Of Cigarettes and Spiders

Carl stretched out on the lumpy mattress and looked up at the ceiling. His body fit perfectly into the depression on his side of the bed as if he had been set into a mold. Molly had died over a year ago, yet he never ever considered sleeping on her side of the bed. Not even in the middle.

He tapped the nearly empty pack of cigarettes on his nightstand. He knew he was going to have to leave the apartment at some point soon and get more cigarettes. And come to think of it, he needed some food as well since all he had left in the fridge was three cans of beer, one egg, and a couple of slices of American cheese.

Ever since Molly passed, he didn’t really pay attention to when he ate. Or even if he ate.

Molly had hated the smell of his cigarettes and made him smoke outside on the little balcony off the living room when the weather was tolerable. Otherwise, she made him go out into the hallway. So it was the height of irony that she was the one who had died of lung cancer after a short battle with Stage Four that had come out of nowhere. Of course, there was no rhyme or reason to life anyway. But still, this had been totally out of the blue and seemed to be so unfair since Carl knew it should have been him. If he had believed in a deity in the sky, he would have asked why life was so random like that. His kids had made it clear that they blamed him for their mother’s illness and subsequent death and didn’t believe that it could have been just one of life’s unpredictable turns.

“Second-hand smoke!” they both spat out at the funeral, glaring at him accusingly. That was the thing about twins. They could hate you at the same time, think the same accusatory thoughts, and simultaneously make it clear why they hated you, so you were doubly damned.

Carl shook his head as he fumbled around the nightstand for his lighter. It took a few moments until his hands stopped shaking and he could finally succeed in lighting the cigarette. He inhaled deeply, then started coughing uncontrollably. When he finally stopped hacking, he took another long drag, coughed a bit but finally felt himself starting to breathe more normally.

Carl had been ambivalent about whether or not he wanted children. It had all been about Molly’s overwhelming need to become a mother that was like a tidal wave that Carl had no power to resist. And when they ended up with twins, what a blessing, she would always say. Carl never told her, but he wished they had just gotten a dog. He always wanted a collie. Like Lassie. Dogs never talked back and they loved you no matter what. They never glared at you with hate in their eyes and insisted that you had killed their mother, even if you hadn’t. But Molly was allergic to dogs, so that never happened. Aside from the fact that she wanted to be the mother of human children more than anything.

There was a time when the twins were little that they had gotten a goldfish. It lived for about a week until one day the kids came racing into the kitchen yelling that Goldie was floating on top of the water in her bowl and didn’t want to wake up and play. Carl walked into their room, took one look at the definitely deceased Goldie, and informed the twins matter-of-factly that Goldie was dead and he would flush her down the toilet The twins screamed in horror and sobbed such gulping, hiccupping sobs that Carl was forced into procuring a shoebox, digging a hole in the yard, and saying a few words over her body. The twins insisted on saying more than a few words about Goldie before she was put into her final resting place and they gushed about how Goldie was the best fish ever, the most beautiful fish in the world, and the most loving fish any kid could ever have. They started sobbing again and clutched each other for support. And that was the one and only pet that ever set foot – or fin – into their household.

Carl vaguely wondered if he should get a dog now so he could have some kind of company that he found tolerable. Not a collie though, but maybe a smaller dog. A beagle might be nice. But was he even allowed to have a dog in this apartment? He’d have to check. And the thing was, if he had a dog he’d have to buy it food. And remember to actually feed it. And take it out for walks. He hated going outside and he hated leaving the apartment for any reason. So he’d have to think about it.

Carl closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He suddenly felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It felt like someone was watching him. His eyes flew open and he peered through the smoke, but no one was there. He shook his head and flicked the ashes from the last of his cigarette into the overflowing cheap glass ashtray that the kids had bought him one Father’s Day years ago. He took one more drag before grinding the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray as he considered turning on the TV.

Carl liked Wheel of Fortune because he was usually able to figure out the answers before the contestants did. Molly had preferred Jeopardy! because she said it was more challenging. Molly’s head had been filled with all kinds of useless, crazy facts that only turned out to be useful when she was watching her favorite show. Carl often felt inadequate because she was so much smarter than him. He sometimes got mean to her for no reason, and she would respond by crying and racing into the kitchen to get away from him. He didn’t understand why he felt the need to put her down and even humiliate her, but he couldn’t help himself. Eventually, he’d apologize, and they’d go back to watching TV, but Molly would stop shouting out the answers after one of those incidents and just sit stone-faced until it was over.

Carl sighed and hoped putting on the TV would stop him from thinking so much. He watched as one of the contestants spun the wheel. “Buy a vowel,” he muttered. And then he suddenly felt it again. That tingle up his spine. Someone was definitely watching him. His eyes swept the room one more time. And as before, no one was there. But then, he saw it. To his left, in the corner where the wall met the ceiling, was a spider. A Daddy Long Legs, to be exact. Molly had always hated spiders.

“Kill it!” she’d scream every time a spider had the temerity to enter their apartment, like an uninvited guest coming to terrorize them. She’d fling a newspaper at Carl so that he could smack the offending arachnid to smithereens until Molly was satisfied that there wasn’t a breath of life left in the million pieces of what had once been its body.

Carl’s immediate instinct now was to find a newspaper and whack that interloper into oblivion. But then he remembered that after Molly died he no longer had the paper delivered. But he did have shoes. He could grab a shoe and fling it at the spider that seemed to be watching his every move unperturbed.

Carl leaned back on his pillow. The spider didn’t move. Carl glanced up at the TV. The guy who had just spun the wheel just lost everything and that annoying whistle that translated into too bad, so sad, made things even worse for the poor guy.

“Solve it!” Carl yelled at the TV. “Once bitten, twice shy, for Pete’s sake!”

But the contestant asked for an ‘L’ and of course there were none.  Carl grabbed his slipper and threw it at the TV.

“That moron just saved your life, pal,” Carl informed the spider. “I was going to throw it at you, but he pissed me off even more than you do right now.”

The spider continued to watch him. Eventually, Carl fell asleep and woke up in the early morning to find the TV was blaring, he was still in his clothes sprawled out on top of the blanket, his mouth tasted like sawdust, and the spider hadn’t moved.

Carl watched the spider watching him. It was a stalemate until Carl finally gave up and shuffled over to the bathroom. After he showered and got dressed, he made his way into the kitchen. He grabbed a piece of American cheese and sighed. There was no getting around it. He was going to have to make a trip to the grocery store. Not only for food, but he needed more cigarettes. A carton would hopefully get him through the week.

He headed to the bedroom to get his shoes and wallet and surreptitiously glanced up at the ceiling. The spider still hadn’t budged.

“Don’t you need to eat something?” Carl muttered as he left the room.

There was no reply.

It was almost two hours later when he returned to the apartment carrying several plastic bags so he only had to make the one trip. He had bought a loaf of white bread, a dozen eggs, another package of American cheese, a stick of butter, a six-pack of beer, a couple of frozen dinners, oatmeal, and a bottle of the store’s cheap version of Coke. And of course, the cigarettes. He sat the bags down by the sink.

Suddenly, the shriek of the phone broke through the silence. Carl glared at the source of this intrusion and waited for the machine to kick on. It was one of the twins sounding palpably relieved that no actual conversation needed to take place – just calling to say hi.

“Hi to you, too,” Carl said sarcastically, well aware that no one actually wanted to say hi to him. He emptied most of the contents of the plastic bags into the fridge and the rest into the pantry. He picked up the red and white carton of cigarettes, trudged into the bedroom, and laid it on his dresser. He nonchalantly turned around and looked up at the ceiling. For a moment, he didn’t see the spider and his heart skipped a beat, although he didn’t know if it was from relief of disappointment. He looked around more intently and then he realized that the spider had moved several inches since he had left and was now perched closer to where Carl always rested on his bed. Carl wondered what the spider’s endgame was. What did he want? Carl stared at the spider, but as usual, the spider didn’t react.

Carl went back into the kitchen, slapped a piece of American cheese between two slices of white bread and grabbed a beer. He then returned to his bedroom and sank onto the bed, as per his usual routine. Because no spider was going to shake him up enough to change anything about his life.

“Nothing here for you, buddy,” Carl said gruffly, chomping on his sandwich as he grabbed the remote and clicked it over and over, hoping to find something worth watching on the TV. When he finished his sandwich, he took a cigarette out of the nearly empty box on his nightstand and lit it. He started wheezing as soon as he took the first puff, and it took awhile until he was able to stop coughing. When he looked up, he could have sworn that the spider was watching him again.

“Don’t judge me,” Carl demanded. “It’s the only thing that gives me pleasure anymore.”

The spider sat silently.

“I have nothing to live for anyway,” Carl said defensively.  “So if the smoking kills me, what does it matter? Who would care?”

He paused as if waiting for the spider to respond. He took another drag from the cigarette, then took a swig of beer before the coughing could wrack his body.

“Molly hated when I smoked,” he said hoarsely. “But she’s the one who died. And it wasn’t my fault, no matter what the twins say. I never smoked around her – she wouldn’t allow it.”

He took another gulp of beer and stared at the can. “My wife is dead. My friends are dead. My kids want nothing to do with me. So what the hell is the point?”

It was possible that the spider blinked at that point, but Carl couldn’t be sure.

“You must have kids. After all, they call you Daddy Long Legs.” Carl laughed at his own joke mirthlessly.

“Do they ever call or visit you?” Carl asked. “Or are they ungrateful brats who want nothing to do with you and never did?” He sighed. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? In the end, we all end up alone, don’t we? We don’t all live alone, but we all die alone – that’s our fate no matter who we are.”

Carl once again tried to find something he could tolerate watching in the late afternoon TV wasteland, but he ended up falling asleep. He woke up just as Wheel of Fortune was starting and was pleased with the surprisingly serendipitous timing. He sat up and finished his beer, then lit another cigarette.

“’T’!” he yelled at the TV. “Tell him you want a ‘T’!”

Carl relaxed when the contestant asked for a ‘T’. There were three of them. At least there was one contestant who wasn’t a moron.

He guzzled more beer. He smoked another cigarette. He checked to see what the spider was up to, but it was basically a whole lot of nothing.

“And I thought my life sucked,” he said to the spider. “But yours is a million times worse. You just sit on the ceiling and don’t move all day. You don’t eat, you don’t talk, you don’t watch TV. You got a lady spider somewhere? I don’t think so or you wouldn’t be here. So what the hell is the point?” Carl demanded. “Do you ever wonder why the hell you’re here? What purpose you serve? Who the hell would care if you live or die?”

Carl stared at the spider and got angry as his eyes started to fill with tears. The thing was, he didn’t know if they were for the spider or for himself.

“Who the hell would care if you live or die?” he repeated, staring at the mirror. He drank another beer. He lit another cigarette.

Carl didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until he felt something tickling his forehead. As he groggily returned to consciousness, the smell of acrid smoke jolted him to full wakefulness. He struggled to sit up and angrily brushed whatever was tickling him from his forehead and saw a small, dark object go flying across his bed and then disappear from sight. But there was no time to think about whatever that was as he realized his cigarette must have dropped from his fingers onto the blanket as he slept and was now smoldering on the tattered fabric. Carl jumped up, grabbed the blanket, raced into the bathroom, and flung it into the tub. He turned on the faucet full force and soon, there was no more smoldering, just the malodorous scent of a wet, smoky blanket permeating the apartment.

Carl felt shaky and gripped the sink tightly. He had never fallen asleep while he was smoking. He could have set the whole apartment on fire. He could have died. He was lucky he had woken up in time. That tickle on his forehead. He let go of the sink as his head shot up. The spider! Was it possible? Had the spider saved his life? Carl shook his head. No way. He was sure the spider must still be in his regular perch just above the bed. It was just a coincidence, he assured himself. It must have been a hair on his head that had tickled him into wakefulness. But he wasn’t so sure. The only way to find out was to check the spider’s usual spot.

His heart was pounding. What was wrong with him? It had to be his nerves from nearly burning down his apartment. How could he possibly be worried about a spider? So he forced himself to enter his room and turn on the light. He looked up. Nothing. He looked again. Still nothing. His heart sank. He had smacked his forehead pretty hard when he felt something rustling around there. Whatever had been on his forehead had been whacked across the room. Had he killed it? The spider had most likely saved his life, whether on purpose or inadvertently. Either way, that was some way to repay someone who had just saved his life. Carl heard Molly’s voice in his head, scolding him for acting like such an ungrateful putz, even if she was terrified of spiders.

Carl looked around the ceiling one more time. Still nothing. His eyes roamed over the worn, yellowed sheet on his bed. Nothing. That left the dirt-colored carpet which hid everything that dropped on it and would be especially adept at hiding a Daddy Long Legs, whether dead or alive.

“Please don’t be dead,” Carl said softly. “You do have a purpose. You saved my life, please be alive.” But he was the only thing that moved in that room.

Carl picked up the beer cans, headed to the kitchen, and threw them in the trash can. He grabbed a blanket from the linen closet, trudged back into the bedroom, and sank onto the mattress. He had no idea what program was on the TV, but he kept it on for company. He didn’t fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning and when he did, his dreams were disturbing and confusing. He fell into an endless, dark hole that turned into a tornado in the midst of a thunderstorm. Then a brown and white dog appeared out of nowhere and pulled him out just before he was swept away and they flew through the clouds, looking down at an unfamiliar world that was filled with wild animals and jungles. Molly suddenly appeared and grabbed his cigarettes, tossing them directly into the tornado which burst into flames. He woke up gasping and sat straight up. The room was still dark. He stumbled into the kitchen and got the bottle of faux Coke he had just bought that afternoon from the fridge. He opened it and gulped half of it down before returning it to the fridge. Then he made his way back to his bed. It was still too dark to see anything. But he had to know.

His fingers searched for and then grasped the chain on the lamp. He hesitated. But he had to know.

“Please be alive,” he whispered. “Please let him be alive,” he pleaded to any possible deity who might be listening. “He deserves to live.” Then he pulled the chain.