I woke up from a terrible dream. It was one of those reality benders that keeps you teetering on the edge of death, failure, loss, or giving a speech in your underpants…the usual perils.
Awake, I realized I wasn’t dying, failing, losing, or on stage in my muffin-topped Spanx, but I was still rattled.
I went to the bathroom, shaking off the adrenaline. As I crawled back into bed, I spied an emaciated wolf spider next to the throw rug.
“Spider!” I yelled, yanking my feet under the covers.
My weapons-of-choice, boots, were on the other side of the throw rug, the spider between them and me. While my pillow had potential whack-power, I wasn’t going to smack him with that. Spider spooge would seep into the poly-fill and become part of the dust mite landscape.
That’s what happens in the middle of the night. You’re going along, happily dreaming about kittens and cupcakes and then, Bam! Supper’s sausage backs up on you and your dreamscape becomes as acid as your upper G.I. The next thing you know, your room has turned into a dungeon of spider and dust mite horrors, and Vincent Price is your
guest host.
Normally I trap crawly things and free them outside, but I didn’t want to risk another spider bite like the one I’d gotten on my wrist while berry-picking last summer. It evolved into a big, blistery, oozing wound that looked like a battle zone. It was so creepy I nicknamed my entire
forearm ARMageddon.
I shuffled through the things on my nightstand, looking for a substitute weapon. I found it…the DVD box for “The Terminator.” How perfect was that, I raised the box within striking range. The spider remained motionless. Then, Bam! I slammed the shizbot out of him.
“You’re terminated, Wolfie,” I yelled. Part of him went skittering across the floor, clinking as it went. I jumped back.
“What the…?”
The spider…the snarling, fang-dangling, eight-legged beast that was about to eat my arm off…was a Halloween earring. I laughed.
Then I cried, “I’m gonna miss that earring. ‘Hasta la vista, baby.’”
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