” he said.

“Yes.  Yes I am.”

She collapsed in to the bed, then sighed heavily.

Silence settled over the bedroom.  He stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out how he could have possibly done something so fucking insane.  And how the hell was he going to explain it to people?  How would he tell his friends that, yeah, that awesome girl he’d been talking non-stop about dumped his dumb ass because the first night she stayed over he tried to squish her with a pillow because he woke up thinking she was a giant nightmare spider.

He began to try to compose an appropriate apology in his head.  Nothing sprang readily to mind.

She started laughing.

“Seriously, Kyle.  A giant spider?”

“Yes.”

The pillow thwacked itself across his face again.  “You really need to get laid more often.  You might figure out the difference between a pretty girl and an angry arachnid.”

“You offering?”

“Mm.”  He felt her shrug, visualized the way she crinkled her nose when she was pretending to think about something.  “Maybe.  But on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“If you have some sort of nightmare about being attacked by giant chickens or something and reach for a lamp to fight me off, I’m so out of here.”

He turned and looked at her.  She was smiling at him.

“Deal,” he said.

“You’re a total dork, you know that?”

“I thought that was why you like me.”

Her nose crinkled again.  “Maybe.”

“I hope the neighbors didn’t hear that,” he said, shifting his gaze to the wall that he shared with the next unit over.  “I don’t want to know what they’d think is going on.”

“Well,” she raised an eyebrow, “We’re both awake now.  I’m sure we can give them something else to wonder about.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“And don’t you forget that.”

Comments

[Fake Al Gore]

I really liked this.

[Geds]

Why thank you.

It's just a bit of goofiness based on a really random conversation I had. I honestly do occasionally have nightmares and wake up convinced that whatever I dreamed about is real and, like, in my room. This is always a bit disconcerting.

Either way, I was telling that to someone not so long ago, and all of the sudden I was like, "Wouldn't it be terrible if..."

And then came a story.