With Halloween around the corner I couldn’t resist! Please don’t let this story get under your skin. This is the lighthearted, macabre story of our little friend, the Brown Recluse spider.

I could feel it crawling on me. It’s tiny legs tickling with every shift in it’s movement. I began crying, “Please get it off me!”

The Brown Recluse spider has long been the enemy of my family. My father taught me to check beneath the sheets before I slithered under them. I check between the quilt and sheet also. I often slept in a thick wool sweater, tucked into a pair of snakebite-proof hunting denims.

I checked the clothes thoroughly for spiders before wearing them. Some think it’s all in my head but I believe everyone on my mothers side has a Brown Recluse somewhere on them. It hides in your hair and crawls over your body while you sleep.

A twisted chill of sickening grotesqueness crawled across my skin and twitching spasms undulated through my spine – tickling chills of tiny legs. I jerked my arms to shake loose any spiders who may have poor footing. My mother told me they are wherever you can’t see them. Turn your eyes away for just a second and there it is.

My mother received a horrible bite Christmas morning in 1999. The bite was just above her kneecap. The highly toxic venom kills all the surrounding flesh, leaving a vile, black sore. No scab ever forms and pus drizzles from the horrid, rotting flesh. Gruesome necrotic tissue outlined the blackened ulceration, encrusting her entire thigh.

The stomach wrenching, fetid stench egressing from the dead flesh made me gag upon inhaling it’s fragrance. My mother told me long ago, “Wherever on your body or head you most fear being bitten is where you will receive it.”

I most feared being bitten on the face. Everyday, Mom took ten pictures of me as each could be the last of my pristine image.

I didn’t want ghastly sores on my face. Please get it off me! Tears streamed from my lachrymal ducts as I cried ferociously. Please…get it off me. I could feel one on the back of my neck, it felt like a Black Widow but I knew it was a Recluse. I could feel the weight of it’s thick, juice filled body.

I looked in the mirror, I was covered in hundreds…millions of rigid spider legs, dancing across the horizons of my flesh…PLEASE GET THEM OFF ME!

The brown recluse awakened, realizing this entire ordeal was just a pleasant dream. “What a beautiful, crisp morning” he thought, “What a lovely day for sweet, tender flesh.”

I wrote this ghastly little tale for Christy’s Freaky Friday’s project (from Christy’s Coffee Break). Here are some important facts we should all know about this extremely poisonous spider:

To identify the Brown Recluse you 1st look at it’s head. Look closely and you’ll see the shape of a violin at it’s base.

Outside, they can be found in firewood piles, leaves, or under piles of rocks. Indoors you may find them in dark closets, shoes, cluttered basements or attics. The Brown recluse is also known as “fiddleback” spider. They may hide under bedding or in clothes, so be sure to check everything! Never use a bedskirt as it gives them an easy climb.

The picture is from: www.desertusa.com

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