short story #20: The story of an eight-legged monster

“Aaaarrghhhhh”, Aisha screamed at the top of her voice, jumping away in alarm. It had always been an impulsive response, the usual response that eight-legged monsters-to-her/spiders-to-others managed to elicit from Aisha.

She was terribly accomplished when it came to screaming like a banshee, whenever she saw a spider that looked like a descendant of Aragog. (Okay, I’ll admit. I may have exaggerated a bit there. I’m talking about spiders that are roughly the size of a palm. Haha! I Aisha can’t be the only one who’s scared of spiders that big!!! Now back to the story!)

Aisha’s mom burst into the room, alarmed by her blood-curdling scream. “What is it? What happened? Are you alright?” She kept up her stream of concerned questions until she saw what had captured Aisha’s undivided attention. Realization dawned on her, and she started laughing.

To make matters worse, Aisha’s brother Avinash joined in, and a fit of laughter ensued… Aisha stood there, warily watching the “danger” approaching her, one tiny step at a time. The “monster” stared down at them through its creepy eyes from the farther end of the ceiling. Just looking at it, gave her the chills.

Aisha turned her back to the wall to tell off her unsympathetic family to stop laughing. At that exact moment, the monster decided it wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to scare Aisha. It started swinging down from the ceiling, suspended by a seemingly invisible thread. Aisha was quite oblivious to what was going on behind her.

Although they followed every moment of Aisha’s worst nightmare, her loving family thought it would be much more entertaining if Aisha didn’t know about her enemy’s approach.

But Aisha’s spidey sensed were tingling. Pure instinct told her to turn back. And sure enough, the “monster” had landed on the floor, and it was moving across the tiled floor so rapidly. Aisha screamed and jumped nearly a foot in the air, barely conscious of what she was doing. Okay, maybe not quite a foot, but enough to land on her brother’s toe. She caught his yelp of pain as she made a bid for “freedom” towards the stairs.

By the time Avinash had come to his senses, the “monster” had reached close to where he was standing. Now, it was Aisha’s turn to laugh, as her little brat of a brother let out a horrified scream and darted out of the room. All those times he had scared her by yelling out “Look out, there’s a spider just behind you” (and other variants) and he was actually scared of spiders too!

Basically it all boils down to this:

Moral of the story:

The next time you yell out “spider” or point out the presence of a spider next to an arachnophobic, at least, give them the legroom to jump 😛

Author’s Note:

Anyone who’s well acquainted with Harry Potter #2 aka The Chamber of Secrets will know all too well, Ron‘s arachnophobia. Rupert Grint‘s terrified-to-the-point-of-comical expression comes to mind.

Naturally when I read the book I felt relieved to know that I’m not alone…when it comes to fear of spiders. The movie made me feel even better.

Image courtesy:
My brother Sushant Suresh who is a very talented photographer but is too lazy (and slightly scared) to start a photography blog.

What do you think? Shouldn’t he start a blog? I mean he even managed to make that spider seem cute! Even to me who’s deathly scared of spiders. 😂

Also, are you scared of spiders too?

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