The Spider Slayer

My Facebook status from September 18th:

So, after ruining my half of dinner, I decide to take a nice relaxing shower, since my shoulders are so sore from wearing Kat around for hours on end yesterday. As I'm rinsing off, I look over to see the bastard son of Shelob and Aragog staring at me from the shower curtain--parts from its last meal hanging from its jaws.

I shrink back against the wall of the shower to assess the situation. I cannot call for help, as this would merely lead to a mass evacuation of my house. I'm on my own: naked, wet and helpless against the monster as we contemplate one another.

Finally, it recalls that it 'saved some for later' and starts eating, then crawls off to the other side of the curtain. I try to determine if I can use the curtain to crush it, but it doesn't seem feasible, so I flick it, sending it flying out away from me, knowing that I will have to kill it later.

Then, as I shut off the water and slide open the curtain, I have a horrifying realization: I flung my tormentor onto my towels. Once again, I know that I am on my own as the only person in the house capable of picking up something that might have a spider on it. So, I tentatively reach out and lift up the towel, eying it for any eight legged fiends.

I shake it, hyper-aware that I could end up flinging it onto my person. Thankfully, it's clean and I towel off my hair, but am unable to wrap it around my head with confidence, for fear that the creature somehow concealed itself in a fold, awaiting such an opportunity. I threw it back and grabbed my next towel, which is brightly colored, so there was no opportunity for the thing to be hidden on it and wrap it around my body.

Now I am tense, miserable, have wet hair tickling at me and a dragonesque spider left in the bathroom to slay because I bolted from the room, unable to stand the idea of looking for the predator that stalked me. And the stress from my 'relaxing shower' has left my shoulders in knots. I finish my post on Facebook.

After social networking about my ordeal, I return to the scene of the incident and find the perpetrator huddled in the sink, clearly traumatized. Merciless, I take my blue, generic Croc and smash it so that a few legs fall off, then wash it down the drain.

Spiders be warned: This is the fate that awaits you in my home. Death. And not a clean one, much of the time, but one where you are a smear across the surface you cling to or mutilated and drowned. For I am the Slayer of Spiders. Burdened by two arachnophobes as my last two serious relationships, I had to develop my skills to survive in our brutal, perverted-shower-spider populated world. Also, to make the shrieking stop and convince my significant others that they can, indeed, sleep easily again at night.