Back in the fall of 2003, my friend Diana and I moved into a huge house over in Little 5 Points.  She had just graduated from college, and I was working at GSU.  Our friend Cynthia moved in with us for a week or two, then left for South America.  It was an interesting time for a variety of reasons.  The place was huge and the landlady was completely insane.

I’ve long known Di was afraid of spiders, but it was our first week living together when I got to experience that first hand.  We had returned from a night at Highlander, and I had just drifted off into sleep, when I was awoken by a scream.  Not an “eeek!” scream, but a full throated bloodcurdling scream of primal terror.  I stumbled out of bed, convinced a bunch of zombie Crips were chainsawing through the front door.  I was met in the hallway by Diana, nearly incoherent with terror.

Turns out, there was a spider in her room.  Not the kind of spider that almost ate the hobbits in the last Lord of the Rings movie.  No, this spider was about 1.5 inches across total.  Two inches, tops.  It wasn’t lunging at her with poison dripping from its fangs.  It was just sitting there.  I smooshed it, flushed it, and headed back to bed.  The last I saw of Diana that night, she was sitting on her bed, legs curled up to her chest, eyes darting around the room searching for the next eight legged beast to attack her.

Fast forward a few months to the night of October 13th.  Our friend Wes came over and we hung out drinking and chatting.  I went to bed at a semi-reasonable hour, since I had work in the morning.  Wes and Diana stayed up late drinking like good unemployed peoples.

I woke up for work in the morning, went in to my bathroom to take a shower, and saw this in the doorway:

In the doorway from my room to the hallway I also saw this:

Finally, in the hall I saw this:

Diana, terrified of spiders, had persuaded Wes to do the dirty work for her, but not to dispose of the body.

Happy Birthday Diana! 🙂