last night, i found in my closet

a great clay mask of great proportions, screaming out at me like Edward Munch's painting; the eyes were hollow and the ochre paint was flaked. It seemed to me very ancient in manner, almost gargoylish, or perhaps even Aztecian. Would it speak to me, I wondered. It did not, I put it back in the closet after ooh-ing and ahh-ing over it for a half hour.

It is not there anymore.

I don't even have a closet.

I made that all up.

Actually last night, after drinking too much caffeine with Fabi down at the Forza Cafe, I came home and wrote and wrote and wrote. Then I tried to sleep. A moth kept fluttering against the window and the paper on the unfinished wall. Sleeping wasn't working, so I turned on the light just in time to see a massive Hobo spider, spatulate, dark brown and horribly frightening (way more so than the fake mask) standing in the corner next to a toy, facing my bed, probably waiting until I was asleep so it could crawl it's swarming hairy legs up and onto the bed and over the lump in the covers, and onto my pillow, and down the front of my pajamas to BITE ME! Possibly also calling an army of Hobo spiders to swarm over the bed and eat my skin.

So I got my journal out and wrote and wrote and wrote, not about spiders, but about some sad things that happened lately, then I drew a map of consciousness, being completely and totally honest about what my subconscious was thinking about OTHER than that nasty creepidy thing on the floor.

Then, when the paper was full and my throat still twisty and dry from even the thought of that spider, I lay down and pulled the covers over my head and curled against the extra pillow, and I pretended that I was all safe in my bed with my husband (the extra pillow) there. And my husband will never let spiders get to me.

And I hid there until I fell asleep.

That is what happened. No mask, just me and a spider.

I think I was very brave.

THE END.