The American Dream: A Short Story
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The American Dream
A Short Story
© 2015 Jonathan-David Jackson
Books by me:
The Quest for Juice (free!)
The Quest for Truth
The Quest for Nothing in Particular
YOU COULD BE anyone, but let's assume you're an average sized person. A spider with a leg-span about as long as your torso and a body possibly slightly smaller than your head lowered itself from the ceiling towards Emily's face. It came down slowly, like somewhere in the arachnid's brain it knew that sudden movements will startle prey, even if that prey is asleep like Emily was.
Emily tossed her head from side to side on her pillow, and the spider stopped, suspended two feet above her. It soundlessly clicked its fangs – impatient. She made sounds in her sleep, sounds that were meaningless to the spider – as most sounds are, save for the buzz of a fly's wings or the high-pitched squeak of a tasty mouse. If you or I heard her though, and saw the expression on her sleeping face, we'd know that she was having a nightmare. We'd probably go to wake her up, if there wasn't an enormous spider dangling there between us and her. Maybe we'd just close the bedroom door and hope we hadn't actually seen what we thought we saw.
After a few moments, Emily's movements stopped, though the nightmare in her head continued. The spider lowered itself even slower than before, a few millimeters at a time, until it was close enough that if it had wished to, it could have reached one long, spindly leg down and stroked her forehead.
Emily rolled off the bed and sprang to her feet, slamming her back against the bedroom door. She reached for the lamp, but in her panic she knocked it to the floor. Her hand skittered across the wall, searching for the light switch. She told herself to calm down or she'd never find it, and in the same thought told herself that there wasn't possibly time to calm down because a spider was at that moment crouched on the bed preparing to leap at her.
Something between a scream and a sob came out of her mouth. It wasn't fair to be attacked in the dark like this – she should at least be able to see what was going on. Her shaking hand found the doorknob instead of the light switch, and she yanked the door open. She stepped into the hallway and spun around to face her attacker in the dim light from the hallway bulb. Immediately she regretted doing so, because your face is one of the last things you want to present to a spider. (It can be a fun mental exercise to decide, in order, which parts of your body you would present to a spider if you had to.)
The spider was not on the bed, though. She kicked the door all the way open and it smacked against the bedroom wall – no spider there. She crouched down to look under the bed, then cautiously poked her head through the doorway and looked around the corner into the room. Her hand found the light switch at last, and flicked it on. Any spiders in there had to be small enough that they could fit in a little corner somewhere, or in your underwear drawer, and those weren't anything to worry about.
Now that there was time to calm down, she wondered how she had even seen the spider above her if it was dark in the room. She blew out her breath as she realized it had been a dream. Even so, she kept her back against the hallway wall. The spider might have been imagined, but the terror was real. Her body was shaking and she could barely stand up. Plus, she was tired – the clock showed 2AM.
There was a lump under her blanket, She wanted to be back in bed, but just in case, she picked up a taped-up box containing her collection of irregularly shaped rocks and dropped it onto the lump, steeling herself for a possible squishy thump. The lump was nothing but air, though, and the box went back onto the pile of not-yet-unpacked boxes. She collapsed into bed.
She hadn't turned off the light, and she considered getting out of bed to do it. Her eyes didn't seem to want to close anyway, though – they were searching around the room, checking for something with eight legs and as many eyes. By the time the clock showed 3AM she was considering just staying up the rest of the night, but then she was asleep.