A spider and a dream

It’s a spider!

An ominous, hairy spider crawling inside my wardrobe door! It’s dark and menacing body is in stark contrast to the white of the wardrobe, disturbing my reason for opening the door. I better kill it before it kills me.

I quickly bend down to take my shoe, all the while not letting the creepy-crawly out of my determined sight. Raising my arm and aiming, ready to slap it dead; but it looks like no spider I have ever seen; my hand and mind pause. It has a fat ass and lanky hairy legs. Spiders are supposed to be flat-assed, right? You know the flattened body that would be easy to slap and kill without splattering it’s possibly equally dark, slimy and gooey insides on the unblemished wardrobe door. Or worse still on me!

OMG! Imagine its poisonous insides splattering on me, causing god-knows-what on my skin! Will my skin erupt into life-threatening, un-bearably painful and ugly-looking blisters that have no cure?! Worse still, what if the splatter lands in my eyes and renders me permanently blind?! It will be a while and many items later before my not-so-developed sense of touch gropes and feels for that shape that remotely resembles my phone, so I can alert somebody, anyone that I had been blinded by a spider’s insides. That’s if I find it in time before the battery runs out. Obviously, I can’t make my way to the charger, let alone get the charger plugged into the charging slot.

In a sign of defeat and nerve-numbing fear I drop the now offensive shoe and as quickly gently push the wardrobe door closed, taking care not to dis-lodge the spider and risk it falling onto the floor. For now, I want the spider to stay in-doors and not creep over to my bed while I am sleeping.
Somewhat satisfied that there’s no way it will crawl out and make its way to my bed to do un-imaginable harm to defenceless me, I take my shaking self to bed and self-assuredly recite a million, sleep-inducing reasons why the spider cannot possibly sneak to where I am- including that its thin, long and spindly legs cannot make it down the wardrobe door, onto the carpeted floor, over the hill of rumpled clothing and climb the mountain that is my bed.

It’s the spider again!

It crawled up and bit me! My wide-eyed stare shifts between the angry bite on my ample breast – the softest part of my body and undoubtedly the most gullible – and the spider, I see a gloating in its eyes and it says to me, “You hurt me and now I hurt you more, you asked for it.”

“But I just closed the wardrobe door, I didn’t hurt you. I saved you!” I respond, with a fear-induced stammer.

“You had the intention to hurt me and kill my off-spring into extinction. A deadly intention is as good as a deadly deed. I was only doing what every mother will do to protect her young.” Ms Spider flatly retorts.

As an after-thought, “Even those she hasn’t seen yet.” she adds with a smirk knowing that it is only a matter of time before I succumb to its venomous sting, trailing its way into my blood stream and to my heart, which is closest.

“I would never have killed you; I can’t even hurt a defenceless and miniature ant!” I say.

“Not to mention not yet laid spider eggs!” I reiterate.

So it was a pregnant spider and not big-assed one. I almost apologise for thinking it had a fat ass.

My thoughts are foggy and my tongue seems to have ballooned in my mouth, I can’t scream or let out any sound. I am paralysed by the fear and all that seems close to the active being I was moments ago are my thoughts. My brain is still working and like film reel, whirls around my mind forcing me to watch but not to react.

The film shot takes me to the part that reminds me that I am all alone in the house; my neighbours are just that, never have been friends and a feeling of regret and melancholy pours over the film frame, shadowing the thoughts and vividly portraying the regret of my not having been so friendly. I should have smiled more, and talked more maybe now I would have help on hand.

The calming regret is quickly replaced by a bright scene, bathed in an awful stench of rot. My body has begun its decay process and I am still all alone; only now may someone come because the smell will be unbearable and people at the office will wonder why I ran AWOL. My friends and stalkers will begin to question my absence from social networks. They will wonder why my phone has been off without any word from me. It dawns on me that it has been weeks before anyone finds my badly decomposed body.

Will they wonder what killed me? Will they do a post-mortem and find spider venom that dis-integrates my dried blood? Or will they just bury me and continue to wonder?

In its decomposed state, will they take my body back to be buried or cremated in my home country? Or will they decide it’s not worth the cost and just bury me in Cape Town somewhere in a deep grave, perhaps at the Maitland Cemetery? Is there a cemetery near Parklands that they might perhaps decide on?

Will it be an ornately designed and crafted casket or splinters of wood hastly nailed together, or will they decide on black refuse bags? Will they put white orchids, trimmed with pink and yellow on the mound of dirt that covers my remains? Will anyone remember that I adored orchids even though I never had any?

With a start and a stifled scream, I wake up bathed in a film of sticky sweat. My eye reflexes dash to my breast, examining its rhythmic rise and fall at the shallow breaths I take; it is comfortingly whole and plump without any spider bite or suspicious mark. A sigh of relief washes over me, I feel the urge to pee.

I reassuringly massage the soft mound of flesh that is so much a part of me but has not always been. It was all a dream, albeit a vivid one. I am shaking all over again in fear at this dream. Do dreams come true? Or are fat-assed spiders poisonous?