“Are you on the toilet?”  She asked.

“Um, no…yeah… I’m warming up the seat…It’s almost there…” I said humorously.  “Do you need to use the bathroom?” .

She laughed.  “Never mind.”

Afterward, I made one more tour through the house to see if the kids were up, moving, and preparing themselves for school.  “C’mon son.  You need to be downstairs, putting your lunch together, and eating breakfast – not reading comics.”

“I wasn’t reading-”

“I wasn’t reading –  I wuz, reading a comic dad…”  I imitated his morning intonation.  “You’re the oldest – A teen – Let’s get it moving.”

I made my way to the kitchen to make my breakfast of lightly sautéed spinach with spicy peppers and oatmeal, plain- with blueberries and craisins.  I developed this habit of pasting my inside scaffolding with nutritious foods, first thing in the morning, knowing I would be face first into unhealthy things by the end of the day.  No doubt, I would track down my local chocolatier or ice cream pusher to take the edge off the stress of the day.  At least, I hadn’t progressed, better yet regressed to downing mud shakes.  I couldn’t push past the irony of drinking a marketed and manufactured “food” powder, all in the name of good health. Huh?

Done with my breakfast of compromise, I began to look for my shoes.  I looked all over the upstairs areas, when I realized I’d left them in the basement, from the night before.   I headed toward the stairs when I saw a huge brown spider on the wall.  I mean huge!  A monster. I’ve seen some large outside spiders, but never one this large inside a house.  If not for the fact that it was in contrast to the grey color of the wall, I would not have seen it, despite its size.  Each leg crawled along the wall and down on to one of the steps going down to the basement.  The legs extended, one by one, creepy crawley, down the wall with its inhuman gait.   The color of the spider blended well with the brown and tan frieze carpet, it was headed toward.  Normally, I subscribe to the live and let live policy, but I perceived this creature to be a threat to my half of that policy.  He would need to be dealt with and dispatched.  I flew to the mudroom and grabbed a shoe before he could disappear into the carpet.

Later that evening, I sat alone on the sofa while watching TV.  I thought I saw something move  out of the corner of my eye. I looked, but saw nothing.  I went back to my television viewing.   Two more shadows moved on the other side of the room.  I quickly turned in that direction, but came up with nothing again.  I furrowed my brow and thought to myself, Am I going crazy or maybe my retinas are detaching.  Neither answer was particularly appealing.  However, my thoughts were interrruped by the feeling of something crawling on my leg.  I swatted my hand at it and reached to turn the lamp on.

The entire carpet began to move and crawl – all 300 feet of it – alive with a sea of brown spiders.  I hadn’t noticed any of them when I plopped onto the sofa – millions of brown spiders camouflaged against the pattern of the carpet.  They began to move toward the sofa where I sat.  I could feel them, hundreds of stick-like legs crawling on my feet.  They dropped from the ceiling on to my shoulders and head. They climbed over the back of the sofa onto my arms and face.  I screamed, hopped up, and hit my head against the wall.  The room spun out of focus as I fell into the sea of spiders, losing consciousness.

When I came to, I tried to stand, but I couldn’t lift my arms or move my legs.  To my horror, I realized I was encased in a giant web.  The spiders were still adding layers, criss-crossing my body. I could just make out a faint bit of light, before the last layers of webbing fell across it.  I was now in total darkness.

Turns out certain spiders are pretty social animals. They were out to avenge the death of one of their homies.  I could faintly hear their chatter as they went about the business of webbing me up.  I could just make out the word, monster, among their conversations.

By malakhai jones
(c) Copyright 2016