Given that spooky season is upon us, I’ve got a tale to beguile you, of the horrors that lie within.
My apartment has become a menagerie. Aside from one delightfully charming but needy pug named Oliver, I am overrun—OVERRUN—with spiders, and very recently, centipedes. There was a bit of a mouse problem some months back, which I seem to have handled for the moment. There is also a ghost living in the wardrobe, but more on that later.
It all started with Victor. Victor was the (presumed) yellow sac spider that lived on the bathroom ceiling for months. He was notable among the spider community living in the apartment as he was a different species from the others. Sturdier. Creepier. While he was not good-looking, he was a very polite roommate. We had an understanding. He stayed far, far away from me and I let him live. But one day in May, he decided to stretch his legs, and spent the whole day wandering around the bathroom ceiling. It was almost comical. Every single time I went into the bathroom, he was in a different spot on the ceiling. I made a point of locating him every time I walked in before I’d do anything else, because I just felt better knowing where he was. To my chagrin, I went in there the following morning…and he was nowhere to be seen.
I checked the ceilings all around, outside the bathroom too, and nope. Nowhere. Except he was somewhere, obviously.
I did see him again, eventually, wandering around much closer to eye level. He spent several days repeatedly violating the terms of his lease (including wandering all the way out to the bedroom doorway), so I had to evict him. I thought that was the end of it, but approximately 3 months later I spotted Victor’s doppelgänger in the bedroom. And then another. And another.
Turns out, Victor had been Victoria…and before I evicted her she produced many MANY babies. Three set up shop in a row on the dining room ceiling. I christened them Tom, Dick, and Harry.
This was getting out of hand.
Around the same time, while moving a flower pot on the sill I observed a tiny centipede scurry off. I haven’t seen the likes of those around these parts in quite some time. I was almost relieved—centipedes eat spiders. Perhaps my new friend would help me out with my little spider problem.
Ours is a delicate and complex ecosystem.
A few days later, Harry disappeared and reappeared in the bathroom a foot away from my face, so Harry was escorted out the back. One down, two to go, I thought.
And then the next day, Harry’s web was occupied again. “You mean there’s FOUR?!?!?” I thought to myself. Ay caramba. The day after that, New-Harry wandered off, and I found what looked like a little drowned Harry in the tub, so I buried the corpse and went about my business. The next day, I found an altogether New-New-Harry wandering up the wall in the kitchen and kicked him out. “How many are there, really?” I wondered. And whatever happened to our neighborhood centipede? Slacking on the job?
I should have known. In my past experience with centipedes, two are there always. Master and Apprentice. I had only become acquainted with Junior.
Later that night, I was washing my face before bed when Oliver began sniffing vociferously around my feet. Initially I paid no mind, but a moment later he began sniffing and scratching at the wall behind me, and I realized with horror he must have seen something. I turned around slowly, and there he was…the Grandpappy of centipedes. A great, lumbering beast.
I realized he was too large to be captured with a mere dixie cup, which was all I had on hand in the bathroom. I ran out to grab a larger cup to catch him in, only to return to find him missing. Mind you, at this point I’m only half-dressed with some form of avocado wash all over my face. I begrudgingly went back to the sink to rinse. As I straightened up to dry my face, there he was…slowly creeping up the wall behind my towel. Disgusted, but having expected and feared exactly this, I was ready. I grabbed the Solo cup and trapped the beast. Only, in my haste, I had forgotten to grab something to slide behind the cup. I stood, trapped, STILL dripping wet and awkward—always awkward—for a full minute when I realized I could use a flat package containing some honey face mask from IPSY just to my left.
And so it was, armed only with my wits and simple tools, I conquered the beast. My foe was formidable, but he had no honor. They will sing songs of this day in the Hall of Warriors.
Satisfied with my conquests for the night, I staggered off to bed—much later than I had planned—when I heard Chewbacca wail mournfully from the wardrobe in the corner. I stopped dead in my tracks. “What fresh Hell is this?” I wondered.
You see, my sister had gotten me a battery-operated Chewbacca mask last Christmas that makes Chewbacca sounds when the mouth is opened. After chasing Oliver around the house with it for kicks shortly after unwrapping it, I had stashed it away in the wardrobe where it had sat quietly for months.
Until now.
I slowly, carefully, made my way to the wardrobe. The doors were securely closed. I wondered for a minute whether I was living out When a Stranger Calls and would find I had unwittingly left one of the doors to the apartment unlocked and some psychopath had gotten in and hid himself in the wardrobe, waiting for me to fall asleep and *BAM* Instant Death. I cautiously opened the door…and nothing. Nobody hiding in the wardrobe. Chewbacca mask lay exactly where I had left it months before. I lifted it up and peered underneath, thinking perhaps a mouse had gotten trapped inside and that’s what triggered the sensor. No mouse.
I closed the wardrobe doors. Double-checked the locks at either end of the apartment. Went to bed. Got up 2 minutes later to check for feet behind the wardrobe. Went back to bed.
I lay, staring at the wardrobe for a full half hour, unable to close my eyes lest the doors of the wardrobe burst open and the ghost inside make a meal of me.
I eventually fell asleep, only to wake up in the middle of the night with a full bladder. I groggily stumbled to the bathroom. I looked down. There, at my feet, was Junior. Junior, unlike Senior, was very easily covered by a dixie cup. I walked the cup containing Junior out to the dining room table to remain overnight until I could release him outside in the morning. However, when I went to put a small weight on the dixie cup, I slipped and the dixie cup toppled. Out and away scuttled Junior, so much nimbler and quicker than Senior.
Curses.
I returned to bed, and somehow, despite the fact that at any moment I could be overtaken by arachnids, insects, or the ghost of Chewbacca, I fell back asleep.
I never found out what triggered the sensor. The ghost remains in the wardrobe. Junior centipede is still out there, watching, waiting. To date, Tom and Dick remain in their usual places, unperturbed. And there are undoubtedly additional yellow sac spiders on the loose that I haven’t even named yet…
Why can’t I be surrounded by adorable woodland creatures (squirrels, rabbits, birds, etc.) like all those Disney princesses?
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