gentlemen, the shit just got real. the spiders have come back on me in a way i couldn’t have imagined.
what i’m about to tell you is a true story -my wife herself is an eyeball witness on this attempted hit. it is long, so i will hide it with spoilers.
Spoiler
the venomous spider saga at the weeks house has been quiet the past month or so. i cleared out some boxes and cleaned up anything that looked like it could shelter a spider. occasionally, we see one in the garage demilitarized zone, but none in the house proper at all. i began to think that i had driven them off; that my ruthless kill on sight+nest demolition tactics had been successful.
what a fool i was.
in reality, those motherfuckers had gone to the mattresses. laying low. knowing i was trained to recognize the silhouette of a brown recluse in milliseconds, they hired some outside muscle from kansas city. and not just any muscle…they hired a stone cold assassin. a professional. a natural born killer - a deadly temptress who lures men to their doom.
a black widow female.
venomous like a motherfucker? check. possibly fatal to pregnant women (wife) and children (son, daughter)? check. small, quick, nimble, able to hide in the darkest places and strike without warning? check.
my wife tells me one day she saw a spider in the kitchen that looked different than any other we’d seen so far. small and black. i listened with one ear while playing re4, and forgot about it. i had no idea that my wife had just laid eyes on my would-be assassin.
fast forward three days to now. i’m doing the dishes, watching The Wire. my wife walks into the kitchen and then exclaims, ‘there it is!’ i turn to my right, and i see her. appx. one foot away from my elbow, slowly walking the counter top.
as soon as i saw her, i froze. she froze. in a desperate attempt to salvage the disaster, she began to wander aimlessly about the countertop, as if she had no particular destination or purpose in mind; just on a casual stroll through the kitchen. she hoped that i would be fooled and that my attention would wander; but she couldn’t understand the scope of my primeval hatred for her and all her kind. with it came a murderous focus.
all confidence, i approached her. her walking seemed erratic, slightly jarred, and i noticed that a few of her legs seemed to be shorter than the others. she had an odd rolling gait about her that seemed to hint of a leg injury, but her small size made it difficult to be certain. regardless, she was slow and ungainly, and seemed out of sorts in the bright light of the open countertop, with no nearby cover. the outcome was assured; my spider killing talents had been forged in repeated battle. their only hope was ambush and that had failed her.
…like all great temptresses, she had shown me just what she wanted me to see, and nothing more.
as i got closer i noticed that, while she seemed to resemble a black widow, there were actually a few significant differences. it was small, smooth, and black, yet the legs were banded and it had no red hourglass on the dorsal abdomen - which itself was far more diminutive than the swollen deadly bodies i had seen before. (crucially… i could not see the ventral abdomen). i began to think it was a simple case of batesian mimicry - a harmless spider throwing up the signs of a deadly one in order to benefit from it’s reputation. my curiosity aroused, i grabbed my cell and zoomed in, snapping a few pictures for identification. i had never seen a black widow in my house before - ever- so i was too lax, too interested, too soft.
you know what it is
Spoiler
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq79/bnonymoushaha/20120824_175150.jpg
wait, i thought. this wasn’t a black widow at all. it was some bluffing fool who had gotten caught in the crossfire of total war. with a deplorable smugness, i carelessly grabbed a paper towel to smash the spider. bluff or no, it was too similar to the genuine article to be allowed continued existence in my domain. i reached down to press the paper towel against the small, fragile creature; wounded and helpless.
i couldn’t have anticipated the spiders’ guile and craft. their plan went deep, subtly using my own strengths against me.
i had fallen right into their trap.
to be continued.