The Fear

By Ananya Siyann Anil

My experiences with spiders are something that I do not wish to relive. I hate them. I despise them. Well I'm scared of them. What you would call a phobia. Arachnophobia to be precise. I vividly remember the first time I saw one. I was about 5. I used to live in my grandmother's house then. We had a TV in the kitchen. Directly above the TV there was a slab where there were old boxes of stuff that I has been there for atleast 10 years. I never knew spiders moved fast. Given the 8-legged situation, I assumed they moved slowly, like a snail. To my utter surprise (not the good kind) one day I saw a pretty big sized one (to my pea-sized brain) moving at a really fast pace from the ground towards the boxes on the slab. Shocked would be an understatement to what I felt. "Have spiders always moved fast? Like lizards and cockroaches?" I asked my grandma, not taking my eyes off where the damn thing had disappeared to. "Yeah, they do."

She replied casually, as if my world hadn't just come to a stop. "Did you see one?" She asked. I did. I saw one. A big one. I wanted her to kill it right in front of me Well not exactly in front of me, but I didn't want to live with a spider. I made my point clear. She took out a broom and started hitting the boxes to make the spider come out of it's hiding space. It didn't. I was devastated. How would I sleep with the knowledge that a monster was loose in the house?? The fear I felt for the split second I saw it was paralyzing. Up until then I have never known the horror known as spider. I have been in paradise. Now I'm in hell. That was what I felt. Betrayal. And fear. To this day I can't look at one. My entire body goes numb and my limbs fail to cooperate.

By Ananya Siyann Anil