Death in the Bathroom

There was the spider first.  He was little and black and by the time I arrived to the scene of the crime it was too late.  Mom has squished him and his crime, beyond that of being a spider in the first place, was that he was in the bathtub, trespassing as it were, in the territory in which she intended to make use of.  Mom needed a shower.  But why did the arachnid have to die?  He was so little.  Maybe he was full grown, maybe he wasn't, but we'll never know that now.  And maybe he was even smaller than I can fathom as his squished state made him all the larger with bits and pieces pressed here and there, his innards pressed outside his body and his legs spread long and splayed out in the submission of death.  Poor little thing didn't have a chance and shortly after his squishing he was wiped up unceremoniously with a square of toilet paper and flushed.  There was no circle of life for him, just death in the bathroom.  He was just a casualty of humanity.  Oh, humanity.

I won't lie.  I've killed my fair share of spiders, but I've saved more than I've killed.  I give them a fighting chance.  Same with all the bugs.  I scoot the earwigs out onto the patio, I shoo the moths and butterflies (have we ever had a butterfly inside the house, I wonder) out through the door, and I scoop out with cup and paper plate each and every hairy spider that Hannah or my mother, inevitably, discover.  Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.  If you don't notice the spiders and the little beetles when they make their random and rare appearances then you don't go through the panic and the fits and the screaming wildly for your daughter, your girlfriend, your father, your uncle, any passing good Samaritan with a cup or paper towel or - grotesquely enough - a shoe to come and end your torment.  Ignorance is bliss.  But when you look down into the tub and see the little black spider, ignorance is not an option and that is why there was a death in the bathroom.

Amanda LaFantasie © August 2012

This was a 10 minute free write based on 'Death in the bathroom.'  It is one of the prompts from the Detangled Writers blog.  Please forgive any errors; I am not going to edit it, as it is a stand alone exercise.