Fear

It isn’t even big. It’s tiny, the spider—it’s the size of a dandelion seed and almost the same shape, but certainly not as downy, soft, or welcoming. It returns my stare with four times as many eyes, standing completely still on a body supported by four times as many legs. Its legs are splayed like a miniscule crab, four on this side, four on that—they begin by extending upwards from the top of the body, and then they suddenly fall downwards. Its legs look like the mechanical framework of an umbrella, or the metal limbs of a dry-cleaning machine, rotating as it transports pressed pantsuits from one side of the counter to the other. . It probably occupies less than one millionth of the total space in the room, but as soon as it entered the corner of my periphery, it has consumed the entirety of my attention.

It moves. I’m not close enough to see, but I can imagine its tiny hooked pincers grinding, the tiny legs creaking, tiny hairs vibrating all over its body and its tiny limbs. Its movement is quick and rhythmic, like an infinitesimal machine. It crawls, one leg rising off the ground as the other returns—fluid, almost graceful—1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Its legs are levers, as they rise and fall, they push the body upwards and forwards. They are gears that mechanize each other in their individual movement.  

I imagine this grotesque grace moving over my skin, and I suddenly become aware of extremely acerbic gastric juices planning an escape somewhere in my abdomen.

The mere thought of those tiny legs pricking against my bare skin, scratching ever so slightly as they creep higher and higher up my arms—its monstrous, mechanical visage fixed into a permanent scowl—the mere thought makes the muscles at the base of my neck tighten into hard knots, creates within my being a curiously restless paralysis.

The tiny presence blocks the entrance—the escape. As it skitters diagonally towards me, it blocks away more and more of the room. Soon, I will be cornered. Soon, there will be no place to hide, no place to run. Pulses of energy drive from my center to the tips of my fingers, my toes, in a frenzied current that offers a tempting lightness of the foot—the potential for desertion. But even as I feel discomfort within the muscles of my face, even as I feel the growth of iron clamps over my stomach, I cannot help but becoming somewhat masochistically entranced by the spider’s gruesome perfection. I untangle my toes from the tassels of the carpet, lift my feet and bend my legs so that my knees rub against the bottom of my chin. 

But it isn’t even big. It isn’t bigger than an apple seed. It’s too far away to see, but I can imagine its eight eyes returning my stare, glistening with a trembling fear and anxiety four times more than even I can muster. Its legs are thinner than black thread, more brittle than crunchy yellow blades of sun-dried grass. One good hit with the accelerated flick of my index finger could send it flying off the living room carpet, into the cold hard marble world of the kitchen floor. A misplaced step could reduce it to a tiny mess of broken, brittle, black shell, slimy green hemolymph, smeared against the soft squashy white strands of the carpet. There is no venom on those petite triangle pincers, and I know and I know and I almost know that there is no malice behind the gleaning eyes, no consciousness beyond the present in that permanent scowl. I know it.

But I don’t believe it. I can’t. I think of closing my eyes and opening them to find the soft prickly legs on the tip of my nose, I think of the rhythmic rise and fall of its legs over the soft, warm, sensitive skin on my cheek, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 over and over again all over my face, under my clothes, hidden within my hair, the crevices between my limbs, crawling and creeping and skulking, sinking those unforgiving pincers into my bare arms, the bottom of my feet, the inside of my navel. It stands almost five feet away from the base of the sofa on which I have made a temporary home, a centimeter tall and a centimeter wide. And yet, it holds my stare with an incredible power that makes my blood stick to the sides of its vessels, makes my heart expand and contract with the same velocity as the creature’s legs.

A cup sits on the arm of the sofa, droplets of water clinging to the corners of the glass on the inside. A wild, courageous thought enters my mind. I pick the glass up, turn it upside down. The droplets slither down the side and moisten the fabric of my jeans where they fall.

It’s almost as if the insignificant being exudes an energetic boundary and it feels so wrong, so forced, to slide my leaden feet off of the sofa’s edge and back onto the carpet’s sinewy tassels. I am walking through a waterfall of honey, I am walking on mud that sucks my feet into the ground with every step, so that I have to coerce my legs out and force them to continue forward. I am four feet away. Three.

We exchange glances, the spider and I. Somehow, we are united by a mutual fear—mine irrational, his substantial. For a moment, we are both frozen.  And then, he moves.

His movement is frenzied: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, faster than before, faster than the monsters of my own machinations; but this time, he scurries away from me. Before I can allow myself to think, I swoop down and trap his tiny body in the glass cage that is my cup, flipped upside-down. And suddenly, I can breathe easy.

Now the only thing that separates me from the spider’s furrowed brow, its corrugated legs, its minute silver pincers, is half an inch of glass. But now, I can press my nose against the glass on which the spider tries to climb but can’t quite grip, I can tap at the walls and monitor the animal’s frightened response, I can examine the grotesque beauty of the tiny monster’s anatomy. He is too weak, too incapable, to knock the glass over, to make an escape. His shallow pincers pull his face into a frightened grimace. He lifts his longer front legs and slides them aimlessly up and down the glass, pawing and scraping at the transparent barricade in pathetic vain.

Under the glass, the machine has jammed; the cold stainless steel has melted away from the exposed switchboard worker sitting at the center. The wires are active with live electricity, ready to spark and sputter and cloud the room with a layer of choking smoke.

I watch the spider struggle under the glass. I wonder if I should crack the glass open just a sliver, I wonder if I’d be able to sleep knowing that the spider was at liberaty.

After a while of watching, of pondering, of examining the spider’s structure, its stature with a queasy, frightened reverence, I rise to my feet.

For now, I succumb to the emotional placation of knowing that my escape is with the spider’s entrapment. Maybe in an hour, a day, a month, maybe when I find his dried body curled back-side up and shriveled over the carpet, maybe then will I muster together the rationality, the veneration, to let him free.