“Go in there!” Tammy crouched behind Revis, who held an iron grip on the front door to the apartment. Seconds earlier, they had run out and slammed the door after they realized they were not alone.
“I’m not going in there. What if I get attacked?” Revis took his hand off the doorknob and backed away. Tammy inched away from the door, too.
“What if I get attacked?” Tammy cried. Revis wasn’t sure if she was mocking him or not, she seemed as afraid as he was. The uncertainty mustered the tiniest bit of courage inside of him.
“I need a weapon. I can’t do this bare-handed.” Revis looked around for something, anything to protect himself. Tammy picked up a rolled-up newspaper from a neighbor’s doorstep. She handed it to Revis. He didn’t take it and it dropped to the ground with a dull thud.
“I said I needed a weapon.” The quiver in Revis’ voice belied the courage he was trying to present to Tammy. She might feel sorry for him if there wasn’t so much at stake.
“Okay, tough guy. Why don’t we just leave and come back?” Tammy was giving Revis the easy out and she was certain he would take it.
“No, we need to deal with this now.” His voice reached a panicked high pitch. Tammy picked up a trowel their neighbor had left among the flower pots.
“By ‘we’ you mean ‘me.’ I’m going inside. You stay here.” Tammy opened the front door with the trowel held out in front of her. She went inside and closed the door behind her. Revis sat down on his haunches and waited.
From inside Revis could hear the sounds of struggle. He knew he should go in there to help Tammy, but he was paralyzed. He was being confronted with one of his biggest fears and he could not overcome it. The front door opened. It was Tammy.
“I couldn’t find the spider.” Tammy was so out of breath she was nearly panting. Revis stayed frozen in a squat.
“What do we do now?” Revis wasn’t asking so much as begging.
“We go inside and watch TV. It’s Sunday night.” Tammy extended a hand to Revis and helped him up. They both went inside, closing the front door behind them.
Inside, a small grey spider sat next to the leg of the couch, completely still. The spider watched through its eight eyes as Tammy and Revis straightened up the living room. It then watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones with them, but since the spider had never seen the show it had no idea what was going on.
Later, the spider watched as Tammy and Revis went to bed. That night, the spider would crawl into Revis’ mouth and be swallowed whole.
So it goes.
