The American Dream: A Short Story

by Jonathan-David Jackson

“How was your first night in the new house?” Olivia asked from the other side of the table where they both sat, packaging parcels ready for delivery.

  Emily placed the lid on a box. “It was good,” she said.

  “Just good? I remember the first night Charles and I were in our new house. There was quite a bit more packing before any of the boxes got unpacked, if you know what I mean.”

  Emily did know what she meant, but you couldn't let Olivia know. It was better that way. “Just good,” she said. “I had a nightmare that kept me up most of the night.”

  Olivia laughed to herself. “Just thinking about it makes me want to move house again,” she said. “I'll text Charles and see what he thinks.”

  It was nice talking to Olivia sometimes when she wasn't listening. You could unburden yourself and somehow it was comforting talking to someone even if they weren't hearing you. “There was this big spider...”

  Olivia looked up from her phone while her thumbs kept typing. “Spiders? In your new house? That's nothing to worry about. Spiders are always coming indoors this time of year, on account of the cold. It's really only if they lay eggs that it's a problem, then you've got thousands of spiders. Of course, most of them just eat each other...”

  Now it was Emily's turn not to listen. She pulled her tape gun from one side of the box to the other, sealing it closed. Then she picked up the next box, checked the contents, and placed its lid on. It wasn't a bad job. Sure, it wasn't exciting. But then, falling out of a plane without a parachute was probably pretty exciting, so that didn't say much for excitement. She picked up the next box.

  She had felt a little worried about going home that night, but once she got inside she found that it was fine. It was a bright day and sunlight shone in through all the windows, so even without the lights on there were no shadows for anything to hide in.

  There were boxes to be unpacked, so she went to work tearing them open and dumping the contents on the floor. An hour later, after hanging nearly all of her clothes, she was starting to sweat slightly. She opened the small box labelled Kitchen - Cups and Bottles and pulled out her water bottle. Something tickled her hand, and when she looked down she saw that something was a spider about the size of a penny. It may have been the size of a dime, but the spider-measuring currency kit was still packed away. She screamed and shook her hand free of the spider and water bottle, and immediately felt idiotic. One, there was nobody in the house to hear her scream. Two, it was a tiny spider. Screaming was only going to frighten them both. She laughed a little as the spider scuttled away.

  She bent down to retrieve the water bottle, and when she stood up she'd lost track of the spider. It was silent in the house – not that a spider would have made audible sounds anyway – which somehow made it seem like the spider was watching. Waiting. Waiting for what? she asked herself. If he comes out here, I'm going to step on him. Let him wait.

  After she filled up her water bottle, she found that she didn't have any interest in unpacking further. Most of the clothes were out, that was solid progress. Nobody had told her how quiet it was if you lived on your own. It was quiet enough that she could hear her own breathing. It was lonely.

  She slid down against the wall in the living room, because there was nowhere to sit, and turned on the TV. That was better. Game shows. Bells. Buzzers. Audiences shouting frenetically. A little noise.

  A couple hours later, she turned off the TV. The sun had gone down while she was immersed in the television world of contestants willing to do anything for fantastic prizes, and even with the lights on it just wasn't the same. Artificial bulbs pushed the darkness back into the corners and behind appliances, but at night it was always clear that the darkness was there, just waiting to rush in and cover you if a fuse blew or a bulb filament burned out.

  It was earlier than she'd usually go to bed, but late enough that she was tired. She rummaged in her box of childhood things, and underneath Boris the Blue Bunny she found her nightlight. She plugged it into a wall socket in her bedroom and then switched off the room light. That was fine. Just bright enough to see things by, not bright enough to keep you awake. She got into bed, and like usual, she was soon asleep.

  Spiders can collapse their bodies, and they can fold their legs up to fit them through small spaces too. That's how spiders get into your car, into your house, into your bedroom. Most of them can go through a space about one-tenth the height of their bodies, simply by collapsing their abdomen and slipping through. The house doesn't even need to have cracks – something as big as a tarantula can get through the standard space under a skirting board, which is just a few millimeters. Nearly all interior doors have enough space at the threshold for a hundred spiders to squeeze through at once. Not that there are that many spiders who want to squeeze under your door. But if they did want to, they could.

  This spider was big, so it probably needed a bigger space to come through than most. It found that space, though, and crawled across the ceiling in Emily's room. Something inside Emily's head, some ancient warning signal, woke her up, and she saw it standing upside down above her. She knew the thing to do was to get away, but then she doubted herself. They say spiders are more scared of you than you are of them, and that makes sense when they're the size of a dime or a penny, but when a spider is as big as a third of your body, is it still more scared of you than you are of it?

  It didn't matter anyway, because her body was paralyzed with fear, which is one of the most ridiculous things to be paralyzed by. The spider gracefully dropped a few inches towards her, which cleared up the question of who was scared of who.

  The nightlight seemed even dimmer than it had when she gone to sleep, but the spider was close enough now that even in the low light she could see its fangs starting to lubricate. She knew they did that to make it easier to penetrate their prey. And then the realization slammed into her mind – she was the prey. Without her even planning to, which was good because she couldn't have planned anything right then, her body snapped into action. Her arms and legs shot into the air, hurling her blanket upwards and enveloping the spider in a woolly cocoon.  She brought her limbs down and to the side, using the momentum of their weight to roll her off the bed and towards the door.

  Now that she was out of bed and had opened her eyes, the nightlight seemed brighter. It wasn't bright enough for the kind of situation she was in, though, so she flicked on the ceiling light as well, then turned to face the spider. The blanket was crumpled up on her bed, motionless. Was the spider confused by it all? Spiders probably can't understand the concept of blankets. Or maybe the scent of the wool reminded it of all the lambs it had captured and sucked the life out of, down to their very last bleat of terror.

  There wasn't time to think about what the spider was thinking, because at any moment it could think something different, make its way out of the blanket, and then Emily would be the one bleating in terror. She had taken a lot of boxes out of her room, but the box of irregularly shaped rocks was still there. She leaped to it, then swept it up and tossed it on the bed in one smooth motion.

  Now that the spider was just an irregularly shaped lump under the box and her mind wasn't occupied with it, there was enough space in her thoughts for the memory of the night before to make its way in. She had been standing in pretty much the same place, with the same box on her bed. She looked at the clock. 1:55AM – pretty much the same time as the night before. Her gaze wandered around the room, and she could see that the door was closed, the window was closed, and there was nowhere else for a spider that size to get in. If spiders could open doors, we would all rest less easily at night, but they cannot. (Yet.)

  Some parts of your brain don't always agree with other parts, and that's why even though she was sure there was no spider in the room she still gingerly tipped the box over with one hand while her other hand gripped a packing knife. The blanket was entirely flat where the box had been. With a trembling knife, she unfolded it. There was nothing there. She dropped the knife onto
the floor, sat down on her bed, and leaned against the box. It felt like her only friend. It was there when she needed it, which is what the best friends are like. It was a good listener. It was solid. It was only a sleep-deprived mind that thought about things like that.

  Emily sat the box on the floor, blew out her breath, and laid back down in bed. She had plenty of time to wish she was back at home before she fell asleep over an hour later.

   

  “Emily?”

  She looked up at Olivia. “Mmm?”

  “Are you ok?”

  Emily raised her eyebrows. “Sure. What?”

  “I was talking to you and it's like you're not even there.”

  How long had she been at work? She looked at the box in front of her. Had she taped it? She lifted the lid to check. It was taped. “Sorry.” She shook her head. “Bad sleep again last night.”

  “Loud neighbors?”

  Emily's new house didn't have any neighbors within a hundred feet. That was one of the main things she had liked about it when she was looking for a place. “No, the...”

  “The what?”

  She wished she hadn't said anything. The dream itself had been bad enough, re-living it through Olivia was going to be worse. She wouldn't let it go now, though.

  “The spider dream, the same one from yesterday.”

  “Oh, you poor thing.” Now she had to deal with Olivia's sympathy too. She just wanted to get into one of the boxes and tape it up. “You know,” Olivia said, “dreams can mean things.” Not this again. Everything meant something to Olivia. “I kept having this dream about something growing inside me, filling me up, like it was going to take over me. Had it for months. Turns out, it was a tumor.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I kept a picture; wanna see?”

  Somehow, it was impossible for Emily to say no to Olivia, even though she had seen the picture probably thirty times since she started working there. It was disgusting, just like all the other times. She didn't say so, though. She managed a weak smile. “So what does the spider mean?”

  “Hang on.” Olivia tapped on her phone for a few seconds. “Homosexuality.”

  Emily raised her eyebrows. “The dream about a giant spider intending to eat me means I'm gay?”

  “It doesn't really give details. The spider could be gay.” She looked up from the phone. “I guess it could mean I'm gay, since I'm looking it up.”

  “So I'm having this dream because you're gay.”

  Olivia shrugged and went back to her phone, but for the rest of the day Emily was sure she kept giving her flirty looks.