Word Count:\u00a0 344<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you kill it?\u201d she asked him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

She meant the spider; he meant the fly. He knew that, of course, but said nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI swear,\u201d she said, climbing down off the chair in the kitchen (though the spider was found in the den), \u201cthe spiders here are incredibly large. And each one seems to get bigger than the last one I saw.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re no bigger here than anywhere else,\u201d he said, keeping the annoyance out of his voice as much as he was able to manage. \u201cYou\u2019re still a million times bigger.\u201d He watched her clamber down to the floor. Swore he felt the weight of her shake the room. Maybe two million times bigger now<\/em>, he thought.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of these days you\u2019ll come through the door and find me caught up in a web that hangs over the house,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Please, God<\/em>, he thought. Though he didn\u2019t believe any web could be woven strong enough to hold her.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cBathroom,\u201d she cried, \u201cunder the sink! Kill it!\u201d and she held onto the porch rail as the sobs rocked her body and threatened to buckle her knees.<\/p>\n

He went room to room until he found one. Held it by its wings carefully and headed to the small bath.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimon?\u201d he whispered, \u201cWhere are you?\u201d And, \u201cAh there you are,\u201d when he spotted him and placed the dead fly on the floor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Word Count:\u00a0 344 \u201cDid you kill it?\u201d she asked him. \u201cYes,\u201d he replied. She meant the spider; he meant the fly. He knew that, of course, but said nothing. \u201cI swear,\u201d she said, climbing down off the chair in the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15],"tags":[25,24],"class_list":["post-1326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-100-days-2012","category-horror","tag-100-days-2012","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1329,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susangibb.net\/blog3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}