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Monday, June 5, 2006 – 6:08 p.m.
The Secret Garden
Gazing intently at the stone-carved birdbath, listening to the gurgle of the stream, watching the tiny creatures scurry about without a worry in the world, Benita’s spirits began to rise. A flood of optimism began to fill that empty void inside of her called “depression.” She was actually starting to feel good.
As the warm, enveloping spikes of sunshine drove the chilly pockets of pessimism and sadness from Benita’s being, she began to relax. Her muscles loosened and her body sagged beneath the heavy blanket of relaxation that now shrouded her. Her eyes, heavy with contentment, slowly closed. Her entire body felt as if it were floating in a pool of soothing, warm oil, but not any ordinary oil. It was thicker, more like rich, dark, creamy chocolate, warm, silky and smooth, able to keep a body buoyant forever. An invisible hand of pleasure gently caressed and massaged her tired, aching body. The relaxation was such that even her mind felt as if it too were under this blanket of pleasure. It was so strong, in fact, that Benita felt like her mind was being massaged and assuaged of anything negative, anything pessimistic, anything bad. Relaxing fingers of warmth reached the deep inner recesses of her mind as she drifted aimlessly and carelessly through a brilliant, warm, exquisitely delightful world of bliss.
Sitting, eyes closed, floating in her world of pleasure and totally relaxed on the bench in the garden, Benita absent-mindedly reached up to scratch a slight tickle on the back of her neck. Her hand dropped back to her side as she continued her journey in her land of laziness. Another slight irritation on her leg again prompted her to reach down, without thinking, and rub away the unwanted discomfort. Benita stretched and sank deeper into her quicksand of euphoria. Seconds ticked by. Then minutes. Her body was warm and comfortable. Her mind was calm, peaceful, relaxed and happy. A slight itch manifested itself on Benita’s left cheek. More aware of this itch than the previous two, she automatically reached up to scratch it while at the same time cracking open her left eye just enough to ascertain the cause of this intrusion. Bright fingers of sunshine assaulted her retina and caused her to squint in the afternoon sun. The fingers of her left hand felt something small on her cheek. Picking it off her face, Benita half-heartedly looked at the cause of the irritation through a blurry, wet eye. Something small, dark and fuzzy was being pressed between her thumb and index finger. Suddenly, her mind grasped the enormity of what she was holding. In an instant of time faster than the time it takes light to leave a light fixture in a room and reach one’s eyes, Benita’s body went from a totally malleable and relaxed state to a state comparable to tempered steel. Her rigid frame and tense condition would have been the envy of any taut piano wire. Terrified to move even an atom in her body, Benita sat frozen with fear as she looked at the tiny, wiggling spider pressed between her fingers. The spider, so small that three of them could sit easily on the eraser of a pencil, looked like a bowling ball to Benita. Her mind had magnified it to such an extreme, that no matter how small she could have been told that it was, Benita would not have believed it. As far as she was concerned, it was a SPIDER, it was HUGE, and she was going to DIE! Benita had had arachnophobia or a fear of spiders from the day she was born. Now, here, in her secret garden, a spider had dared to intrude and violate her one and only haven of peace and tranquility.
As Benita sat petrified on the bench, another itch began to register in her mind. This one was on the back of her right leg. Too terrified to move, Benita could feel another spider beginning to crawl slowly up her leg. Since she was wearing shorts, her fears went far beyond just having a spider crawl up her leg. She was now terrified that the spider would go up inside her shorts wherein it would become pinched or stuck between the fabric of her shorts and her skin. Her mind was racing with utter terror and confusion while at the same time the spider continued to climb. At the same instant, another spider began to ascend her left leg. This one was bigger than the first two, and she could feel each tiny step that this spider made. A fuzzy, itching sensation caused stipples of goose flesh to cover her body. Benita broke into a sweat, her heart racing. Her brainwave activity was in high gear as she contemplated what to do while at the same time was terrified beyond explanation. Glancing down with both eyes wide open, the first spider was still struggling to escape Benita’s grasp. Finally breaking free of the trance her body had gone into, she loosened her grasp on the tiny creature only to watch it fall in her lap. With renewed vigor, the spider disappeared beneath her blouse. Feeling its tiny feet scurrying toward her breasts, Benita began to scream. In her state of terror, however, her scream escaped silently. Her vocal cords were tighter than the guide wires on a suspension bridge. Her lungs were frozen in the process of exhaling and her chest muscles were paralyzed.
A fourth spider began to descend from a flower hanging beautifully overhead. It landed softly on her dark hair, and began to scurry across her scalp and down her forehead. This additional element of horror sent Benita into a frenzy and she jumped to her feet shaking her arms and legs violently to loosen the unwanted arachnids from her body. As she did so, the spiders seemed to multiply. The more she jumped around, the more spiders appeared out of nowhere and began crawling over her body entering her shorts, her blouse, crawling between the folds of her bra and panties, wiggling down inside of her socks and shoes and burrowing into her hair. Spiders of all kinds including Black Widows, Brown Recluse, Daddy Longlegs, Jumping, Wolf, Sac, Tarantulas, Garden, Jeweled, Lynx and more quickly made Benita their home. Benita was in a state of utter panic. She had nowhere to run.
An unbearable itching in Benita’s right nostril caused a wave of panic to wash over her. Reaching up to relieve the itching, Benita felt the soft, furry body of a spider disappearing into her nose. In a state of revulsion and paralyzing fear, Benita pressed down on her nostril just above where she thought the spider would be to stop it from entering her nasal cavity. A sickening crunch echoed through her skull as she misjudged and crushed the spider inside her nose. Spider entrails and liquid dribbled from her nose and down over her lip. Spitting, cursing and violently wiping her nose and mouth with the sleeve of her blouse, Benita’s stomach churned and twisted with nausea.
Hitting every part of her body with her hands that itched or that she imagined was itching, Benita turned to flee from the garden. As she did so, thousands of spider-webs began to appear out of mid-air covering the flowers and plants that surrounded her. More varieties of spiders miraculously appeared on these ghostly webs. Benita turned to run into the pond, down the stream, and out of the garden.
Crawling over the edge of the rocks that lined the pond, hundreds of spiders came into view. They stopped, staring at Benita through small, beady, black eyes. The sunlight glistened off their eyes like a thousand diamonds on black velvet. She turned again, this way and that, but the spiders continued to appear. Turning once again toward the birdbath, Benita caught sight of a huge spider sitting on the edge of the bath. Unknown to her, she was facing an Australian bird-eating spider. Although lacking teeth like some spiders, this spider nevertheless had venom that was deadly, venom that could dissolve bone and scales of its’ prey. As she watched, she saw its’ 2 ½ inch body pounce and attack a small bird that had been sitting in the birdbath. Using its chelicerae, a pair of appendages just below its eyes and above its mouth, the spider injected the small helpless bird with venom. The bird began to flail and writhe in agony and then quickly died. The spider then drug its’ meal back into the dark recesses of the rock and disappeared.
Benita was in a panic to escape. Nevertheless, there was nowhere to go. Spiders were everywhere. An audible “thump” sounded out in the garden as Benita felt something heavy and thick land on her back. Then, another “thump” did the same. A third “thump” and a fourth also added to the ever-increasing din of spiders hissing, crawling, chewing and moving. Benita began to scream, this time audibly. Ripping her blouse off, buttons skittering across the stone-laden ground, Benita threw it to the ground. Tangled in the folds of her blouse, Benita saw four big, thick, furry, fang-endowed Funnel-Web spiders, one of the deadliest spiders known to man, trying to scramble from their temporary prison. A fifth “slap” of something thick and furry hitting Benita’s bare back sent her into hysterics. Benita, between screams, on the edge of insanity and ready to have a phobic breakdown, could feel eight, tiny needle-like points begin to penetrate her back. Then they began to move, upward and at an angle toward her neck. Frantically reaching over her left shoulder with her right hand, Benita tried desperately to tear the spider off her back. With every attempt, however, the spider would move just enough to avoid being captured or dislodged. Benita’s heart was at the point of bursting from sheer terror and anxiety. While pre-occupied with her attempt to tear this eight-legged carnivore from her back, a Black Widow crawled into her right ear. Reaching up to tear it from her ear canal, Benita felt its’ tiny body crawl deeper inside her head. Being so close to her eardrum, every step the Widow made was amplified ten-fold so that the sounds were unbearable. Turning her head to the side, she began to pound on the opposite side of her face with her fist. With each powerful blow, she could feel the widow dig its legs deeper into her ear canal so as not to be dislodged. As her heart was about to stop, silky strands of spider thread dropped from the spinneret of a four-foot spider sitting precariously on a tree branch overhead. The sticky threads began to stick to Benita like cotton candy. She began to tear them from her body using both hands at the same time. Benita twisted and turned to loosen herself from this trap, but in so doing, she wound herself up tighter in the silky prison to the point that movement became unbearable. The Black Widow in her ear began to dig into her eardrum. The Funnel-Web spider began to climb slowly toward her face and the spider overhead began to ascend slowly down his homemade rope.
Upon reaching Benita’s silk-encircled body, the spider began to slowly wrap her in a bed of warm, moist spider thread. Squirming, but to no avail, Benita could hear the sounds of the silk being squeezed from the abdomen of the spider. She could hear the “click, click” sounds of the spiders legs as they moved each thread from one leg to the other enwrapping her in her tomb. She could taste the bitter taste of spider silk as it covered her mouth. Her eyes the size of silver dollars and her body screaming for more oxygen, Benita’s mind began to thicken into a sea of blackness. Dark, oozing tar-like rivers began to drain from the sides of her vision and fill in the pool of light that filled her eyes. Her vision slowly went from 100% clarity to 50% clarity and then finally dissolved into nothing more than pinpoints of light in front of her. Her mind filled with a mental fog so thick that synapses were unable to navigate from one neuron to another. As Benita was about to lose consciousness, the jagged, sharp, burning sensation of the Funnel-Web spiders’ long, pointed fangs sank deep into her back. Trapped against her skin under a blanket of spider silk, the Funnel-Web spider was trying to escape. As far as it was concerned, the only way out was through Benita. As far as Benita was concerned, she was dead. Her head drooping slightly against the strain of silk that enshrouded her, Benita’s body went limp and collapsed in a soft thump on the rock floor in front of the iron bench.
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