Broken Promise

The garage door swung open revealing mostly empty space. When Donald Adgson went in to retrieve the lawn mower from the far corner, he noticed that a fair share of unwanted guests had been artfully redecorating the otherwise unsightly space. Stretching from the mower handle to the ceiling he saw several thin lines of silk. Upon closer inspection, he could see the silk had been wrapped several times around the thin metal handle. Showing no signs of care, he pulled the mower quickly in his direction. Rather than breaking, the silk lines expanded, causing Donald to pull even harder on the mower. It seemed that the harder he pulled, the stronger the silk became, and even when he had pulled the mower out of the garage altogether, the silk remained intact.

Not wanting the web to stick to his skin, he reentered the garage to fetch the pruning shears. Donald would not allow himself to be defeated by little insects no matter how many legs they had. Recklessly he yanked the shears off the wall, upset that he was devoting extra time to this tedious task. On his way out of the garage, he noticed something even more discouraging than the powerful strands that had captured his mower. Along the rubber trim at the bottom of the metal door there were at least a half-dozen spiders, each with its own web, each with small spherical ornaments hanging from the silk strands. At first he thought the ornaments were simply captured flies, but it quickly occurred to him that he was probably staring at thousands of spiders, all rolled up into small eggs. Even more disturbing, the visible spiders that hung close to the nests were carrying large domes on their backs, indicating even more eggs on the way.

“What is this? Charlotte’s Web?” Donald muttered to no one in particular.

Donald tossed the shears to the ground and turned around to search for another weapon. Hanging on the wall he saw an axe, a broom, and a rake. He opted for the rake. The perfect combination of power and meekness. Its steel claws would outmatch the spiders and their webs while leaving little to no damage on the garage door. The broom would have been too messy, trying to remove all the silk and guts from the mass of bristles. The axe was just a bad idea.

While his neighbors watched suspiciously, Donald wreaked havoc upon the colonies of spiders that had housed themselves without permission in his garage. He didn’t really mind spiders, but they had no right to be on his property. The scratching of the metal teeth of the rake upon the metal garage door resonated throughout his garage and bounced into the streets, causing more and more neighbors to come to their windows or front doors to see what this crazy man was up to.

“Stupid spiders,” he muttered continuously as he bashed the rake against the door. Some he easily captured, but others found ways to run between the teeth. The eggs did not move, but they were so small that he had trouble pulling some of them off their sticky webs.

“Daddy, what are you doing?” a voice cried from his driveway, a voice so sweet and innocent that he had to stop what he was doing and explain to the child.

“I am cleaning up the spider problem,” he told his daughter in his most soothing voice, a dramatic change from his accusatory shouts of angst directed at the spiders.

He expected that his young daughter, five years old, would be pleased with her brave father for saving her from all of the evil spiders. But rather she wept.

“Daddy, leave those poor spiders alone. They are just trying to live.”

This certainly was not the reaction he expected or hoped for from the young girl.  He may have been a bitter, cynical, and impatient man, but his one weakness was his daughter.

“Sophie, honey, I need to get rid of these spiders,” he said as he lowered the rake to show that no harm was being done. ”They may be poisonous, and, besides, I think there are eggs up here. If I don’t take care of this we are going to have hundreds of spiders.”

“Baby spiders?” Sophie perked up, her voice squeaking in excitement.  “Babies are so cute.  Daddy, we should take them inside the house and care for them.”

He hadn’t thought that she would play this angle. He had figured that the threat of hundreds of spiders crawling around would terrify his daughter, but she seemed not to possess the natural human aversion to eight-legged creatures. Rather than reason with her, he thought he had just better scare her into hating the spiders.

“Honey,” he said calmly to counter her excitable tone, “if I don’t take these spiders somewhere else, then they will get in our house and they will crawl anywhere they want. They will crawl on you when you sleep and bite you and maybe even slide into your mouth while you snore.”

“I don’t snore, Daddy.” An apprehensive look overtook Sophie’s previously delighted face. ”Will they really bite me? That’s not very nice.”

“Of course they will bite you. Spiders hate people even more than people hate spiders. When I was your age, a whole nest of spiders attacked me. I wasn’t doing anything to harm them. I was just like you, trying to make friends. They wouldn’t have any of it. I don’t mind them now because I am an adult, but I need to get rid of them to protect you.” Donald felt a little uneasy about telling his daughter such lies, for he had always promised himself growing up that he would never revert to a “when I was your age” story like his father always did. But sometimes you just had to do things you didn’t want to do to get what you wanted. And right now he wanted to get those spiders away from his house while keeping a smile on his daughter’s precious face. After telling her the story, he raised the rake and gently started to sweep the spiders away, keeping the metal upon metal scratch as silent as he could to show that no harm was done.

“Daddy?” Her voice made him lower the rake again, and he looked into his daughter’s widened and hopeful eyes.

“Yes sweetie?”

“Promise me you won’t hurt them.”

He grimaced slightly, an expression he hoped she was too young to interpret. He hated lying to his daughter, and even more he hated promising something he knew he couldn’t keep. It would be unfeasible to remove all of these spiders without hurting them. Certainly the simple act of transporting the delicate sack of baby spiders would destroy all of them.

“I’ll do my best,” he told he with a wink, a gesture that always brought her a little bit of joy.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she whooped as she rushed to him and jumped into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he lifted her high but not high enough to see the spiders. She planted a firm kiss on his cheek and said, “Okay, put me down Daddy. I am going to go tell Mommy that you saved baby spiders.”

He watched his darling daughter sprint from his arms to the house. When he was sure she was inside and not watching his actions, he carelessly removed the rest of the spiders and eggs, and then swept the whole army of creepy bugs into the grass adjacent to the garage, on the neighbor’s side of course. He then proceeded to put the rake away, retrieve the shears, free his mower from the web, and mow his modest lawn while his daughter occasionally peaked out the window to watch he hero.

“Where are the spiders? Are they okay? Did you see any babies yet?” Sophie fired off a barrage of questions as soon as he reentered the home after his hours in the hot sun cleaning up the yard.

At first Donald didn’t recall what his daughter was talking about, and she must have been able to read his inquisitive face, for she followed up by asking, “You didn’t hurt them with the rake, did you Daddy?”

Now he remembered. What were they teaching her in kindergarten anyway that made her think that spiders were her friends? They should teach her to loathe those stupid insects. He certainly had not taught her to be compassionate towards inferior life forms.

“The spiders are fine,” he told her. ”But I am not going to tell you where I put them because I don’t want you to go playing with them.” He felt relief as he told her this. It wasn’t really a lie, other than the part about them being fine. He was sure they weren’t fine. He doubted they could withstand being swept harshly with a metal rake. He had seen several of the eggs smashed flat on the ground himself. He just hoped his daughter wouldn’t stumble upon the pile of spider guts he had swept into his neighbor’s yard.

Sophie seemed satisfied with his answer, hugged and kissed her Daddy for being so brave and so kind at the same time, and then scampered off to the kitchen to play with her mother. Donald went upstairs, removed his dirty clothes, and took a refreshing shower while his wife and daughter prepared dinner.

In bed that night Donald was rudely awoken at three in the morning by gentle tickling that he assumed was from his wife and was not appreciated on a work night. ”That’s enough, honey,” he whispered groggily to the woman sleeping soundly beside him. When she didn’t respond and he still felt the tickling, he assumed his weary mind was just playing tricks on him, so he laid his head back on his pillow and tried to fall back to sleep.

The jarring of his body up and down must have triggered the rapid increase in the tickle. He felt it running up and down both legs and on his back as well. His wife could not possibly be causing so much sensation in his body, and he wondered if maybe he had been infected with poison ivy while working in the yard today. He jerked his arm back and attempted to scratch whatever itch was ailing him. When his hand arrived at one of the many itches that were rapidly overtaking his body, he felt an unwelcome visitor on his back. His hand quickly retreated from his back and shot to the bedside lamp. With no regard for his sleeping wife, he flicked the switch and allowed the light to burst into his eyes, forcing them closed. Even without his sight, he quickly flipped himself over onto his back and flung the sheets off his barely covered body.

When his eyes had the adjusted strength to open and face the light, he looked upon his body and found dozens and dozens of tiny spiders crawling harmlessly all over him. Although they did not bite him, he jumped up from the bed and began brushing and slapping his body, much to the chagrin of his roused wife. “What are you doing?” she asked him impatiently.

“Spiders!” was all he could utter in response, an utterance so loud that it sent Sophie rushing in to see what was wrong.

“Daddy, don’t hurt them,” she shouted as she witnessed her father slapping his body hard to snuff out their young lives.

“They’re everywhere,” he managed to gasp, spiders seemingly overtaking his body.

“Get in the shower and wash them off,” his wife screamed, now realizing that her bedroom had been invaded by hundreds of unwanted legs.

Donald rushed for the shower, turned the water to scalding hot, and burned the spiders off his burning body.

When he returned several minutes later, his body bright red from the heat, he found his wife holding a crying Sophie. “He promised he wouldn’t hurt them,” she muttered over and over through her sobs.

“It’s okay honey, it’s okay,” the mother assured the girl.

At that moment, it occurred to Donald that his daughter had found those spider eggs and brought them into the house. ”Sophie,” he began soothingly, “did you bring spider eggs into the house?”

“Daddy, you said you wouldn’t hurt them. I found them by the garage after dinner. Most of them were smashed. There was only one left that I could save.”

“Why did you bring them in the house? I told you they were dangerous.”

“They’re just babies, Daddy, and I put them in your room so they couldn’t get to me.”

Donald didn’t know whether to laugh or yell at his daughter’s naïve innocence. He picked up his little angel and held her in his hot arms. As he held her, he noticed a small spider crawling on the floor towards the bed. Making sure his daughter wasn’t looking, he softly stomped his bare foot upon the spider, smiling as he protected her in his warm arms.

Nathaniel Tower writes fiction, teaches English, and manages the online lit magazine Bartleby Snopes. His short fiction has appeared in over 50 online and print magazines. A story of his, “The Oaten Hands,” was named one of 190 notable stories by storySouth‘s Million Writers Award in 2009. His first novel, A Reason To Kill, is due out in July 2011. Visit him at http://www.bartlebysnopes.com/ntower.htm.