I found my hand gripping the trigger, water sneaking impatiently from the spout, as my eyes ran back inside my head from that uninvited guest in the sink to the words I'd just read literally five minutes before. Could it really have been? Was the world really like this, that I should set aside my book of short stories upon the kitchen counter only to walk three feet and find myself inside one? Coincidence like this, I always thought, was only in that fiction.
I began blowing things way out of proportion as I stood there holding the spray nozzle at the end of the hose that snaked back inside the sink. What if this is a test of my character? I'm being presented with the true life enactment of "Spiders I Have Known." You just read it, you idiot; don't you see why you're here? Prove to yourself your convictions. Prove to yourself that you don't have to prove yourself to anyone. You're not strange for letting them live. You're not off for not cowering as a harmless skeletal wolf spider slides across your office window. Let them whisper. Let them wonder. You're better than that for letting them live. As long as they do no harm, as long as they're not...
And then I clinched my fist and let the water fire down at the porcelain. The spider flailed a bit at first, all eight legs struggling in opposite directions, but just as quickly, it curled itself into a little brown ball. And like a bit of crusted casserole, it swirled into the drain, disappearing into the black upon a river of tap water.
