A few nights ago I fled from bed in fear of phantom arachnids. This is a phenomenon that has been plaguing me for roughly a year now. For some reason it is always spiders or insects, usually spiders, which is unusual because I am not particularly arachnophobic. This happens to my sister as well but she is one of those people who may actually have arachnophobia. For her, it makes sense. Maybe we share some kind of psychic link and I am experiencing her fear vicariously and this is all HER fault. I think I will have a talk with her. I mean, I don’t like spiders and if I had one crawling up my back I would probably freak out a little bit but I am not so terrified by them that I would have recurring nightmares. So, I blame my sister. This is somehow her fault. Everything always is. Dammit Steph.
I can recall a time when she and I returned home from some excursion or other and we were walking in to the house, she ahead of me. As she opened the door she unwittingly disturbed a sizable spider which then repelled down its silken ass-rope, landing directly on her back. Witnessing this, and knowing her fear I said something like, “Oh god, Steph…”, and from that, she immediately knew the situation and froze in horror.
Mewling sounds of terror began to escape from her which elicited a great deal of laughter from me, or maybe I was already laughing, I can’t remember. At any rate, she lived through the terrible ordeal whether by flailing and screaming or by her heroic brother flicking the thing off of her. If my memory is accurate, and it usually is not, I think I did flick it off of her after she began chanting, “Get it off, get it off, get it off…”.
Anyway, this phantom arachnid phenomenon is something that I believe many people experience. There are other widespread phenomena of this nature. There’s the demon thing sitting on your chest and suffocating you phenomenon (never had the pleasure), sleepwalking (that one, yes), sleep-pissing (…maybe…) and more that I can’t think of.
If you haven’t been fortunate enough to experience this, I’ll explain. It usually happens when you are nearly fully asleep but still some remote consciousness remains. The spiders come in different ways. They have been under my sheets, at which point I throw off my covers and stand there in the darkness next to my bed for a minute or two, waiting for the line between dreams and reality to thicken. They have come repelling down from the ceiling, heading toward my face at which point I jerk my head to the side and roll out of bed like I was thoroughly trained in military combat, and again I stand there waiting for my brain to become properly oriented once again.
Keep in mind, these are always huge spiders. About hand sized and quicker than tarantulas. I wouldn’t flee in fear from a daddy long leg… well, yes I would if it was coming at my face while I lay half-conscious in bed – but these suckers are formidable.
At first, they came in my bed and down from the ceiling. But this most recent episode was worse. They were all over the floor of my room. Not one or two, but dozens. Because they were also in my bed, I threw the comforter off and ran out of the room and into the bathroom. The light was on in the bathroom and this helped bring me to full consciousness as I caught my breath, realized what had happened, and still not fully awake, began trying to explain to my roommate what he had just witnessed.
Back in reality, I returned to my room and found that I had thrown the comforter across it; evidence of my terror. I picked up my cozy blanket and fell back into bed, hoping for no more recurrences, no phantom spider aftershocks, no more episodes, and there were none.
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