Kanna-sama: I hate spiders, but I find I like to reflect on the lives of the things I hate most.

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Rating: K and up

Genre: General

Summary: A girl reflects on her worst fear, spiders, and discovers how sad they really are. Drabble.

Notes/Warnings: Drabble.

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Spiders. My worst fear, next to dogs. The only ones I had to really fear were the poisonous ones, but I hated them. I hated them like nothing else. I hated them because of the fear they evoked in me. Those eight-legged, tiny insects that did nothing but crawl on the wall of my room or simply sit and gaze at me. Those insects in which crawled over my feet outside or on me when I was sitting in a lawn chair. Those insects that rid the world of flies, annoying creatures that never let me be, tried to rape my skin.

Yes, spiders were nothing to be afraid of. But the fear was there, deep in me. If I saw in passing, while walking down the road and seeing one lingering on a gatepost, then I would not mind. I would not freeze and have a cold sweat slide down my back. I would not scream and run from it, plead for someone to kill it. What reason would I have for killing it, when all it had been doing was sitting there, not harming anyone?

But then, they normally never did any harm. And it was true. Usually all they were doing were walking on the wall or trying to find a place to hide for the winter. They only thing that made them problems was their horrible figures. The black ones that looked like miniature scarabs were the ones that made me shudder. Were they called jumping spiders? I don’t pay attention to the name.

And now, I was sitting here on my bed, frozen as I always am at first, gazing up at the black spider, the miniature scarab. All it was doing was lying there on the cover of my ceiling light. It was filthy, in need of cleaning, and was tipped slightly. It needed to be replaced, or better yet, removed. I had considered running to one of my parents or my brother to kill the spider, but it hadn’t moved since I first spotted it. Besides, my brother was as fearful of them as I was. He had a true phobia of them, though. He would start to hyperventilate and shake violently. I was simply afraid of them.

The fear was gripping me again, but still, I hesitated. I couldn’t kill a spider ever since, when I had tried, it had jumped back at me, almost onto my face. That was when the fear began. I usually hadn’t cared until then. In any case, I could not think of why I should end this spider’s life. What had it done to me? All it was doing was sitting there, safely out of my reach.

But what if it dropped from the cover and onto my bed, or even me?

My lights were right above me. Cold perspiration formed beneath my armpits, on my forehead. My hand twitched, readying myself for flight. It could be plotting to come down and crawl up my pant leg right now, as I stared at it, as it stared back at me. What could it be thinking? Was it simply trying to get away from the outside world? Or did it have an ulterior motive?

The notions that swam through my head were too much. I fled. A moment later, I returned with my mother, who sighed and grumbled about needing to kill the harmless insect. She climbed onto my bed and I watched anxiously from my bookcase, my fingertips digging into the wood of it. The spider scuttled away as she attempted to squish it with some toilet paper. She mumbled a curse and followed it with her hand, bending my cover down more than it already had been. The toilet paper trapped it and mashed it beneath the weight of her hand.

I thanked her as she left with the dead spider in hand, my broken light cover with her. I lowered myself onto my bed, the fear sliding from my body, it slow measurements, as it always did. Briefly, I closed my eyes, swallowing. When I opened my eyes again, I wondered how many spiders died every day from this absurd fear we humans had of them.

Then again, how many humans died because of the fear they had of us?

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Kanna-sama: I was faced with the exact same situation with a spider and felt the need to put it into words. It’s been bothering me ever since. I think it interesting how the last drabble I had about an insect was a butterfly, the complete opposite of spiders. I would like to hear what you guys thought of this. Please leave a review on your way out. Ciao.