tarantula 1

I was asleep. I couldn't breathe A heavy weight on my chest shocked me to instant wakefulness. 
     Its weight felt like 15 pounds. A mutant. I thought I was dreaming. But of course fear and pain has a way of bringing you awake. I lay still in paralyzing fear except for my working mind.
     Its fangs were platinum white, emitting a metallic sheen. My cerebral bank worked to process the awe I felt toward those fangs. Each dripped a sticky, clear fluid venom.
     At the fang's base were tufts of long, coarse hairs. The blood vessels beneath pulsed. I wondered whether those fangs would impale me from parallel sides, and cause instant death, or the venom kill me first. 
     I felt its breathing. Not by respiratory orifices from nostrils, for it had none. Maybe it breathed via orifices located on its abdomen, like a grasshopper. 
     I could feel its intelligence. No heart beat, that I could detect. Not that it made much difference in terms of my impending death. 
     Two of its main orbs were large, like shiny black marbles. Two eyes on each side of the main eyes were located behind the main orbs. I knew that it had another four, located centrally at the top of its head by my studies of the arachnid kingdom.
     Its fangs opened slightly, much like a cat unvelveting its claws. The fangs extended toward my face. I felt vibrations emitting from them, like a tuning fork. I wondered their cause.
     "It must be getting ready to inject me with venom."
     I knew the results. Instant paralysis and a slow, painful death by the liquefaction of my internal organs.
     As a child, I had hurled assorted insects upon wood spider's webs. I spent many hours observing these spiders scurrying to their stickily trapped victims, injecting them with venom and either slurping the contents of the hapless insect's innards on the spot, or else entombing them in layers of webbing, for a later meal. I learned to use a magnifying lens to view the details of this drama.
     I felt like one of those insects.  "Maybe this is happening to me because of what I've done to insects for curiosity's sake. Stupid thought. Why would God punish me in this way? They're only bugs." 
     I thought about the classic, The Fly, one of my favorite sci fi thrillers, starring Vincent Price. I watched it in black and white back in the 50's. Remember the scientist who'd invented a teleportation machine? His atoms got intermixed with a fly that had inadvertently entered the transport chamber and the scientist found himself at his teleportation's destination with the head of a fly.
     At this thought, I remember my Mom banging on the door of my bedroom and screaming, "Ruben. I told you to get rid of that jar of spiders. Now! Out of the house! And don't bring them back in!"
     Mother had barged into my room while I, engrossed in a trance-like reverie, lay upon my bed, contemplating the spider contained in a jar- the one on my chest. 
     I had fallen asleep, fully transfixed on my favorite tarantula. 
     I had suffered a hallucination while under the effects of a high dose of codeine and antibiotics. The medicinal combination synergized with my imagination and caused my neurosis.
     I love spiders, but not enough to sustain a 15 pound specimen on my chest. I pondered the idea of giant spiders walking the face of the earth. I wondered why most spiders are manageably small relative to humans. Probably same reason He didn't make strawberries 10 feet in diameter.
     "Thank you God for not making spiders humongous, at least for girls' sake.
     I took my pet tarantula outside, unscrewed the lid of its glass prison and released it into our rock garden. I knew I would find her quickly enough once I felt better.