She asked me to kill the spider.

She asked me to kill the spider.

With love for all creatures, I grabbed a cup and a flyer from a law firm offering to sue Chevy for everything that's happened to my car from a blinking light to an exploding engine.

With adoring care, I crept up to the spider and raised the cup to place it over and allow it grace of outside safety.

It moved about three feet, then crawled onto the ceiling.

I followed it with the cup, sending it feelings of care and well-being.

The spider seemed to crouch on the ceiling.

With steady hands, I guided the cup of caring to the...

The spider dropped, legs outstretched, directly at my face.

I yelped like a seven year-old girl and jumped backwards.

One of the dogs was right behind me and I fell over the dog.

The spider fell on my leg.

With the litigation flyer, complete with pleasant picture of the attorney and a white sedan, I brushed furiously, knowing that the venomous arachnid would at any time sink its long dark fangs into my thigh all the way to the femur, injecting a potent toxin that at the least would see a huge hemorrhaging wound fester to gangrene, at worst--agonizing death with me surrounded by family and friends arguing over who gets what after I'm dead.

The dog, sensing opportunity, sprang to action and began chasing the kitten who was minding its own business lounging on the couch.

The kitten scrambled, using its claws for traction--right over my leg. I'd been wearing shorts, and immediately felt the penetration of sixteen kitty-litter contaminated spikes.

The spider, seeing this wide-eyed furball thing rush at it, now bolted for the nearest dark and presumably safe place--up my shorts.

Again screaming, now more akin to a five year-old seeing mommy in a face-treatment mask, knowing that my favorite, okay, only, testicles were in immediate peril, I brushed wildly at the thing which appeared the size of a hairy dinner plate. I backpedaled over the floor in phobic terror.

The useless flyer, both useless as a spider capture module, spider abatement sweep and as something with any chance of winning against one of the largest manufacturers in the world, flew into the air. I grabbed the nearest thing--a dog leash and lashed out at the multi-legged horror show monster on my knee as if chiding the horses from Ben Hur for the final victorious lap.

The spider, throwing all caution to the wind, lept onto my thigh. It looked to be drooling for my blood. In that microsecond, I wondered if spiders, in fact, do drool, but comforting panic returned and all sense departed.

My screeching voice, coming from the throat of a pixie falling onto a cactus, spouted blasphemes and censored words with the rapid call of a 600 round-a-minute minigun.

The spider leaped again and now landing on my shirt, looking with its eight beady eyes into my paltry two, and ran forward.

Beating my chest with the leash like a highway masticator, the kind that reduces weeds to nubs and covers your recently washed car with a layer of dust, the spider dodged and jumped. Every action taking it closer to my face where I knew it schemed to sink those fangs into one of my eyes. Again, a microsecond of black fantasy of the spider standing on my cornea and stabbing through my lens into my optic nerve. All sanity departed.

I swept the Demon of Eight with my hand and it jumped onto one of my fingers.

Yelling with such ferocity that my voice, lost in terror, had all the decibels of a giraffe mating call. I shook my hand furiously lest the beast poison me like the creature from Book Three of the Lord of the Rings, where Frodo is captured and eventually rescued by Sam. I don't know anyone named Sam, therefor knew my fate would be sealed.

The spider, unable to cling to my epidermal substrate, flew into the air and landed behind the couch.

I lay panting, checking my pulse for fibrillation and my pants for lost bladder control. Both still intact.

She asked me to look behind the couch.

I said no, it will kill me.

Then, devoid of shame or discretion, the spider emerged from under the couch, and took several steps towards me. It didn't move far as for a spider, several steps means just three of eight legs.

Acting like a action hero, towering far above the spider, whose height didn't exceed 3/16th of an inch, I raised my size 10.5W foot, which makes buying shoes on sale at Big 5 Sporting Goods all but impossible, to crush the homicidal arachnid into atoms.

The spider, sensing impending doom, ran under the door and outside.

To freedom and away from the terror of the house of humans.

She sent it love.