PANIC

 (Season 2, Episode 41)

a horrorwalker travel guide non-fiction tale:

The Horrorwalker does not have to pay me a visit in order for me to appreciate this bit of personal Horrorwalker reality horror!

PANIC

(Herndon, Virginia)

9-29-12, ‏‎2:01:01 AM

I'm sitting at my desk writing another scathing political rant against the racist, retro leaning Republican party. I'm full of fire as I an obsessing over Mitt Romney’s recent arrogant 47% of America comments. I was fully committed to what I was typing and was oblivious to my surroundings at the moment.

I suddenly felt something light touch down on the top of my bald head. Then I felt it move a little. I was of course startled and panicked as I looked up above my head at the white ceiling of my den which is about six feet above my head. I then had to physically fight the urge to put my hands on my head to feel what was up there.

I stood up and slowly made my way just down the hallway to the bathroom. I carefully reached inside the door and flipped the switch to the up position to turn on the bright lights. I cautiously approached the mirror and saw that the black thing that was resting on my head was the biggest goddamn spider I had ever seen in my freaking life.

‘Holy Hell!’ I whispered in gut wrenching apprehension of making a move to get the rather large creature off my head.

It just stood there, pressed close to my scalp… unmoving! What in the hell was I going to do? I didn't want this hand sized creature, actually the side of a half dollar piece, biting me on my goddamn scalp!

Crap!

Then I got the brilliant notion to do something to remove this nightmare creature, that would probably be situation comedy funny, if this was not a real-life “life or death” situation!

I turned on my shower. I plugged the drain. I warmed the water a little. I then got down on my knees, pushed back my shower curtain and without hesitation jammed my head and upper torso into the medium force level stream of water. I left my head under the water for a few seconds before I slowly withdrew my drenched upper body and approached my mirror again.

Ah ha, goddamn it! The spider was off my head. I was already toweling off as I turned toward the shower to turn off the water, fully expecting to see the spider dead and floating in the warm water slowly filling the tub. But, much to my horror… there it was… struggling to climb out of the water, up the side of the tub. It was obviously a survivor,
I thought, as I watch it move about. And then my mind came to clarity and I regained my senses… realizing that in actuality I always claim that I am not afraid of spiders. I never want to meet a Black Widow or a Brown Recluse, but I really keep my emotions under control when I see spiders.

And so, I reached down and pulled the plug out of the tub. The water quickly drained into oblivion. The spider stopped struggling and was now just sitting there… like it was waiting for me to make the next non-panicked move.

No more panic.

***

Ten minutes later, the spider and I are parting ways. I swept it onto my dust pan and took it outside to the front yard. I walked it, in the darkness of the midnight hour of night, out to the edge of the yard, hopefully far enough away to prevent another human head/spider encounter in the near future.

All that crazy, and in the end… the spider lives to see another morning and I can go back to writing my horror stories. The caveat of my life now is, even though I often creep myself out when I write my Horrorwalker tales, now I have a creepy crawly scalp to always remind me that a little bit of real horror is always one second away from us all in real life.

Wait for it… wait for it… creepy horror can happen to you, too.

RLJ