Word Count: 344
“Did you kill it?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he replied.
She meant the spider; he meant the fly. He knew that, of course, but said nothing.
“I swear,” she said, climbing down off the chair in the kitchen (though the spider was found in the den), “the spiders here are incredibly large. And each one seems to get bigger than the last one I saw.”
“They’re no bigger here than anywhere else,” he said, keeping the annoyance out of his voice as much as he was able to manage. “You’re still a million times bigger.” He watched her clamber down to the floor. Swore he felt the weight of her shake the room. Maybe two million times bigger now, he thought.
She had been so pretty, tiny and dainty when they married twenty-seven years ago. When he took delight in being her knight and killer of bugs. When she willingly packed up the house and followed him anywhere his transient jobs took him. When everything seemed an adventure. But the years left behind them now appeared to find their way to her backside.
“One of these days you’ll come through the door and find me caught up in a web that hangs over the house,” she said.
Please, God, he thought. Though he didn’t believe any web could be woven strong enough to hold her.
The next evening she stood on the porch as he pulled in the driveway. She was crying and waving a dishtowel over her head. As he came up the sidewalk he knew without understanding her sputtering by the way that she hopped around shrieking.
“Where?” he asked.
“Bathroom,” she cried, “under the sink! Kill it!” and she held onto the porch rail as the sobs rocked her body and threatened to buckle her knees.
He went room to room until he found one. Held it by its wings carefully and headed to the small bath.
“Simon?” he whispered, “Where are you?” And, “Ah there you are,” when he spotted him and placed the dead fly on the floor.
