Thick White Crust - WHITEFLIES AND WIDOWS
September 17th, 2008by N.L. Belardes
BAKERSFIELD, CA-
It’s time for a breakdown.
The magic realism had already started. Sugar skull ghosts and sparks of firework lightning bolts. It was September 10, 2001, Las Vegas. I just had a summer of dreams: airplanes, white tunics, exploding casinos. I left my girlfriend that day. I was going to hitchhike to California across the Mojave Desert the next morning, September 11th. Somehow, as the story will say, I got to California. Over the next several months I scribbled “Thick White Crust.” I could barely stay ahead of it as it chased me. I ran down flights of stairs into a university to let it out and then ran back out into the daylight, enveloped once again in drowning literary moments. The story is magic realism non-fiction. It’s a bite of a sugar skull. It’s the moment fireworks burst. It’s whatever you need it to be as you dream while asleep or awake.
Oh Yes!: N.L. plugs TNB on GPod Radio! Talkity Talk Talk
W H I T E F L I E S A N D W I D O W S Early in the morning, a cloud of silverleaf whiteflies surrounded me in a gust of confetti.
Smaller than most houseflies, whiteflies are friendlier, slower. They’re fragile like tiny candle-dripped moths. When resting they fold their waxy white wings roof-like on their backs. When sailing, they spread their bright wings straight from their sides and glide like flakes of ash. They landed on my arms and in my hair—a dismal celebration of my return to Bakersfield.
I was with Bonifacio in his car. My window was rolled down. We sat at a stoplight and watched whiteflies swirl around the hood, past the windows and around the mirrors as they migrated toward some unknown place in the city to eat the undersides of leaves.
That night I called Bonifacio for a ride from the University. I didn’t like to accept rides. But he had offered and I didn’t feel like walking as I had been told the buses were no longer running.
“Are you all right?” Bonifacio asked.
“Yes,” I said. I was not. Nervous, I watched a black widow weave a silk trail for herself from the payphone to the ground. She reminded me of death’s grasp. I grew frightful when I lost sight of her. There was a light above a wooden canopy that shot down in my direction. Her shadow was nimble, delicate, bulbous, elongated. It seemed to creep across the pavement as she spun her web.
“I will be there in twenty minutes,” Bonifacio said.
I watched the spider’s shadow grow to an enormous size, her nimble legs like fingers reached and clawed at strands of silk. I feared her jaws as she seemed about to crawl on me, to sink her venom like her sister had already done. I had cramped, sweat, thrashed and begged to die. I had more visions of her in humanoid form: seducing, poisoning throughout my dreams, blowing kisses of venom, threatening death in a morphine-dripping, non-sleeping Hell. Now she was on the cement. She crept across the ground near the telephone. I watched her legs move and weave. She then stretched across the sidewalk as if she wanted to feel the coolness of the ground against her hourglass belly. Her sister hung from under a bench I wanted to sit upon. I could see that her bulbous body was poised. She wanted to bite a thigh. Another hung against a wall, low to the ground in a mish-mash of webs that tangled into a non-uniform mess of steely strands.
I walked away and sat near a bus stop on a low cement wall, my head tilted toward my chest in near slumber. I was just beginning to let my mind wander when I saw a little creature dangle from my black-rimmed glasses. It drifted on silk down to my khaki pants. I squished it onto my left thigh. Its little black legs curled in death as I pressed upon it thinking it was a gnat. I didn’t believe it had really been a spider spinning from me, drifting downward as if jumping from a great tower.
As it fell to the ground I had seen its many legs. “Must be my imagination,” I said.
I waited a few more minutes.
Then I looked down to see my pants were crawling with spiders. Immediately, I jumped and began brushing them from me. I stomped my feet in the darkness. I had already been filled with anxiety from being alone in the dark and alone in the computer commons, writing in isolation. Now I was filled with dread, with visions of black widows scooting along my meninges, squishing just beneath my skull bones.
I felt their tiny bites all over my body.
The baby spiders caused my skin to raise in goose bumps. I waited for my legs to cramp like the nightmare I had already lived through. It felt like the spiders were still under my shirt, creeping and biting.
I waited to feel the sweats, the parched mouth, the vice grip on my kidneys, all the signs of poisoning as all the widows seemed to suddenly want me immobilized, drained, eaten.
A bus pulled up and I thought about jumping onto it. It sped away quickly. There was one man seated by a window. Strange. I had been told the buses were no longer running. Still, no sweats. I felt pangs and pinpricks along my arms and hands. I felt a million spiders marching their way toward me through the grasses where I now stood under a tree. I felt them dropping from above and blowing in the breeze in little parachutes of silk. My skin crawled as I thought about just walking away from the University to Bonifacio’s home to escape their spindly grasp.
Bonifacio was my salvation. Yet I felt guilty that I had called him. I didn’t have enough money for a bus anyway. I would have had to walk several miles to Elm Street in the spider darkness.
He pulled up and I was clearly distraught.
“Get in,” he said. “Are you not feeling well?”
“I’m fine. I feel guilty about this car ride.” I had been sleeping on his couch. I could feel the spiders still upon me. I wanted to leave and return to Las Vegas. I wanted to go sleep in a shelter. I was tired of being a burden. Spiders crept into my soul and began weaving a devilish shape around my heart.
I had just written an email to my ex-girlfriend in Las Vegas. I wanted to send her the first twenty-five pages of a novella.
She had written back to me: “I am so tired. Tomorrow is my day off and every second of it will be filled with work. I would love to read your novella. Send it my way.” She had also written in the same letter: “Your letter almost made me cry. I had to fight it back. Yesterday was the day my mom died. My throat hurts. I am glad you have a nice friend like Bonifacio. I miss my mom.”
She never read my novella.
It had been three years since Theresa’s mother died in South Florida. I had been in Ohio writing my first novel. I was toiling over it, going crazy in the Ohio woods. I felt the ghosts of the Erie Canal creep through me from the Moundbuilder hills that had been turned into cemeteries.
She received a call that her mother was in a coma. She sat up crying all night. She knew she had not left her mother on well-enough terms.
I could feel the Indian ghosts trapped in the mounds nearby. They were held down by the bones of white settlers, mill workers and canal boat drivers who lay buried above them near the mound’s surface. They stalked the old white house where I toiled away at writing a novel on a computer that I brought up to a second floor sewing room. I could see the Erie Canal from the room. There was duckweed on the water while sugar maples and cottonwoods stood guard. The ghosts stood there too. One that looked like Theresa’s mother took a position there every night while I felt the wind was a whisper to me that her daughter was in Florida by her bedside.
When her mother died I saw a rainbow shoot over a northern Florida morning. The road was slick. I had been driving from Southern California to Florida to deliver her family car and didn’t make it in time to see her shallow breath rise and fall and then cease in its moment, forever trapping her dreams in the fluttering end of her existence. In that moment she was finished—but across that rainbow her soul danced.
Theresa’s mother was tall and beautiful and so was she. She was in her mid-twenties, but her mother was far older, nearly sixty and was a strong refreshing sight to behold.
After three years had passed, Theresa’s eyes became her mother’s eyes. Her skin, her mother’s skin. Her height towered with her mother’s presence. Her smile, the creation of all the months of toil in her mother’s womb, and years of an adventurous life crisscrossing the country, had become so many years later, her mother’s.
As days continued to break over Sunrise Mountain, Theresa’s lips filled with life and dew drops from the early morning air. They cracked with desert dryness throughout the day. I could see them in the Mojave sand wind that whipped the dry skin-earth of creosote dreams. I imagined she wet them with her own visions, starry-eyed, as Bonifacio drove me home and I brushed imaginary widows that fell onto the darkness of his floorboards.
Read More of “Thick White Crust”:
Part One: H A U N T
Part Two: B O N I F A C I O
Part Three: S E P T E M B E R
Part Four: L E G A C Y
Part Five: G R E A T G R A N D M O T H E R ‘ S B U L L E T
Part Six: N O N - M I G R A N T S
Part Seven: D I A d e L O S R A S C A C I E L O S
Part Eight: T H E G A T H E R I N G
Part Nine: W H I T E F L I E S A N D W I D O W S
*Stay tuned for the next installment: T H E S T R E E T S
*************************************
N.L. BELARDES is a journalist, blogger and videographer. He writes several media blogs, including Noveltown’s Paperback Writer and Nick 2.0 (Formerly on ABC23). His work has appeared on the homepage of CNN.com and other news sites all over America. You can purchase Lords: Part One, which describes the infamous Lords of Bakersfield. They still creep the city long after they and a 1977 Central California dust storm ravaged the area. N.L. welcomes humorous notes and news tips to his MySpace or Twitter.
Tags: 9/11, arachnid stories, author, Bakersfield news, black widows, California Writer, Chicano fiction, day of the dead, Death, dia de los muertos, Latino, latrodectus, magic realism, N.L. Belardes, neurotoxin, September 11, September conspiracy, spider bite, sugar skulls
Yikes! The vision of a million baby spiders crawling all over is CREEPY! I get annoyed when one of those suckers lands on my head and leaps on a single thread of web to my glasses and swings like a child in the park… Goosebump city, baby! I can’t imagine how you felt…
So sad about your ex’s mom, but everything happens for a reason and it sounds like her mother’s soul intertwined with that of your ex’s to live on and prosper. I do love how you visualized her soul dancing on a rainbow the day she passed. It’s a comforting thought to know she’s an angel dancing in the sky letting everyone know she’s okay.
Do you still think find yourself thinking about the bed of spiders, those ghosts in Ohio, and Bonifacio? I only ask because this was an emotional, yet eerie entry.
I see Bo around every once in a while or hear about him. I always wish him well. He’s a cool dude and fellow lover of U2.
I get creeped out about black widows all the time. Yet I’m drawn to them. I’m always studying them, fascinated, maybe because their poison was in me…
I don’t think about Ohio ghosts so often anymore. Mostly spiders. I see them every morning when I take a walk. There are 1000s of black widows hidden in the walls I walk along. You see their webs about every foot, and occasionally one of the widows peeking out, ready to chow on her next morsel…
And you know widow webs when you see them. They’re such a tangle of strong steely threads… the strongest I’ve ever felt.
This is a beautiful chapter full of creepiness and desperation! I can’t imagine looking down and being covered in spiders! Would have taken me days to get over that creepy feeling of spiders crawling all over me.
The paranoria you feel about seeing the black widows by the phone and bench serves as a great visualization for your paranoria and desperation you feel regarding your own lost status of wanderer, surviver in Bakersfield. How you’re able to weave these webs of emotion and prose amazes me.
Truly beautiful images!
I too loved the image of your ex’s mother’s soul dancing on a rainbow. I’d like to think that my grandparents souls danced across a rainbow at their passing.
Do you feel like you’ve conquered black widows and this time in your life?
remember that time I was fixing your drier where the hose connects to your wall and a big fattie black widow went down my shirt? Shit I had to run home and take a shower. AYIEEEE!!!
My friend calls me a Spider Shaman. I don’t know. Can you see me dressed up in giant spider skins with a big staff? Ooga Booga!!
Spiders: I still dream about them all the time. I imagine when I’m old I’ll go crazy and just talk about spiders incessantly… spiderspiderspiderspiderspiderspiderspider…
I remember when you fixed my dryer and the black widow crawled down your shirt. I think you danced a crazy spider dance all the way home and into the shower!
Spiders, especially black widows are creepy and scary as all hell!
I think I just did that dance in the living room. I’m going to go take a shower right now just in case one is in my boxers.
First of all, NO spiders, let alone Black Widows whouls have access to crawl along your meninges.
Second, NO ONE ever leaves her mother on well-enough terms. Ever.
Third, How the hell can you write so well so fast? I am totally in awe of you, cross-dressing American in Mexico.
“Thick White Crust” is a manuscript I am re-writing for the web. I originally wrote it between 2001 and 2003. I am finally dusting it off and thought TheNervousBreakdown.com would be a great venue for it…
I have posted about a third of it. Not sure how much more I will post on here… I have a radio show to do next week where I talk about it though. I will try and post that along with the GPod Radio link already at the beginning of this post…
Wouldn’t cross dressing mean I put on women’s clothes? Yikes!
Oh and I’ve had meningitis and encephalitis. I imagine that’s what it would feel like were spiders to have access to crawling on brain linings…
That “whuols” up there was supposed to be “should”. ( Must learn to proof read. Must learn to proof read.)
NL, if those aren’t women’s clothes you are wearing there, I’m a monkey’s uncle.
I must say that I am relieved that you are not writing this wonderful stuff at the speed of light. Revising, okay. I can accept that. You’re (somewhat) human again.
Oh, must be the thing that looks like an orange strap. That’s a card colder for my VIP beer pass. But you can think it’s a bikini top strap if you want.
Maybe I can write at light speed.
I wrote a novel in a week last year.
Know any agents??
No - it’s not the orange strap, silly - you look like you have smudged lipstick on! (teehee)
From making out with hundreds of hot babes!! Oo la!
I’m sure dreaming about spiders must mean something.
The thought of being covered in spiders troubles me. *shudder*
I don’t know. I had a particularly vile one about a week ago. I woke up thinking my arm was covered.
Maybe they just mean something is going to happen…
Spider dreams are the worst! Although I had a creepy vampire dream recently and when I woke I saw spiders in my eyes. Couldn’t get rid of the spiders no matter how many times I blinked. Maybe spiders and vampires are related.
Oh now that is freaky.
You were bitten by a black widow, eh? I was bitten by a fiddleback. Did time in the hospital. I totally get this fear of the crawlies.
A fiddleback. That’s a violin spider or brown recluse… geez. Yeah, I did time too. 6 days in the hospital slammer, babycakes….
6 days???? That’s hard core. You’re lucky to have survived that wicked little mofo.
Practically croaked. Practically…
Have you taken any new photos of spiders that you can post here?
Dadgumit, NL! I’m so far behind on my Thick White Crust reading. AND you just keep dishin’ ‘em out! I’m never gonna get caught up.
Looking forward to reading this later tho’
Josie you always crack me up!
Here’s a link to my spider photos: Baby spiders and more…
The spider photos are beautifully wicked and creepy. I especially love the one with the spider devouring a fly…
It’s the one with the baby spiders that has me sweating in my shoes…
I could never get that close to a spider to take its photo! Great photos though! You’re braver than I.
She is the best bug photographer I know. That one photo of the spider on the 2 x 4 is creepy too cause it’s huge. That’s quite the Michigan arachnid! I’ve been taking videos of black widows lately…
Spiders both fascinate and terrify me - even Daddy Longlegs.
When I was a little girl, I used to pick up Daddy Longlegs and take their legs off one at a time to see if they would still live if they legs slowly disappeared. Surprisingly, they were still dragging (slowly) with one leg left before I….
You’re twisted. But then I used to catch butterflies and put them in a jar of water with tiny flowers and leaves and swirl them around like a water spout had attacked Bakersfield. Of course, Bakersfield isn’t close to any bodies of water…
My brother used to catch lizards and pop ‘em in the microwave…
Longest one ever took to explode was 25 seconds and fastest was 7.
And my mother wondered why I never ate microwave popcorn…
And I felt bad cause we smashed a few lizards between pieces of cement… Dang. Exploding lizards. That’s some mess. I wonder what would have happened if he stuck one on a piece of baloney and put it in there… Baloney lizard soup.
I really love lizards and we have zillions of them here. Unfortunately my Golden Retriever puppy catches and eats a minimum of a dozen a day. This surprised me on so many levels. First: Why? Second: If my three year old Golden Retriever can only catch that which is already dead shouldn’t the puppy be of similar slowness? I have learned yet again not to make assumptions.
“Baloney lizard soup” is repulsive. I want that washed out of my memory immediately!
Where the heck do you live, the middle of the Mojave Desert? I think that puppy may be your only line of defense against some kind of jurassic hell.
And if the market continues to crash at least you know you won’t starve. You can eat baloney lizard soup every day!
I saw a black widow a few hours ago. I wanted to squish it but was afraid I would somehow miss with my foot and it would leap at my throat like a Monty Python bunny.
This was great! You were so good at describing the black widows that now I am sweating and brushing imaginary bugs off of my legs. I have been a black widows victim once and the scariest part is not knowing when or where the spider had found access to my kneecap. Anyways, good story, so good that I will have spider nightmares.
Thanks.
Also, love the sombrero on you.
Thanks Missy. I hated getting bit by a black widow. Was one of the worst experiences of my life. Your kneecap? Ay cheemama!!
By the way, when your new album comes out I’m going to wear my sombrero and dance around in it to your music! Ay! Ay!
you had better wear it…
I’ll make a funny video!
I think spiders are going to cause you to go insane one day….
the girlfriends name is changed here, yes?
I see the gravatar gods are still denying your sombrero face?! I like that.
The gravatar’s love me… what’s your problem sista k dawg! haha
Yeah, the ex-gf’s name is changed…
My name is real though… I think… Is that your real name? Or is it Walter?
I only wish my name could be so lovely as Walter. I think my life would have held so many more things if only I was a Walter.
Let’s both be Walters!
We can’t both be Walters…..it’s a one of a kind sorta name and if you were a Walter I’d have to stop calling you a Nickaroo…and I’m kinda attached to that.
feeling tiny bites all over your body…
ahhhhhhhhhh omg
can’t take it.
vaguely sexual.
altogether uncomfortable.
hate spiders.
one sentence, so many reactions. A+
I was aiming for a C-. That’s great!
Yeah, I did spiders. So what?
Spiders scare the sh*t out of me. Heh, I’m a wimp, guilty as charged, the girl jumping up and down like that possessed boy in tighty-whiteys….
Got goosebumps.
Come on, you can write, “Shit.” I double dog dare you. Just had a funny mental picture of you. Heheha…
Shit shit shit. Ha! Wasn’t clear on TNB rules but then again we’re a naughty bunch aren’t we? Naughty and heavily medicated???
I don’t think there are too many rules here… I’m proud of you now. Don’t you feel liberated?
Indeed! A weight has been lifted!
Good, now we can curse like superheroes! Hey, don’t you have a spider story to share??
At first I was thinking, “what’s Nick’s deal with spiders?!?”…
By the time I finished reading the comments, I too find myself brushing phantom spiders off my arms and legs. Very clever Nick Belardes, very clever….more of your Jedi mind tricks…
PS- I hope these are brighter times then back when you first wrote this piece.
Except for the spiders, it sounds like it was pretty lonely back then eh.
PSS- That pic in the sombrero does a disservice to Mexican transvestites everywhere…
John B, you never cease to astound me for figuring out what I think are fool proof Jedi card tricks.
Fear is one of those rare Jedi weapons that can be used like a salty political speech infecting blogs and dark corners of MySpace with spidery words of mass destruction.
I’m cashing in on this transvestite act. The world is my stage…
No I didn’t read your spider experience—which would have panicked Satan—and then write this. Its been stashed in my repertory for some time. It’s on the lighter side but sort of fits the theme.
SPIDERS
Remember resting
a bare bottom
down into the cut out hole
of a country outhouse, and
being in mortal fear of the spiders
that darkly roamed the premises?
Those militant terrorists
of Nature’s Bureau
of Internal Affairs,
reprobate low-lifers
of the two-seaters
of a country childhood.
Never-the-less,
childhood time spent in the
penitent darkness of such
rustic outdoor closets
did provide endless penetrating
glimpses into the concealed
craftiness of these arthropodous
arachnids–stealthy crawling
kings of oral phlebotomy, and
how they cleverly cast their
gossamer nets in all the
corners and crevices of the
realm, and sometimes–before
one sat to groan and grunt—
even beneath the holes
placed there for parking your butt.
Lingering stalkers
of faultless insects,
they had cleverly mapped out
their entire indoor dominion
and positioned their sinister snares
according to some unplumbable plan,
taking advantage, it seemed,
of all the statutory rights
and concessions granted by nature
to the earliest applicants
of Her hit and miss evolution.
Spiders, I believed,
concealed demons.
For they manage to appear quite dead
when yet alive, yet
more alive than dead
after they’ve died..
And the second you think
you’ve spied one that’s dead,
it soon scurries away in a flurry
to whither it hasn’t said..
Another appears quite alive
but after being nudged with a stick.
the inquest will have soon disclosed
that it’s only the haunted remains
of a lease on life
that nature’s long since foreclosed—
Her mockery, I suppose,
of the human eye and its
vainly assumed knack
for discerning between
spiders long since dead,
and others still waiting
for their very next snack.
“For they manage to appear quite dead..”
They do… they’re zombie creatures. Night of the living spiders!!
Come around more often, Joe!
Dang, NL… now you’ve got everyone paranoid about spiders, phantom spiders, hiding spiders… thanks a lot!
I’m half tempted to post one of my spider poems here… Not sure I can top old Tetro though… He’s the master of spider shamanry…
I’m sure you’re the master of spider shamanry! Mine is just spider tomfoolery compared to the places you go in your mind and writing to not forget the old ways, people who still feel their past in the wind, touch it in stone polished by rain, and recognize the taste in the bitter leaves of plants the gods left for us in the jungles of the Amazon. And as you always remind your readers: not to forget the wolf spirits. Hey! You won’t catch me sneakin’ round your place on Edison highway late at night in the dark! LOL
I’m glad my little novel has had that affect on you. More people need to read about the Lords of Bakersfield and the stories of the Central Valley…
First off - great chapter. Full of pregnant imagery. Like a pregnant widow, for example…about to witness the hatching of hundreds of eggs.
So, I have a spider story similar to your rat story. HUGE spider. I was living on a small island off the coast of Hong Kong at the time. The spiders there are bigger than a man’s hand and are called “bird-catchers” for a reason. They string up these massive 20 ft webs in the cane forests and just sit there…in wait. I put a stick up to one of them once (from the opposite side of the web, of course) and it grabbed on to the stick and fought me for it. Shook its 20 ft. web at me like an angry gorilla. They are the things nightmares are made of.
We had one in the kitchen of our little studio flat. It’s legs were the thickness of chopsticks and it was a light brown (despite the fact that most of those spiders on that island are black with stripes.) First, I tried to trap it under a bowl. Not only was it too big for the bowl, but it was also too fast for it. I was forced to corner the damn thing with a broom. Samurai spider. It was a death match like none other.
All that is to say, I dug your story. Stuck a chord with me.
The part about your ex’s mother’s shallow breaths made me cry. I’ve had to watch that before.
Erika, that is terrifying. I’ve seen a Goliath spider in a zoo. But your spider was a Goliath Goliath Gargantua Supreme. Wow. I am having nightmares tonight on top of my usual dose of I’m-an-insane-writer bug nightmares.
Sorry I made you cry.
I hope you have happy memories to bury such bad ones.
If not you can watch me dance in my skeleton costume again.
Yay for the skeleton dance antedote!
I started Man Liberty today. It’s gooood.
Add a character. Let’s sell it for billions!
Now Jordan keeps watching YouTube vids of Goliath spiders eating mice. AYYYIIIIIEEEE!!
tell him to watch this one - these are the ones we had EVERYWHERE in the cane forests around our house…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoQJMsmgF9o
(this is not the brown spider we say, though…looking for a pic of that one)
OK, that person in the video almost touched it… ugh. I just watched some other spider vids. I’m sweating.
Fear not - that person was putting its hand up to it from the opposite side of the web. They can’t seem to get through those…uh, at least that’s what I always figured. We used to do the exact same thing. It’s kinda like dancing a skeleton dance with the devil.
Anyway, imagine looking out into a cane forest just off your walking path and seeing, like, 12 of those or more perched on their webs through the cane…
Dreamt about spiders last night, thanks to your story.
Ooo! Share the dream!!
12…?? Gulp. I see easily 1,000 black widow webs on my walk each morning. But they hide in the daylight (mostly). If I saw twelve giant cane-crackhead spiders it would freak the bajeebus out of my soiled soul!
Nick, you need to start eating more garlic!
The spiders are NOT your friends!
They are out to get you…
I remember how sick you were when that widow tried to take your life, we all thought that hockey would consume your life in some way or another… just not in that way!
Oh Cindy, remember when Bob Sheldon, who was the prez of the Golden Nugget Casino got all freaked out after my widow episode, and said he had to wear gloves when working in his backyard wood pile cause he didn’t want to get bit?
And you guys! You all decorated my desk with fake webs, plastic spiders, and that really cool spiderman web shooter that I wore and soaked Donavon with? Ahhh… those were the days…
I miss hockey. Hockey in Bakersfield sucks. No roller hockey anymore…
I’ve been bitten by a brown recluse and lived to tell the tale. Hate spiders, they suck err bite.
Oh tell your story! I want to read all about it!
When I moved to the mountains I bought this awesome bed made of wood that looks log cabin-ish. It has all of the natural splits and crevices that are dark and damp…the perfect place for a spider to take up residence. We had ignored our neighbors when they told us to make sure we had an exterminator on contract; I was ignorant and thought I didn’t need one. A spider here, a bee there, ants like scavengers there–that’s what raid is for. Then one morning I woke up to my arm throbbing and swollen. It hurt like hell and I could see two small puncture wounds where it was red the most. The pain lasted for days, but I did nothing other than pop lots of Benadryl. Then my husband woke one morning with the same affliction to his arm and the next day to his other arm. His pain was worse than mine and his skin was purplish.
We finally called the pest control folks, who came out and discovered the brown recluse living in wood in our bed. He said we were lucky that we didn’t have more than just pain and discomfort–especially my husband being bitten twice.
I now do random checks of the cracks in the wood on my bed with a flash light. My kids think I’m crazy.
Holy crapeezy. Why the hell did those spiders even need to chomp on you at night? They’re retarded. They’re creepy little dumb bugs!! Aiigh!
And yeah, my pops was in a hospital for 3 weeks from one of those spiders… good god!
Me: 6 days from a black widow bite in the hospital. I would rather die than go through that torture again. That was some messed up shitake! Stupid spiders!
*sounding like Anakin* I hate them!! I HATE THEM!!!
Supposedly they like the dark…or me in my pj’s and they just couldn’t resist!
haha!
Dear god they bit through your ninja turtle underoos. That’s blasphemous.
It was Wonder Woman and you better watch out before I fly my invisible jet to Bakersfield and open a can of whoop ass…err spiders…on you! Then maybe whip you with my lasso! Yippie!
I don’t think I have a comeback. You sound like a professional.
And I do parties. For a fee.
Look, NL, you’re making me crazy. Are ANY of these pictures the real you? I doubt it. I’ll bet they’re all cut out of the newspaper or something. I totally don’t trust your visage anymore.
I went to rearrange my garage on Forrest and pull some stuff out … the idea was quickly changed to just rearrange a bit and run since the place was covered in webs and each had a black widow. Black widows and eggs everywhere, many I stomped and squished - but I will not return for any of my things until I bomb the place again. It’s just horrible! I kept feeling like things were crawling on me and up my pant legs even after I’d left - didn’t help that a big brown hairy spider with huge chompers tagged along jumping off a flower pot into my car and has taken up residence between the seats. Time to vacuum! Eek!