Fiddleback

“She is afraid of spiders.”

“Lots of people are afraid of spiders. So what?”

“Pranks only work on people who are afraid of things. Like, dying, nuns, spiders! They actually succumb to their own imaginative fear. People don’t act irrationally for the most part, when they like something, but when they don’t. Shove a cookie in someone’s face and they are just going to take a bite, not scream. See what I’m getting at?”

“What’ve you got in mind?”

That is how it began. She thought she saw a spider and dropped my Chicago Fair commemorative plate.

Never had any intention of harming anyone. Never intended to do much more that perhaps show someone the implications of being afraid of something that can’t possibly harm you. Most times, it is all in their head anyway. I just wanted to show her how foolish her fear was.

I went to the store; the Prank Shop I call it. Really just a hole in the wall closet, catering fake eye balls, plastic piles of dog…well you get the idea. It’s kind of a Halloween store really, but is open for birthdays, even holy days I suspect. People like to play tricks on others; shock them out of their trance and back into the possibility that life doesn’t have to be safe or boring. Not everything is going to kill you.

Lois is a fiend I’ve known since grade school. She’s always been one of those people, who for some reason, have become afraid of their own shadow. Can’t do this or that, because it could…kill you.

Lois is one of those people, like fog over the river on a winter morning; gloomy, just sits there, won’t let the sun shine in, and spits on your windshield when you are near it. 

She’s a good person, but just so entrenched in being entrenched, she can’t see the roses for the thorns. So I thought it would be fun to take that fear of hers and turn it into one of those, “Aha” moments. That instant, when the light goes on in your head, and you realize you been fearful of something that really wasn’t worth the time or effort to be afraid of. Fear can and does control people.

I went down to the prank shop and picked through their large selection of spiders and found this Tarantella that looked as life like as any real one. Even had those little hairs on its legs, and jiggled when you touched it. I got a few just to make sure she’d not miss the show, once I got it set up. 

Lois drives the Mid-town bus from here in Elmira, to the coast, and then back. Takes about an hour each way, she makes two trips a day. I know she’s gone during the day, and I know she keeps a key to the front door in the fake rock, in a pot by the door with the pretend tree in it.  I can get into her place anytime I need to, not that I ever would, normally, but this was a special occasion. Prank day only comes once a year and I ain’t getting any younger, nor is Lois. And I’ve been thinking of this for a long time and hate to waste a good idea. 

So, if I’m going to shock her out of that cloud she’s trapped in, I got to make it something that not only gets her attention, but hopefully makes her realize how foolish it is to be afraid of something like a spider. They don’t do much but catch flies and things like that. There are no Tarantulas around here, no poison spiders I know of, accept maybe the Brown Recluse, which I hear is everywhere, in all the states, but maybe Alaska. But that is no reason to keep Lois from snapping out of her slump and start living, and stop being afraid. 

I went over to her house, and sure enough the key was there. I let myself in and put the spiders, I got five of them, just to make sure, all over the house. Put one in the kitchen behind the sponge she uses to wash dishes. Two in the bathroom. One in the shower up next to the ceiling, and one by the soap dish on the sink. And one above the bed and the last one under this pillow she hugs when she is watchin a scary movie. I guess, I must have got six, but then I wanted to make sure. I figured I had all the bases covered. Now all I had to do was make up an excuse to be there when she got home and invite myself in and watch the fun.

She usually gets home about six or so.  I go over there and sit on the stoop outside waiting for her. She doesn’t show up, and doesn’t show up, seven, seven thirty, eight, and I can’t take it anymore. So I call her. She don’t answer. So I call again and this time Beatrice her cousin says, “Hello, this is Beatrice. Can I help you.” 

Well I know Beatrice, her cousin, so I says, “What you doing with Lois’s phone?” 

And she says, “You ain’t heard. Lois was in an accident. Somehow, she swerved off the road and almost off the cliff into the ocean. Nobody was hurt accept her and her pride. She managed to bang her head on the window when the bus hit the sand, or that’s what the police think anyways happened. Who is this anyway?”

I tell her I’m Lois’s friend, and she remembers me. She asks if I want to talk to Lois. Well, I called, so I figured I’d want to talk to her, find out what was going on. So Lois comes on, and I ask about the accident, what happened, how it happened. She goes into this story about this, that, and the other thing. Most I’d seen her get excited, ever.

Then she says, “learned my lesson, even if it was the hard way. Hang on,” she says, and yells something about asking if she can go home. 

“I’m back, and as I was saying, “I was driving along, like I always do. Had one more stop to make to let them old people off at the Casino. You know that one off the ocean with the view of boats. So I’m driving along, looking at the water down below, licking the rocks like it does, the sun sparkling off the water like diamonds. Then I go to put the turn signal on, because that turn off is right after a corner, and you got to give those behind you a notice what you are doing. I had a guy just last week. going to pass me as I’m turning. Could have killed us all. Anyway, I go to put the signal on, and I notice something on the visor above my face, and it’s this big ugly spider, about the size of a nickel. It was getting ready to spring for me, I could tell, and then I think my heart stopped beating. They say I must have jammed on the brakes cause we skidded towards the cliff that drops into the ocean, but we somehow stopped before we got there.

Cops said we was lucky. I must have passed out. Anyway, being here for the last couple of hours getting checked out, had time to think, and decided being afraid of spiders almost got me and the gamblers on board killed. Can’t have that. I need my job, and ain’t going to let no spider take it from me. You hear what I’m saying? Oh yah, and I really was sorry about that plate.”

Then she had to go. Some kind of test to see if she’d been drinking. So, I had to break back into her house and find the spiders I planted. No point in trying to scare her out of herself, when she’d done it to herself already. Had trouble finding that last spider. Hard to remember where I put them all. I had been in such a hurry so I wouldn’t get caught. 

The last spider Lois said, “Must a been Fiddleback Recluse, or they thought so at the hospital anyway.” 

It had bit me, and I must have passed out. She said they are real poisonous and can kill you. She said she found me slumped on the couch when she got back from the hospital and couldn’t wake me up, thought maybe I was dead.  So she called the emergency people and they come and got me. I guess those Recluse type spiders carry quite a wallop. Need to be more careful she says. “And how come…”

Had a time explaining to her what I was doing in her house, with a purse full of spiders and her pretend rock sitting next to me.

She took it pretty well though when I explained, how I was just trying to help.