They KNOW!

Once upon a time, I wrote a little book called Demon Bound, which featured a heroine who could communicate with spiders (and who fed them vampire blood, because she’s a nutjob) — and while writing that book, I did a lot of spider research. Not a lot of that research ended up in the book (as is typical with anything I write), but one thing did happen: My stone-cold heart warmed and softened.

I vowed that I would never senselessly kill a spider again.

I suppose it was much like how it softened and warmed after reading Charlotte’s Web. That didn’t last, but this time it would. If I found one in my house, then — after catching it in a jar or on a piece of paper — I was going to take every single spider outside. I’d be all DO NO HARM to our eight-legged friends.

…

Here’s the thing: I think they know. Ever since I wrote that book, my apartment has been under a spider attack, because they know they are safe. WHERE DO THEY COME IN? I don’t know. My god, I don’t know, but come in they do! And I take them outside, every one.

(Okay, there was the one in the bathroom. I smashed that little effer with the shampoo bottle but holy crap I WAS NAKED! Giant pervert spiders should be an exception.)

I think I hear them laughing at me. Yesterday, I felt something tickling the back of my leg, and am sure it’s a spider, but no — it’s just a string from my skirt. Then I LOOK UP, and there’s a freaking spider, pulling silk out of its ass, and I’m sure it’s about to write “SOME IDIOT” a la Charlotte in its web.

I flipped the bird at the little bastard, then took it outside…where, when I look up, I see a ton of cobwebs in the eaves.

Everyone who follows me on Twitter already knows this part, but here is what I did (because I am SOME IDIOT): I took a broom, and tried to brush the cobwebs down. Thirty of those huge mothereffers descended on me. No joking. All of the sudden, crawling down the broom’s straw sweeper thingies. So of course I scream and dash inside.

I’m pretty sure they are all going to come in after me tonight. If they do, I’m taking my shoe to every single one of them. Fuck Charlotte (and Demon Bound, too).

What’s funny is that spiders never used to creep me out. I was one of those kids that caught spiders in a jar, then fed them flies (Don’t judge me! I was lonely.) But now, I feel them everywhere. I suppose it’s just one of those things that will eventually pass, that creep-out that fades over time, and will be replaced by a creep-out over toads that carry their young beneath a layer of their skin. Because that’s creepy.

But I’ve been more and more interested lately in not only what is creepy, but how I creep myself out. I know about 90% of it is mental (and since horror is my go-to genre when I’m in a reading slump, probably not helped out much by reading it) but there are times — mostly when I’m naked in the shower — that I manage to scare the shit out of myself even though there’s no spider (or zombie, or crazy dead girl from inside a well with stringy hair) behind me at all.

Does everyone do this — freak yourself out all the time? What is it that you use? Do you have one creep-out thing, or a bunch of them? (Like, when I was pregnant, it was all Aliens, all the time.)

And, bonus for the weekend, one of my favorite blogs: 2leep.com, which scours the web, so that we don’t have to.

Bonus #2: Ilona’s On the Edge releases on Tuesday, and she and bittenbybooks.com are having a fantastic giveaway in celebration. Click on the banner for details.