Sadie Kaye
The day didn’t begin well. I awoke from a nightmare to the sight of a penis scant inches from my face, but at least it wasn’t Daddy’s. “Please don’t point that at my face Lex, it’s not polite.”
“But Mummy, I really need a wee!” my son explained.
“Okay. If anything, that makes it less polite.”
“But I really need to go!”
“Then go!”
“I took my pants off, but… there’s a spider!”
Reluctantly, I got out of bed—it was 4:12 a.m.
Now, I’m not great with spiders. I’m of the school that gets a pint glass, traps it, slides something sturdy underneath and releases it into the garden—only for it to return, all smug, a bit later in the day. Deep down, I know this method is pointless: being unreasonably reasonable to something incapable of showing you the same courtesy. But I can’t bring myself to kill them, that’s WAY too much contact. And anyway, I’m not sure I could have killed this spider. This spider was massive. Like someone had chopped off a werewolf’s hand and left it, twitching, on the toilet lid. It was like all my phobias had decided to get together and have a child. Yes, it had the usual eight hairy legs, but this was the first spider I’d ever seen with buttocks. No wonder my kid was scared. I was scared. It was the sort of spider that you had to keep the eyes in the front and back of your head on. To look away, even for a moment, was unthinkable. Who knew what it might do? Further twitching? I could feel it sizing me up. I fully expected it to growl at me.
“Erm, how badly do you need to go?” I whispered to my son.
“Really badly,” he replied, hopping from foot to foot. I put my hand on my son’s slim shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. “Leave this to me.”
Showing the appropriate respect, I backed away from the toilet and tiptoed downstairs to fetch THE BIG BASTARD SPIDER VASE: a hideous glass vase my mother-in-law had given us on the day of our wedding reserved for extreme situations of grave peril, when the normal pint glass diameter just won’t do.
I crept back upstairs. A part of me, probably my cowardice gland, hoped that the spider had trundled off somewhere dark and out of my jurisdiction, but there it sat: one leg tapping the toilet lid, like it was listening to Bad Bunny.
I shuffled closer.
The leg stopped twitching! Was it getting ready to pounce? Was I still having a nightmare? Should I have put some pants on?
Slowly, oh so slowly, I inverted the vase and got down on my knees. Breath held, poised above the staring monster, heart crashing in my chest, I reached out and…
“MUMMY, DO SPIDERS SMELL?”
“JESUS—don’t shout! You might… frighten it!”
I stood up, grateful for the respite. The spider resumed its impatient leg tapping. “Do they smell, Mummy?”
I could’ve lied at this point, convinced my son that having eight legs meant that spiders had four bums and so, yes, they stank. But I’m trying to cut down on lying to my family, so instead I said, “No darling, that was me—sorry.”
“Oh, that’s okay, Mummy. Can you hurry up?”
I got back down on my knees, beads of sweat popping on my brow. Then it MOVED! Or, more accurately, it rotated, slightly.
I backed away, could feel it glaring at me. I passed the big bastard spider vase to my son. “Here,” I whispered. “Have a wee in this.”
Sadie Kaye is a writer & performer from Hong Kong. Her humour, fiction, rants & reviews have appeared in the South China Morning Post, Cha, The Hooghly Review and various anthologies. She’s a writer & producer for Contro Vento Films and Art Editor for The Apostrophe. She can be found at https://sadiekaye.tv.
Featured photo by Jared Vega (Pexels)
