Page 31 of Crash
Twelve
Violet
I guess I was currently undergoing a test.
A test of strength,a test of resilience…or something likethat. Ash was away on holiday and had taken my safety net with him. I wanted to learn how to deal on my own, but I wasn’t expecting my already quiet life to be evenmore…quiet. I was used to his stupid head being around, especially since he’d spent the year before last here on house arrest. Since then, he’d come and gone for days at a time, but never for this long.
It got me thinking that this is what it’d be like to be truly alone in the world.
I kept myself busy with Netflix and microwave meals and got a huge delivery of groceries so I didn’t have to worry about going out. Sometimes my dependency on my brother scared the hell out of me.
I avoided Lincoln when I could at work, but Ash had left him in charge, so it was unavoidable. Our conversations had been brief and I could hardly look him in the eye. I’m sure he knew I was crushing on him and that my heart was broken since I[CS1]sure as fuck didn’t do much to cover my awkwardness around him.
Long story short, I felt like a little girl around him. Lincoln was a man…he wasn’t interested in children.
Gearing up for another night at home with the television, I left my dinner rotating in the microwave and headed upstairs to get ready for another marathon session ofSupernatural. Flicking on my bedroom light, I moved across the room and picked up the remote. Something black overhead caught my attention, and I glanced up and screamed.
A huge ass fucking Huntsman spider was sitting in the middle of my ceiling…right over my bed.
Scuttling backward, I darted into the bathroom, opening and closing doors trying to find something to spray it with. My hands shook as I fumbled through the bottles of shower gel and nail polish remover.
Shivering, my skin crawled at the thought of that thing falling onto my bed.Shit, fuck, ass, bastard!It had to be at least as big as my palm.
If there was one thing I was afraid of, other than the obvious, it was spiders. Deadly fucking spiders that would eat your face off. Huntsmans were harmless, but they were huge and had all the legs and thecrawling.
My hand clamped around a giant can of hairspray I kept on the basin and I peered around the door. It was still in the same place, sitting there like it owned the joint. I aimed the can up and edged around the motionless spider, positive it was about to spring into life and come right at me.
I could try to scoop it into a glass or a bowl, but it would run and drop to the floor. The thought of it disappearing where I couldn’t find it was worse than seeing it on the ceiling, so I aimed and sprayed. I doused the thing with hairspray, and it began to flee across the roof as I squealed, my finger jammed on the button. Before long, its movements became sluggish, its long legs sticking to the roof, and then it stopped completely.
Grabbing a dirty glass from on top of my bookshelf, I climbed onto the end of the bed and reached up, my hands shaking. Shit, it was just a fucking spider…and it was motherfucking stuck to my roof. I raised the glass and it moved, its hairspray-laden leg waving around wildly, and I made a hasty retreat. Its other legs tried to move, and it made it an inch before it halted completely, well and truly stuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I pulled my phone from my pocket, and I automatically went to press Ash’s number, but I hesitated. He wasn’t here. Right underneath, in alphabetical order in my almost empty contact list, was Lincoln’s name. I glanced at the spider and almost threw up in my mouth.
I didn’t have anyone else to call. Swallowing hard, I pressed my finger on his number and put the phone against my ear. As it began to ring, I pointed the hairspray at the huge, furry, black lump in case it tried anything.
“Hello?”
I froze as I heard his voice, suddenly feeling like a right idiot. “Hello?”
“Violet?”
“I’m sorry to call…”
“What’s the matter?”
“There’s a…thing…and I’m afraid, and I can’t get it down…” My words rushed together as I stared up at the spider that was now firmly stuck to the roof.
“Wait, slow up,” he replied, sounding worried. “What thing?”
“A spider.”
There was a pause. “A spider?” He sounded amused.
“It’s fucking huge,” I cried. “It’s over my bed and I can’t—”
“You’re afraid of spiders?” he asked a little more gently this time.
