Page 15 - FINAL DESTINATION

FINAL DESTINATION
house. Perhaps, while he had been fighting back his panic and not listening, the farmer had found everything in order and left the house. Could Neil have missed the rasp of the door closing as the farmer left? Up here, wedged behind a door, would he be able to hear the clatter of the pickup’s diesel engine as it pulled away? He couldn’t be sure, so he stayed frozen in place.
In the heat and the gloom he listened for any sound, but it was movement that caught his attention. With the box held in front of him with both hands, the far edge formed a horizon between the shadows behind the door and dim light of the room. It was there that something caught his eye. He tried to blink away the sweat that stung his eyes and then he could make out the silhouette of two thin legs reaching over the edge. Then a third and then the small hourglass-shaped body.
It was too dark to see the markings or even the color of the spider, and, though he knew very little of spiders, he knew this one was dangerous. He fought back the urge to drop the box and run screaming from the room like a little girl though that is what he really wanted to do.
As the spider pulled itself onto the top of the box, Neil considered how he would prefer to die. A shotgun blast would be painful, but, if the farmer was a good shot, it would be over quickly. He had no idea how long it would take to die from the bite of a Black Widow spider, or how painful. He still heard nothing from downstairs. It was possible that the armed farmer had left the building, but the spider was definitely here. Choices, choices.
The spider moved across the box, first to the left and then to the right, but always angling closer to Neil. He had nothing to swat the bug with but his hand and he knew that was not a good idea. Perhaps a good fast sweep of his arm would fling it away from him, but he thought that it might just latch onto his shirt sleeve or worse yet his arm. The spider came to a stop at the center of this strange new landscape it had discovered.
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