The Invasion of the Eyeball Sucker

I always wondered what it would be like to ride in the back of a police car. It's a little claustrophobic, really. Did you know they take the door and window handles off back there? I was also a bit uncomfortable being seat-belted in with my hands cuffed behind my back. I looked over at Jessica in the back of the other police car and smiled at her. She didn't smile back. She takes everything so seriously. It would all work out just fine once we explained everything. I am torn about missing that damned wedding though.

Just two hours ago, I finished hanging our pale-green organza bridesmaid dresses in the back of my car. Both sadistically sized 18.1 think designers deliberately make those dresses two sizes small just so bridesmaids feel like cows. And pale green organza-who looks good in pale green organza? If the bride needs to resort to such tactics to make herself feel prettier then that's a clear indication of poor self esteem. I am a perfectly happy size 14 single woman living in an apartment with my best friend and my cat. I have a degree in psychology and a promising career in retail management where I am the assistant assistant manager at Linens and Things where I get a 15% discount even off of sale items, thank you very much. I don't need to put other women in ugly green dresses and rub their faces in the fact that I am a size 6 and getting married to their old boyfriend to feel good about myself.

Anyway, I went back up to our apartment to get the rest of my bags and my room mate and best friend Jessica. She almost looked good in pale green. Her complexion is dark enough that green doesn't suck all of the color out of her face like it does mine. Her bags were in the living room next to mine. "Hey, it's time to go," I called.

"Come in here," she answered from her bedroom.

"We have to go. You can put your make-up on in the car."

"No. Come in here."

Something in her voice really scared me. I thought maybe she'd lost the back off of one her earrings or something, but when I got to the doorway of her room she was staring up at the ceiling over her bed. "Look," she said.

She didn't have to tell me to look, I just did. It was natural in those kinds of circumstances. At first I didn't see anything, and then I noticed a black dot in the corner. "What is that? There's a hole in your ceiling?" I asked.

"Look closer."

I stepped into the room, stood next to her and squinted at the black dot. I could feel the blood drain out of my face. The dot had a leg. "Oh," I said.

"Yeah," said Jessica.

It wasn't a black dot. It was a spider. If it had unfurled its other seven legs it would have been at least the size of a quarter. I began to back slowly out of the room so I wouldn't alarm it.

"Wait, we have to do something," Jessica said.

"What we? This is your room."

"Yeah, well, if we leave for three days, who knows where that thing might turn up next."

She was had a point. I saw a program once about how some spiders will climb onto your face in the middle of the night while you're sleeping and suck all of the juice out of your eyeballs. I think I saw that on the Discovery Channel. "We have to do something," I said. "We have to kill it."

"Kill it with what?"

"Bug spray."

"We don't have any."

"I'm sure we do..." I took that opportunity to get the hell out of there and go check under the kitchen sink. We didn't have any bug spray, but we did have several cans of other stuff. Some of it had to be lethal. I picked one up and went back to Jessica's doorway. "Here," I said. "Try this."

She looked at me. "Windex?"

"Yeah."

"Windex won't kill a spider."

"It says right on the bottle 'do not ingest.' Some lady killed her husband with it."

"That's just an urban legend."

"No, I saw it on 2020. Just try it." I handed her the bottle and retreated to the hallway. "Be sure to set it on stream instead of spray. It goes farther that way."

Jessica read the label. "Well, it does have ammonia in it..." she said. I took cover behind the door jamb and watched as she adjusted the nozzle, took aim and fired.

The spider's only reaction was to pull his leg in tighter.

"I'll get the oven cleaner," I said. We had a new can of it. Well, it wasn't new, it was a couple years old but we never used it so it was full. I knew it had to be lethal. I read the label on the way back to Jessica's room.

"Open the window," I told her.

"Why?"

"Because you're supposed to use it in a well ventilated area."

We looked at the window. It was on the same wall as the spider. "How about we just hold our breath?" Jessica suggested. Sounded good to me. I took my position just outside her door. Jessica aimed...

"Wait!" I yelled.

Jessica jumped. "What?"

"You're supposed to shake it."

"No, you're not."

"Yes..."

Jessica checked the label then held it out to me. "No."

"Alright then," I said.

Jessica turned, aimed and fired. Pressurized white foam spurted straight out of the can in a three foot stream then arced into the center of Jessica's bed with a flat splat.

"Maybe if you shake it..." I suggested.

Jessica glared at me, but shook the can anyway. She fired again and another lump of foam landed on her bed next to the first.

"You're gonna have to get closer," I told her.

"Shut up."

"Well, you are."

Jessica pushed past me out of the room. "Where are you going?" I asked. She didn't answer. She came back with a dining room chair. She put the chair in the center of her room, climbed onto it and aimed again. "You're not closer," I said. "You're just higher."

Jessica fired the oven cleaner once more. The pile of foam on her bed grew another few inches. "Arrrrgh!" she yelled. She dropped the can of oven cleaner, jumped off of the chair, grabbed a clump of foam from her bed and tossed it at the spider. The clump hit the wall three inches below and to the right, clinging for a moment before sliding down to the floor. It took the color out of the wallpaper as it went.

"Alright, go get the cat," Jessica said.

"What for?"

"So he can get the spider."

"How? It's on the ceiling."

"We can throw him up there," she said.

"No!"

"Here, kitty, kitty..." called Jessica.

"No!" I told her. "Hairspray."

"What?"

"Hairspray. I remember seeing someone like Oprah or Bob Villa say that if you spray a spider with hairspray it freezes them and they can't move."

"Get some," she said.

I went into our bathroom, picked up my can of Aqua Net and rushed it in to Jessica. She moved the chair a couple of inches closer to the comer and climbed up on it. I backed into the hallway. Jessica leaned forward and sprayed. The spider ran across the wall. We both shrieked. I pulled Jessica's door shut and ran into the bathroom. I heard Jessica smash into her bedroom door and curse just as I slammed the bathroom door shut and locked it. There was a gap underneath so I stuffed a towel under so the spider couldn't get through. Jessica made it out of her room and pounded on the bathroom door. "Open the door. Let me in!" she called.

"Is it dead?" I asked.

"No, I don't know where it is, let me in!"

"If it's not dead I won't open the door."

"It's still in my room..."

"You said you didn't know where it was."

"Well it's not in the hallway-yet-so let me in there before it comes to get me!"

The last thing I wanted to do was open that door, but I couldn't leave her out there with that thing, so I did. She pushed her way in and shut the door, leaning on it. "All the hairspray did was piss it off," she said. "Got anymore ideas?"

"We could burn it," I suggested.

"Bum it with what?"

"Matches."

"And which one of us is going to get close enough to do that?"

"You are."

"Think again."

"Maybe we could throw the matches."

"No! That's stupid."

"You wanted to throw the cat," I reminded her.

"We can't throw lit matches around. For one thing, they don't go very far."

"What about those really long matches?"

"We don't have any."

She was right. Things were looking pretty grim. We were supposed to be at my old boyfriend's wedding and here we were, held prisoner in a bathroom by a spider. The only reason I was going to the wedding was for the chance that the bride would trip over her big flat feet on the way down the aisle. While everybody laughed and her mascara ran, the groom would look out over the crowd. Our eyes would meet and he would see how great I looked despite the green dress and would rush over to me, carry me up the aisle and marry me instead. That probably wouldn't happen, but as long as there was a chance, I had to go for it. I opened the cabinet and rummaged around under the sink for something... anything, and I saw it. Way in the back was a bottle of green alcohol. I grabbed it, stood up and said. "Come on. We're gonna kill that thing and get to that wedding."

Jessica and I opened the door really slow, peeking out to see if the spider was in the hallway. The path to the kitchen was clear so we ran for it. I took the broom out from between the refrigerator, handed it to Jessica.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

I pulled the dishtowel off of its hook and began wrapping it around the end of the broom handle. "Making a torch," I told her.

"A torch?"

"We'll light it and stick it up next to the spider and SSSSSST it'll be dead." I poured the green alcohol on the dishtowel. It really soaked it up so I used the whole bottle. "Matches." I said.

Jessica opened a drawer, took out a pack of matches and put them in my hand- just like we were on an episode of E.R.

It was time to kill the spider.

Jessica went first-she was holding the torch, after all. It wasn't lit yet, but still. We got into the hall and stopped next to her door. "If it gets in my hair promise you'll kill me," she said.

"I promise."

She put her hand on the door knob. "Light that thing as I open the door," she said.

I got out a match. Jessica took a breath, and put her hand on the door knob. I lit the match and touched it to the alcohol soaked dishtowel. It really flamed up well. Jessica swung the door open and burst into her room with a karate yell, holding the torch high in front of her. Things kind of went in slow motion from that point on.

The flaming dishtowel got caught in the spinning blades of the ceiling fan and ripped right off. Pieces of the flaming dishtowel flew everywhere catching the curtains, the bedspread and Jessica's Orlando Bloom poster on fire. The smoke alarm immediately began to screech.

Jessica screamed and started whacking at the flames with the bristle end of the broom. She yelled at me to turn off the fan. Well, I wasn't stupid. I wasn't going into a room that had a spider and a fire in it. I ran into the bathroom and started wetting down some towels in the shower to use to put the fire out. When I had one soaking wet I started to go into the hallway but Jessica came running out of her room slapping at her head. "It's on me! It's on me!" she squealed. She wasn't smoking so she must have meant the spider.

I threw the wet towel at her but she ducked it and ran into the living room. I followed her because the smoke was getting kind of thick in the hallway. She was slapping at her head. "Get it off! Get it off!" she yelled and ran right toward me.

I backed away from her and started moving furniture into her path and throwing pillows and things at her to keep her away. What with Jessica yelling and the smoke alarm going off we didn't hear the doorbell ring. The smoke was pouring into the living room and we couldn't see very well either. I almost stumbled over the cat so I picked him up. At that same time, Jessica made it to the front door. She tried to run out but there was a man standing there. She just slammed into him, pushing him aside to get out. He fell down just outside the doorway. I couldn't see him clearly either because off all the smoke and he could have been a serial killer or a rapist and he was starting to get up so I threw the cat at him. The cat hit the man's face claws first with a "RRRAAAWWLLL!" and the man fell over backwards again. I made it safely out the door and that's when I saw that he wasn't a serial killer or a rapist. He was a police officer. A police officer with an angry cat attached to his face.

Well. Apparently, knocking a police officer down and throwing a cat at him is considered "assault." They are calling the fire "arson." I'm sure those charges will be dropped once we explain that it was all just an accident in the name of self-defense. I'm sure my old boyfriend will get divorced as soon as he realizes the only reason his new wife is a size 6 is that she throws up 85% of everything she eats and her teeth start falling out.

I'm also sure that spot on the window of Jessica's police car isn't just a spot.