AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I edge closer and kneel on the bed. The spider still doesn’t move. It is flat, and its legs are long. Its body is not really that big, but it is kind of flat too. It is mainly all legs, and it looks like the kind that would enjoy sucking my blood. It looks fast, too, with those long legs. I imagine this guy will do well in the spider Olympics if it was a thing.
I reach out carefully, the glass extended in front of me. I’m hoping to place it around the spider, trapping it where it is, and I’ll wait for it to crawl into the glass. I’ll wait as long as I have to. I just have to get the glass a little closer. Just a little more…
The glass is only a few inches away when the spider, of course, chooses to leap at me like a flying squirrel. It explodes off the wall, all legs, and hair, and fangs, and it launches itself right at my face. The bastard suckered me in. It is a worthy adversary, and it tricked me completely.
As promised, I drop the glass and run out of the room and down the hall, screaming and swatting at myself again. I’m sure it didn’t end up on me since I didn’t feel any hairy spideriness anywhere on my body, but I’m done. This isn’t a job for me. I need help.
Before I even realize what I’m doing, I throw open the door and stalk down the sidewalk and across the lush lawn, in my pajamas and bare feet, over to the neighbor’s house—the very same neighbor who might be a criminal or something worse. Right now, I don’t actually care. I just know he’s often awake at night. There’s a light on deep in the house as I can see a glow filtering through the blinds at the front window.
I don’t actually care if he’s part of the mob at the moment. His killing skills might even come in handy. I need someone to do a dirty deed for me—to commit an atrocity. I’ll hire him for a hit myself if it comes down to it.
One way or another, the spider is going down.
CHAPTER 4
Wade
A wild pounding at the front door at nearly three in the morning was the last thing I expected to hear when I hunkered down and started prepping the living room for the first renovation project I was going to undertake—painting the kitchen cupboards.
I had thought about ripping out the carpets first but given that the painting would probably make a mess on said carpets, I changed my mind. After our conversation, I texted Rob back, asking him to order me a few rolls of clear polyester film. I hadn’t been overly enthusiastic about furnishing the house. I went with the bare minimum and had the real estate agent purchase it for me with money deposited into a separate account. He was happy to do it for a large bonus, which also included keeping his mouth shut about his client.
After the poly arrived via a courier, I shoved the couch, coffee table, TV stand, and flatscreen into a small the area in the living room and spent the rest of the afternoon hanging up the poly all over the walls and along the carpet. I did think about sanding and painting it in the garage, but that meant leaving my car parked out in the driveway and also making a huge mess of the garage, which I didn’t plan on remodeling or repainting, so I decided against it. The living room, along with the other rooms, would all be painted a neutral grey, and I’ll replace the old carpets with hardwood, so it didn’t actually matter if I made a mess. Still, I didn’t want to be too messy, hence the poly.
I cleaned out the entire kitchen, which wasn’t much of a job. I don’t have many dishes, or much food stockpiled. Everything got placed in the first empty bedroom down the hall, and then I started tackling the dismantling of the cupboards. It wasn’t easy going either. If I wanted to demolish the whole thing, I guess it would have been a quick job, but the cupboards are oak, and it doesn’t matter how rich I am, my first instinct was to save, sand, repaint, and reinstall them along with granite instead of the cheap countertop currently in the kitchen.
Once I start a job, I don’t stop until I’m done. I like the feeling of accomplishment, and I don’t like leaving loose ends untied. So, there I am in the kitchen at three in the morning, trying to wrangle a particularly tough upper cupboard off the wall without wrecking either the wall or cupboard. The battle has been ongoing for an hour, and I’m starting to wish I had a sledgehammer or a saw.
