Monster

It was a happy Saturday morning and as usual I was doing my arithmetic, sitting in the corner of my room. I looked up, just to glance out the window when I saw it. No, not the cloud in the distance that looked suspiciously like a funnel. But it was the monster underneath my window sill that nearly brought me to tears.

My screams echoed around me as I hopped onto my desk, hoping it would protect me from the seen dangers. The monster didn’t react, it only twitched slightly. 

So now I’m on the phone, calling and calling my next door neighbor, yearning for him to answer his phone. Twenty two interrupted voicemails later, Elijah picks up, unamused at me for interrupting his Saturday sleep.

“Elijah!” I pant into my phone, “Help me, HELP me!”

“Bobby Jean,” he drawls, “What is it this time?”

He clearly doesn’t understand the gravity of my situation and I can understand why. I get hysterical quite easily. But this time, it’s quite serious.

“Please just come over,” I plead.

“Bobby Jean, I was having a dream where I had unlimited toast, and you interrupted it.”

I sigh shakily into the phone, checking for the monster. I don’t see it. Panicking I scream again, my eyes whizzing over every surface of my room. That’s when I spot it on the floor, systematically utilizing each of it’s legs to zoom towards me. It’s almost like it’s gliding.

“ELIJAH!!!” I wail, “Please, PLEASE help it’s getting closer! I don’t know what I’m going to do if you don’t help me! My family’s out and-”

“Alright, alright!” he recognizes the terror in my voice and finally shows some concern, “Gee willikers, if I get there and it’s nothing, you owe me some toast,” then he hangs up.

I’m lucky Elijah’s family and mine are so close, because if not, he wouldn’t have a copy of our house keys, and I would be dead. 

Within a minute, Elijah is in my home, calling my name. I’m about to answer when the beast starts to move faster, my demise a part of it’s plan. The holler I let out reveals my location so Elijah bounds up the stairs and barges into my room. Once he arrives, his eyes sweep over my room, searching for the source of my terror.

I point to the dusty floor, where the monster has stopped moving, unsure of what to do with Elijah stomping about.

“Jane,” Elijah rubs his temples.

Uh oh, I think, knowing he only calls me Jane when I’ve severely annoyed him. Apparently this demon isn’t a big enough deal for me to call him from his lovely dreams.

“Jane,” he says again, not hiding his irritation, “This. This is a spider! Is this what you were freaking out about?! I am up before eight AM on a Saturday for this?!”

“But it’s so big,” I whimper, “And you know I don’t like spiders!”

Elijah remembers my extreme phobia of tarantulas and his expression softens a bit, “Well it is pretty big…” he says, hesitantly, “And hairy…”

The spider begins its journey again, this time towards Elijah.

“Woah!” he yelps, backing away from it, “And it moves pretty quickly…”

I nod, hope returning to my stiff self. It doesn’t last long though. Elijah says that I will have to kill it myself, as a step to getting over my phobia. I squeak as he turns around to get the bug spray. I don’t want to be left with the tarantula alone with no escape. What if it starts moving towards me again? When I tell this to Elijah, he releases a disgusted sigh and picks me off of my desk and carries me to the doorway.

“Keep. Watch,” he tells me sternly, “These things disappear like- AH!” he yelps again, pointing to where the spider should be. It’s not there. “Find it while I get the Raid,” he commands, slumping down the stairs.

I scan every corner of my room that I can without entering it before realizing that that just won’t do. I’ll have to go inside the room. Drawing a deep breath in, I prepare to scout the unknown. I’m about to step in when I hear a cry from the kitchen. A loop of profanities follow, rising from a macho bass to a screechy wail. 

I gallop down the stairs to find Elijah, pressed against the wall as if a two hundred pound person were pressing his chest instead of a spider the size of my palm. It must have hitched a ride when he was carrying me out of my room and climbed up his body. And he wonders why I didn’t want to walk over it myself. How the tables have turned, I think to myself, giggling. The look of rage and desperation from Elijah cuts me off and makes me feel sympathy for him. I would have fainted by now, with the beast’s multiple black eyes staring into my soul.

So I grab a piece of paper and smack the tarantula onto the floor, extending my arm as much as possible away from my body. As soon as it’s on the floor, Elijah lets out a gasping sigh and steps right back into authority mode.

“Ok Bobby Jane,” he breathes, “Tell me where the Raid is and I’ll get it.”

“It’s…” In the closet next to the other closet downstairs in the container with the faded blue stuff, not the first one, the second one, and I think it’s under the candles. Either that or it’s in that weird thing with the things that..., “You know what? I’ll get it,” I say.

I bound down to the basement to unearth the bug spray from it’s winter hiding place. I can’t choose between Raid for home pests or Raid for spiders so I get both. By the time I get back to the kitchen, a slight smell of smoke is rising from the corner. Also, the spider is gone and Elijah is looking around with a guilty expression on his face. 

“Bobby Jane!” he begins sheepishly, “I uhm. Well, I lost the spider. You see, I turned around for just a second to get some toast and uh…”

I groan and toss him a can of spray. We check each other up and down for the creature then put our backs together, surveilling the area. Arms erected and sprays ready, we encompass the kitchen, searching for the beast.

“Ceiling attack!” bellows Elijah, sending me somersaulting to the ground in self defense and fear.

Elijah rolls his eyes at me, then points to the spider dangling in front of him, appearing to be suspended in midair. As I stand up, Elijah tells me that I’ll have to spray it myself. So I take a deep breath and approach the spider as it stares at me with it’s eight glistening eyes. 

Wooshhhh, the force of my spraying causes the spider to swing back, then forth, then back, then-

“Get it!!” I shriek, when it falls to the floor, scuttling about in mad circles.

We Raid the creature, covering it’s brown hairs in a sticky white mist. The air around us smells like World War One with all the poisonous gasses. After a coughing filled eon, Elijah and I notice that the spider is immobile.

“Grab a shoe and kick it. Test if it’s dead,” Elijah orders.

Feeling a new sense of empowerment, I follow his commands without complaining. When I kick the newly whitened spider, it flips over on it’s back, waving it’s legs around. I want to put the poor thing out of its misery, but I refuse to ruin my shoe. So I pick it up on a piece of paper and flush it down the toilet.

I brush my hands with accomplishment and pride as Elijah yawns hugely, remembering that it’s Saturday morning. He grabs his toast and leaves without another word. Sighing, I sit down, resting before going back to my math when I notice a squeaking coming from underneath the range. When I investigate, I find a rat, snacking away and glaring at me with red eyes. I scream again, grabbing my phone to call my across the street neighbor.