Eight Arms to Hold You

This piece is clearly about a month old.

The spiders, with whom I am engaged in an ongoing, endless battle, have decided to use this season to mount a new offensive. It hasn't been OK. I know the spiders know I hate them. I know the spiders know this is a war.

A couple months back I found a spider waiting for me. In my mail. I can't figure what else a spider was doing in my mail except waiting. My mailbox gets opened and has activity in it several times a day. It's a little dark box, sure, but it isn't exactly spider heaven in there. Yet a spider was in there, not just in the box, but in between the pieces of mail I removed. Waiting. I of course sprang back, dropped all my mail, and stomped on each piece.

Shortly after, I was sitting in a friend's back lawn enjoying a beer. We weren't there more than two minutes before I saw a huge spider skittering his way through the lawn right near us. I realized that the spider must have been in the area first, and since it was crawling away from us, I let it be. Not five minutes later, another God damned spider was climbing up my bare arm. C'mon spider! Do you really think that tasty insects can be caught in a web somewhere on my shoulder?

Next, I find this asshole in my shower.

This wasn't a small spider. Here it is in better perspective.

Naturally I soaked it in Raid. When it comes to spiders I'm way too much of a pansy to even pick up its corpse with a wad of toilet paper, so after it stopped running and dying I broke it up with a broom handle so it would go down the drain. Oh, I forgot to mention where I previously saw a spider exactly like this one. Just walking across my living room floor the night before. Not hiding in a corner or running along a baseboard, but just crossing my floor in bright light like he lived there. I checked my lease. He wasn't on it. He got a large book dropped on him.

Then they tried to get me at work. Shortly after the tubspider, one of these creatures was rappelling down the wall of my cubicle quite near me. Another big damn spider. I stood up and tried to figure what to crush it with, and how the hell I was going to crush it without it dropping and running. Of course my first timid thrust with the spine of a 3-ring binder was lame, the spider dropped behind my monitor and I wondered how I could finish the day knowing it was loose somewhere. I tried to be an adult about the situation and went back to work. In my job many papers come to my desk paper-clipped and leave stapled. I have an old Kleenex box on my desk that I toss paper clips into and also reach into whenever I need one. Guess where I found that evil bastard? Just came straight charging out of the box, that's where. Thank God I didn't have my hand in there at the time. It got crushed with the binder. Next day, another of these big sons-of-bitches came crawling along my wall again. It also got crushed with a binder.

Look! Another spider in my bathtub!
(Yes, I have cleaned it since then)

Sometimes I think my bathroom window exists exclusively so spiders can get in the tub. It's like a dog door for spiders. Spider door.

Then, they sent some sort of monster after me.

Here's a better picture. Make sure you see the whole thing. About half of its horrible body is kind of buried in the web.

I'm really praying that the first snow kills this demon.

This thing is fast and it lives not 20 feet from my door. It even has some god-awful funnel web.

I think that's a leg in the background. Probably the delivery guy
bringing fetal mice for the spider to devour.

I can't even get near this thing to pour bleach on it. It's just waiting like some sort of arachnassassin or arachnommando.

Next up? Another spider in my mailbox.

After that? One of those horrid translucent white/yellow things dangling in front of my bathroom mirror, probably waiting to swing into my mouth when I brush my teeth. Then it would lay eggs in my tongue.

It never seems to end. They've had many failures. But much like Skynet, Pyrrhus, and Ryan Reynolds, they just won't stop.

And now... now, they aren't fucking around anymore. They've realized that I won't be killed so easily. They sent this for me.

I assume it has already eaten my neighbors and their children. If I don't come back soon, just torch the house. If I'm still alive, I'm comatose and filled with millions of eggs. And unless you're Nadya Suleman, that's no way to be.