More "It Came From My Notebook"

There is a spider living underneath the staircase of my old and crooked house. She is nameless, a thin and ageless thing, having an octet of twisted and spindly limbs to move her from room to room.  The spider sees with one thousand hungry eyes like little black pearls, all in a row on either side of her face. Her hair is long and black, mouth wide with well-stretched lips made to swallow prey in one breath, jaws gaping, red and smeared with the dirt and blood.

She appeared one day, quite like spiders do, in the dry days between summer and fall. Shuffling first under the floorboards and crawlspaces of the front porch to find her way in, then into the corners and behind the shelves, and hiding from my line of sight. Until I crouched to her, held out a hand and told her, “Stay.” And so she did.