There are two spiders trapped in my vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner is cheap, lime-green and gray, and I found out today that spiders can survive being sucked into it. The dustbin is transparent, and I watch the two spiders, identical, running towards and away from each other. They bump into each other, front legs to front legs, on one side then the other. I feel bad having them in there. I should let them go or kill them, but I can’t because I’m too afraid.
***
I cried all day yesterday and when I went to look lovingly at my bed, anticipating sleep, a spider was crawling in my sheets. My sheets—I don’t make my bed—are light gray, nice ones my parents sent me because the website they ordered from sent the wrong size by mistake. My body has formed peaks and valleys and wrinkles in my sheets and the spider pauses on top of a peak. I imagine it looking out at the vast gray landscape like sand dunes. I had been meaning to change my sheets but kept forgetting. After I saw the spider and vacuumed it up, I changed my sheets and flipped my mattress.
***
My friend told me that on one of the last days of the worst years of her life, she saw the biggest spider she’d ever seen between the shower curtain and the clear liner. She told me that when she saw it, she realized she had to move home. I’m not sure if the spiders in my apartment are here to tell me something or if they are here because it’s cold out.
When I turn on the suction in my vacuum, the spiders stick to the filter, but once I turn it off they crawl away. One of them clings to a piece of dust caught in the flap at the mouth of the vacuum, the flap intended to keep the dust contained, and starts to climb out. I’m holding the vacuum in my hands, watching the spider work.
The second spider is still scuttling around the rim of the dustbin. It hasn’t found the way out yet. I’m surprised the first spider found the exit so quickly. When I turn on the suction, the spider brings all its legs to itself, playing dead. When the suction stops its legs splay back out. It crawls. I bang the vacuum against my hand so the escapee falls, and both spiders run around the brim again. Towards, away, towards, away.
I’m terrified of spiders and always have been. When my dad would catch spiders for us as kids, he’d sometimes bring them over “for a kiss.” It would make me cry almost every time, though I can’t say why.
***
The second spider I found when I was coming out of my shower. Being naked, I felt much more vulnerable. Plus it was crawling on the doorframe above me, so it could drop down on me at any moment. It moved quicker than any other spider I can remember.
The spider is a deep brown against the bright white trim of my bathroom door. When it drops down on its web, the light catches the red hues in its legs, its tiny abdomen, like sun through amber. What a beautiful thing. It’s trapping me in the bathroom, so I vacuum it up. I have no choice.
I don’t know if spiders eat one another, or if that’s a myth. When I see a spider, my body is no longer mine: it’s all fear. A curious reaction. There is very little I can feel in my body as acutely as a response to a spider. Perfect fight-or-flight. I’m scared writing about it, even now.
***
In college I pulled an all-nighter at the computer lab, trying to finish out the semester without having to go back to the psychiatric ER again. I used a Mac even though I don’t normally, and the tiniest little spider I’ve ever seen dropped from the monitor onto the table. I had a cup of coffee with me, of course, and before I had a chance to think I was overcome by fear. I set the coffee down on top of the spider, and it died. I killed it.
Right away, I called my roommate in a teary frenzy. Bawling, I explained to him that I met the tiniest spider I’d ever seen, and I killed it. Why? Did that make me a bad person? He said, no, you’re scared of spiders, are you okay, maybe you should come home. And I thought I might be okay if I hadn’t killed a spider the size of a poppyseed. I thought about its tiny web, and I cried, and I said I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
***
So now there are two spiders living in my vacuum. I’m trying to find a psychiatric ER to check myself into but there isn’t one because Fairbanks Alaska might be the worst town on Earth, and there are two spiders living in my vacuum. I am too afraid to open the dustbin and empty them outside or into the toilet, so they’re trapped in there, and I taped off the exits with duct tape. I’m just going to wait for them to die. When they die, I know I will be sorry.
My friend tells me her brother has stopped killing bugs for ethical reasons. He says the number of bugs globally has sharply declined and he doesn’t want to contribute, so he catches and releases them outside.
I explain to her how I have to twist to unlock the dustbin, so I’m afraid when I remove the filter, I’ll accidentally shake a spider onto myself.
“And then I’ll die,” I say.
She agrees. That’s completely understandable. I tell her I’ve taped them in and now I am just waiting. She says that’s a good idea even though it’ll take a while. She tells me she hopes they suffocate.
-- Audrey Coble is a disability researcher and writer of creative nonfiction currently living on Dena’ina land in Anchorage, Alaska. They hold an MFA from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Read more of their work at audreycoble.space.