Fear

They creep into dark spaces and hide--watching, waiting and searching for food.  They wind their webs about the corners.  Hanging in the depths, they are poised to strike at a minute movement of the threads.  Most are not dangerous to humans...unless of course, if you count the damage that a person can inflict on themselves in the attempts to avoid the creature! 

Last week, I had the unfortunate opportunity to make close contact with one of these invasive creatures.

I was making dinner when the light went out in the kitchen.  I pulled on the chain, but nothing happened.  Being the resourceful woman that I am, I went to the cupboard and took out another light bulb.  But changing the offending bulb had no effect.  It was the light socket itself.

Considering that I have little use for working with live electricity, and absolutely no interest in trying to electrocute myself by venturing into that arena, I called for my husband.  He, of course, has no such qualms about live wires after working on heating and air conditioning for the military.

So I left him to his part of the project as I use the other light, dim though it was, to continue dinner preparation.  I had decided upon spaghetti, and needed a pot to put the water on to boil for the noodles.

My pots and pans are kept in a cabinet beneath the sink.  Chaos is the best way to describe the arrangement, since there are no shelves on which to stack anything in any type of organized manner.  I had to get down on my hands and knees to see the back of the cabinet.  There I spotted the pot I wanted to use.  I pulled it, and the other three stacked on top of it, to the front of the cabinet and set the stack back in storage.

I discovered the creature when I removed the top two pots.

Now, you must understand that I have a deathly fear of spiders.  Will I did when I see one?  Most likely not, but a heart attack is giving it pretty good odds!  Although tonight, a racing heartbeat was the least of my worries.

There it was!  it was greay and black, with a body as big as a quarter and legs that stretched out beyond the span of my hand!  Its front legs were raised, poised to strike at the closest target.  Its maw gaped, revealing white fangs that yearned to sink their length into the tender flesh of an unsuspecting prey...or my hand, whichever came first! 

I live in North Carolina and I screamed for the police in Anchorage, Alaska to come to my rescue!  At least that's who my husband thought I was summoning.

The chair he was perched upon sat in the middle of the kitchen floor.  One foot rested on an arm of the chair and the other bearing his weight was anchored firmly on the seat.  His hands were thrust up into the ceiling, patching together a loose wiring connection on live electricity.  At my yell, he learned to fly.

He dropped with little grace to the floor and rushed around the corner, catching his toe on the door jamb.  It sent him sprawling onto the hardwood floor where he slid within inches of the pan.  Looking down into the pot, he immediately spotted the eight legged problem.

"Holy crap!" he said, skittering backwards away from the offending pan.  "That's not a spider, it's Godzilla in a costume!"

The jarring of his fall and the vibrations of his voice caused the creature to become more defensive.  I screamed again because it twitched.  It glared at me with its eight eyes.  Phillip glared at me with a quarter of that total.  It looked at Phillip as though pleading him to make my siren scream be silent.  It moved, and the siren sounded once more.

I could barely breathe as the pot was gingerly carried from the kitchen into the front yard and Phillip returned it to me, empty.

"Did you kill it?" I demanded.

"No." he replied.  "I thought he'd been traumatized enough for one day."

I was horrified!  My knight in shining armor had not slain the dragon, but merely turned it loose in another location!  Did he not realize that it will return?  It will wait and watch and bide its time until it can find a way to sneak up on me in the dark.  It will hunt me down and find places to hide where it can jump out at me, the unsuspecting victim.  It might be the linen closet.  It might be the medicine chest in the bathroom.  It will even find a way to hide inside my coffee cup if it gets the chance.  I will never be safe!  It will hunt me down!

My husband rolled his eyes and went into the living room, light fixing forgotten for the moment.  Apparently live electricity and screams of panic have no place in a room together, according to him.

My kitchen light is still not working and that creature is still out there... somewhere... waiting....