When I have nightmares, they tend to be vivid and weird. The one I just woke up from was no exception.
I was living in my parents' unfinished basement for some reason. (Never mind the fact that my parents have a finished basement, and that this was not reconizably their house.) My father was out of the picture. I'm not sure if he was dead or what, but it was just my mom, my sibs, and me. And I was the one living in the basement.
There were some spiders in the basement. I'm not normally bothered by spiders, but I found and killed some big 'uns down there. Then, just when I thought I was safe, I found a pair of huge black widows—huge fat things, with diamond markings so shiny and red they looked like they'd been stamped on in plastic. I found the black widows hiding on the underside of what I think must have been a large sheet of plywood set up on sawhorses, perhaps to accommodate a model train set. Anyway.
When the jig was up, the spiders appeared on the top of the plywood, where I worked damn hard to smash them to bits with a board. When that job was finished, just when I thought I could rest, I noticed a brown recluse the size of my hand lurking about. Just as soon as I noticed it, it was gone. Then I felt something gripping my hand, and a painful prick. The damn thing was clinging to my left hand with the little hooks at the ends of its legs, and it had just bit me.
Well, I flailed about trying to pry the spider off my hand, and I thought I succeeded in killing it. But maybe not, because the next thing I remember, I was waking up on the basement's concrete floor. As I stood up, I felt something tickling the hairs of my back. (Yes, never mind.) That's when I realized . . . I was wrapped in a shaggy coat of spider silk! I had passed out and the brown recluse had wrapped me up like prey!
I tried shrugging the web off like you'd try to get out of a straitjacket. I got some off but not all. I went running up the stairs, sobbing and screaming, calling for my mom to get it off me. Then I woke up.
That was nearly an hour ago. I'm still freaking out every time I feel a hair brush against me.
So what do you think? Anxiety dream?
