Visitation

Monday 11 August 2014

You perched yourself in the kitchen, getting in the way of meal preparations.  You have a fat, round body and a great deal of hairiness.  You are so ugly, you make me wish to shriek from some part of myself that may not know how to stop once it gets going.

Does fear travel?  Do you feel mine?  It's so ridiculous.  You're not doing anything except being yourself.

I opened the dishwasher door on Saturday morning, and there you were.  You fell out from where you must have been sitting, up near the handle, with only some steel between me and thee.  You plopped down onto the base of the dishwasher, and I felt like I could go crazy as soon as I saw you.  How awful, to be on the end of someone's completely insane revulsion. 

Over the past 48 hours, you have moved.  First you went from the inside of the dishwasher to its top, hidden under the bench.  If I bent down I could see your shape, your hideous eight limbs.  This morning when I woke, you were still jamming the kitchen up with as much silent discord as if three different multiverses had all deposited their own Slayer in the kitchen, playing all at once.  Just from sitting there.  You weren't doing anything wrong.  But you were sitting right beside the sink, forcing me to fill up the water jug from the bathroom, just in case I accidentally touched you and my grip on reality fled.

I got the packet of konjac out of the pantry in preparation for today's lunch.  When I ripped open the plastic to reveal a clear white rectangle of plastic with the konjac inside, you reared up your front legs a little.  I wonder if you would ever be able to believe that though I am so much larger than you and able to end your life 60,000 times over since Saturday, my fear wanted to flibbertigibbet me through the wall in response to your hairy reaction.  I think there are many beings in the world who are very small, and/or feel very small, and some of them find themselves in positions of power because fucked distorted dying system taken over by nasty nutjobs.  And they react out of their feeling-small space, which has a bulbous balloony ego crust to compensate, like a little fort, bulging like a spider sac.  And then they enjoy this false sense of power that has nothing to do with empowerment, and other people react to them and make them feel big and not powerless.  It is surprising to incite a feeling of fear in someone else, sort of the way it must feel when you cut yourself and you feel something.

The odd thing is though, humans can react with the same levels of fear to each other as we can to you, dear huntsman of the kitchen.  I guess in some ways it's probably not that hard to fathom.  Except we feel fear at people who aren't even doing anything.  They aren't launching drones, but we are still scared of them.  Because we're a bit of a fucking mess right now at this point in history, though I do believe we've on the upswing.  We are children in adult suits, and we need a big plethoric pile of lollipops and sunshine, pronto.

When it comes down to it, we just really don't know our own strength, or our potential, Ms Sparassidae, if I may take the liberty of addressing you a little more personally.  I'm taking liberties with your gender here, but your belly was so round that I can only presume it is full to the brim with others just like you.  Small ones, that will burst out of your guts on the kitchen bench and rush down to the floor, up my legs, and into my nose.  I turned my back on you in preparation for making my lunch and I kept getting this feeling that you were going to launch yourself off the bench at me, even though if you did most likely nothing would happen to me, even if you did.  Even if you did, I would just curl myself up into a ball, repeating over and over the phrase, even if you did.  But just knowing that you bite your prey to immobilise it is really way not cool.  I don't care about our size differences.

You crawled up the side of the toaster, across its face and onto the sandwich maker, which was sitting closed and upright on its side, perilously close to the saucepan that I stirred on the stove.  I could see movement going on towards your front.  I do not know if you have little smaller contraptions round there which you use to eat with and to be honest, I don't want to know.  I can't bear to look at the Wikipedia page any more.

And now you've gone.  Your absence leaves an arachnophobic shadow that looms 27 feet on the wall.  If you would be so kind as to position yourself on that space, where I can see you, I will then be able to do the dishes.  I do apologise for extending great ribbons of invisible web of revulsion towards you, if it does so happen that the universe is more alive and connected than our current dull scientific paradigm would have it.  If you somehow did feel my revulsion, then I simply must apologise.  I cannot seem to quite help it. 

4 comments

  1. I liked this, and when I was reading it I had visions of "Miniscule" and the spiders running around houses, and they were kinda cute! ;P But hairy, full bellied ones are not so cute, they do make you feel on edge. I wonder where she(?) is now? I had a praying mantis following me around for a while, I still miss it!

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    1. Awww, Miniscule. Yeah, they were cute ... but even them wouldn't be so great up your nose.

      I know where this spider went - onto the stove, so when I picked up the colander that was sitting on it, so was she. Dropped it on the floor, and poor thing climbed on top of the colander for a while till eventually she disappeared and I haven't seen her since.

      Oh, praying mantises are so cool ... they're sort of sweet looking in a spindly kind of way.

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  2. You need one of these spider catchers (warning shows a pic of a fake spider). I bought one for my mum and it works really well. she even hates the fake spider you get with it practice with, but she can use it for real when she needs to. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brainstorm-Spider-Catcher/dp/B000G04RDK

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  3. Hmm, but is four feet REALLY long enough? :)

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