About one week ago, I was sitting on a stool in my house, writing an essay for the very class this is being written for.
       As I sat, my brain left a section of itself to continue that task, while the rest of it flew off to party with my subconscious, who had just had another child. As I sat and thought about the strange speed with which this extended metaphor had flown out of my brain, a particularly large and frightening member of the species I had long ago declared all-out war against wandered under the door and faced me, absolutely still.
       I reacted as I always do around spiders, and jumped on top of my stool, pulled the bottom of my pants upwards, and shrieked like a small member of the opposite sex.
       Having accomplished this, I continued to stare back at my new-found nemesis. I immediately tried to come up with the quickest and most effective way of eliminating the hairy little creature. Brinkmanship was a thing of the past. I looked around, and found that there were no convenient cups and postcards lying around, which might have been used to capture this foe. I didn't want to kill it, not because the act itself was unsavory to me, but because it meant sleeping in the same room as a sad, flat little corpse that could easily rise from the dead and remove my eyeballs as I lay dormant. I stayed where I was, and realized that I really would have to kill it. I then began thinking of ways to do this without causing the enemy to become more, ahem, "widespread" than he had before.
       The entire time my brain was focused on his extermination, the spider continued to look, or face, in my direction, clearly considering ways of exterminating me. Or, at least, that's what I thought, until he went under a nearby desk, in the jerky-Tim Burton-stop-motion animation way spiders seem to do everything.
       I looked under the desk, but he was too well-camouflaged, and I couldn't see him. I decided retreat made sense at this point, and moved all of my things, including my mattress, into the living room. I sat in this new haven, and eventually settled down enough to begin writing again. I continued, and the spider started to disappear from my mind. I was able to listen to music again, and I relaxed. I thought that this spider might have never existed, until he wandered in front of me again.

       I stared at him, and he stared at me. An imaginary tumbleweed drifted by.

       This was simply inconceivable to me. The only explanation my frightened brain offered me was that the spider must have been sent by older spiders with foreign accents to make me sleep with the ichthyoids. It must have been a hit spider, I thought. An arachnassassin. I had wronged them in some way, and now they had sent Guido, and he was going to ice me.

       I considered making out some kind of will, and decided there wasn't enough time. I quickly scrawled that I wanted my body to be cremated by way of detonation on my arm, and turned to face my doom.

       And faced.
       And faced.
       And faced.

       The spider simply didn't move. I realized it was trying to frighten my even more. I was supposed to make some kind of peace with my maker before he killed me. He wanted to consider my crimes against spider-kind. My brain feverishly wondered if other species had assassins, and if they could be hired to kill each other.
       But the spider still didn't move. I eventually worked up the courage to poke it with my pen. It wiggled a bit, in a slow and lethargic way, and I realized that my little nemesis was dying.
       I could have allowed it to die in the warmth of the house, but it still scared me. I went to get a cup, but decided there was no need. I went back to where I was, and watched it as it faded away. It kept facing me until it's lifeless body had no other choice.
       I could have resolved to treat spiders with more kindness, as though the spider's purpose had been to teach me a lesson, but I didn't. My nerdy little brain simply fixated on how the experience had been just like the climax of Blade Runner.