My first memory is a few foggy visions of a purple dragon in a yellow t-shirt clutched to my chest as I sit between my parents in a cart moving along the rails in pitch darkness. It is one of the most terrifying memories I have, I have more than my fair share, and is at least partially responsible for my dislike of the dark. The funny thing is, it wasn’t in some haunted house, but in the Epcot Center. The dragon I clutched to my chest? Figment the Dragon.

Fears come in all shapes and sizes, but phobias are something beyond. They lack rationality. They control you, even as you’re screaming inside that there’s no reason to be afraid… usually.

Years ago, back when I was still in college, my English professor asked us to write a paper about a moment that defined our lives. Something that made us what we are. Most people wrote about the moment when they knew what they wanted to do with their lives or a happy memory of their family or friends. A chance meeting with a childhood hero. I took a different approach.

Mine wasn’t a singular moment, but a collection of three particular instances that led to my abject terror associated with anything creepy-crawly. Rather than approaching it in a dark and sinister fashion, I attempted to write it in a lighthearted tone, because I know from the outside perspective, that my phobia is ridiculous, even if it’s disturbingly real to me. My teacher praised it for being a unique take on the assignment, and for my use of a comedic tone to cut the tension of a difficult topic. It was the first time I received praise for my creative writing from a professional, rather than friends or family. While I no longer have that paper, I thought I might attempt to recreate a version of it for this post.

The Window

The first of the three incidents that made me who I am occurred at an age so young that I don’t consciously remember it, however, I’ve heard the story a hundred times from my mother. It started early on a cool spring morning. I had woken her before the rest of the family, crying to be fed. My mother obliged, wrapping me snugly in a blanket and carrying me downstairs to the kitchen. My cries dimmed, now that I lay in my mother’s arms. Along the way, she stopped to open the curtains, taking a moment to bask in the dawning sun.

As she approached the final curtain, she paused, head tilting in confusion. The dark curtains shielding the window were… moving?

A few steps closer, and she heard it. A soft hum coming from the window. To her horror, the curtains were already drawn. It was not yards of fabric she saw, blocking out the morning sun, but a floor-to-ceiling window blacked out by thousands upon thousands of flies.

She let out a shriek and bolted from the room, crying for my father.

That was the last day we ever had cloth curtains.

The Christmas Tree

The next moment was many years later and is what I commonly refer to as ‘The Christmas Story’.

My mother loved trees. Plants too. All nature, really. But every year at Christmas, someone would ask why we didn’t get a live tree. The answer was that my mom didn’t believe in murdering a tree just to display its dressed-up corpse for a month. But one year, she had a brilliant idea.

We would get a live tree… in a pot!

We could keep the tree inside for the holidays and, when spring came around, we would plant it in the backyard. It was perfect. Excited, the pair of us immediately ventured forth to the local garden center to adopt our new Christmas tree.

We wandered through a few rows of potted trees before we spotted it. Our tree. It was just the right size to fit in our little house. It was green and healthy and smelled of winter cheer. We bought it right then and there, then spent far too much time trying to figure out how to squeeze the poor thing into a car much too small for it, but we managed. And soon it was home, in a place of pride in the center of our living room.

Over the next several hours, we proceeded to trim the tree from top to bottom. Rows and rows of sparkling lights, draping strings of shining red beads, and treasured ornaments collected over a lifetime. As we finally stepped back to admire our work of art, we heard an odd noise.

A soft buzz.

Concerned, we searched for the source. Was it a faulty light? The mechanical Santa, making his list and checking it twice?

No. It was a wasp, crawling on the wall behind our newest member of the family. I gasped in fear, while my brave, indomitable mother strode forth, swatter in hand, to slay the beast. We breathed a sigh of relief that it couldn’t match her prodigious skill. The fallen enemy was ignobly cast out from our castle, via the porcelain throne. But upon her return from disposing of the villainous scum, we spotted another.

How odd.

It was the middle of winter, and while the weather was often mild, it was still far too cold for the insectoid invaders to awaken. Nonetheless, once again, my dear, sweet, five-foot-tall mother entered the battlefield, while I, her timid offspring remained content to watch and cheer her on from a distance.

It was when we encountered the third hostile intruder that we knew something was very, very wrong. The buzzing was no longer a soft, erratic murmur, but a constant, seething roar that grew with every passing minute. Before my loyal matriarch could shield her feeble spawn once again, the tree erupted.

Hundreds upon hundreds of raging wasps burst from the tree, a whirling cloud of unabating aggression. I, being the loyal and dedicated squire that I was, shrieked and retreated from the battlefield, posthaste. Up the stairs I went, into my room with the door slamming shut behind me. In a blind panic, I shoved everything I could find into the cracks along the door, before diving into bed and cowering beneath the covers. And thus, I did abandon my protector.

Now this tiny woman of faith and fury that exceeded not a hundred pounds, was left alone to face an army.

Faced with no other choice, she seized the pot that weighed twice herself, and heaved and hoed it outside. But she couldn’t stop there. No. For we possessed a canine companion who would need to exit that same door later that evening. So, with immense difficulty, she dragged that tree, wasps buzzing around her, to the farthest corner of the yard, ensuring her family’s safety.

Our Christmas that year was spent forlornly staring out the window at our fully decorated wasp tree.

The Explosion

Some of you may suspect what is coming by the title alone. For you, I suggest you turn back now. You need not further pollute your psyche with such deranged images this tale will conjure. For the rest of you… I apologize in advance for informing you of an arachnoid fact that you had lived a long and blissful life without ever having had to know.

The days were growing hotter as summer approached with the same vigor it always did in our little beachside city. Birds were returning, building their nests within the safety of the boughs of a long-dead evergreen tree that stood in effigy to Christmas Past in our backyard. As the chill of winter fled, so awakened the bugs.

This particular incident occurred one evening, as our family returned home from our weekly Sunday outing. It had become something of a family tradition, between the three of us: my mother, my brother, and I. That day, it had been just an ordinary dinner and movie. Unsuspecting of what awaited us, we opened our front door and kicked off our shoes in the entryway. That was when it happened.

I looked down and saw it.

Perhaps the largest spider I’d ever seen outside an aquarium enclosure at the zoo was staring back up at me. We stood there for a moment, eyes locked, perhaps equally shocked by the giant that suddenly appeared. Then I did the only thing I could.

I screamed.

At the top of my lungs, a shriek to wake the dead. I dove to hide behind my brother, begging him to slay the beast!

My dear elder brother took up his shoe in my defense and did slay the monster that had invaded our beloved home. But our tale of woe did not end here, I’m loathe to say. For it was not alone. Nay, she was not alone.

This was the moment I learned a fascinating tidbit about the Wolf Spider. The females lay their eggs in an egg sac, which they then carry on their abdomen. At any other time, I would have considered this to be an interesting – if disgusting – little factoid. That night, however, it became my living nightmare, for the mother spider exploded into a thousand tiny spiders!

My valiant brother desperately slammed his shoe upon the invading horde, screaming at the top of his lungs, “The Raid, get the Raid!”

Our curious cocker spaniel chose that moment to approach the enemy battalion, at which time I grabbed at her collar, attempting to drag her back into the living room. Meanwhile, my mother returned with the can of Raid, and the pair of them finally finished off the spider army.

Around them, tiny corpses lay scattered across the battlefield. Bludgeoned or poisoned to death. I held onto my dog, crying into her fur, while the pair of them set about the grim task of disposing of the bodies.

Now, I can’t help but eye every spider with suspicion, because where there is one… there could be a thousand.

And thus, is my phobia explained. These are hardly all the instances in which I have been scarred by the creepy-crawlies of the world, but these are the three that have stuck with me. The three that I can point to and say, “See! My irrational fear is perfectly rational!”. Though for some reason, people always laugh when I tell them these stories…