The Scary Motherfucker Who Lives in the Basement

Tyler Golec,

“Spider!” My aunt screams as she sprints up my basement stairs.

You had a hole in a wall. It was opposite the bottom of the basement stairs, below a water gauge in a crack in the cement.  You were scary but that was half your charm. My uncle tried to kill you once but you simply retreated into your fortress in our basement wall.

“Spooky!”

You are probably the one arachnoid whom I have ever named.  You were a scary motherfucker. Thick furry legs big hairy pincers; you were probably dangerous.  My brother and I loved you.  We looked for you, for when you’d poke your head out of your crack. We’d show you off to our friends.

“Hey want to meet Spooky?”

You were greeted more than once with demands of death. But you were to badass to end up smeared on the shoe of an adolescent.  You would just shoot backwards into the cement, safe from the incoming rubber.

No, you would live long, far longer than I ever expected a spider to live.  It’s not like I found your corpse or anything. You just simply stopped showing up at your crack. And well I figured it out.  I didn’t ever lose sleep over you but for the eight or ten year old that I was it was a loss.

“Where did Spooky go?”

I think my little brother denied it longer than I did.

“I see him!”

He’d point at the crack where you were not.