November 18
Holbrook, Arizona
Kevin stopped outside the motel room door and groaned. He needed to brace himself before he went inside. They’d spent three days in a luxurious South Star resort and spending the night here was going to take some getting used to.
The hike from yesterday, the short tour they did today, and the three hour drive to Holbrook, had left him exhausted. Jasmin was still at reception, chatting merrily to the middle-aged man about all the places they could visit while they were here. Kevin couldn’t care less; all he wanted was a bed.
He opened the door and his first instinct was to run in the other direction.
This was the motel room horror films were made of.
Paint was peeling off at the edges of the wall.
And on the topic of paint, the eerie light green very closely resembled the color that coated the inside of an asylum.
People probably went crazy here too. It smelled musty and dusty…
and rusty. Everything looked like it should have been replaced thirty years ago.
The website said this was three stars. Maybe the standards were different here.
He carried their bags inside. The beds were clean. The bathroom was stained, but clean. It would have to do. Besides, the sun was already setting and he wasn’t going to let Jazz drive around at night in an unknown town looking for another place.
Dropping the bags, he walked across the room and fell onto one of the single beds.
The coarse, dark green sheets could cause serious chafing if he moved too suddenly.
He had just begun to relax when something caught his attention, a quick movement at the corner of his eye.
He sat up and looked around, but could see nothing. It could very well be a rat.
Another slight movement to his right took his eyes to the little table between the two beds. He waited and waited, preparing to see a huge rat run across the room. But what he saw…He could’ve in no way prepared himself for what he saw.
Two long, hairy legs came over the edge of the table.
As another two gangly legs came up, he saw its face and then its entire brown, hairy body came into view.
It wasn’t a rat. There was no rat. The rat had probably been hunted and eaten by this monster.
Eight legs. Eight eyes. And a big, hairy behind.
That was a huge motherfucking spider!
So big that Kevin already knew that a rolled up newspaper would be an inadequate defense. Its long legs moved as it slowly inched its way across the surface of the table.
“Oh, hell no!”
He scrambled to his feet, but in his frantic attempt to scurry away, he kicked over the table and now that fucker was on the loose.
He hopped onto the bed, hoping he could spot it easily with an aerial view of the room.
Panic was gushing through him. His fear-stricken eyes were wide, searching the room manically.
Where did it go? What did it plan on doing? Did it like the taste of humans?
As an attempt to lure the beast out of hiding, he grabbed the remote control and tossed it at the toppled table. The noise must have shocked it because it came running out. Despite himself, he screamed, a high-pitched scream that could probably be heard by every guest at the motel.
“Fuck, no!” He hopped from one bed to the other. “Fuck! No!” He took a giant leap, slid into the bathroom, and shut the door.
“Was that you screaming?” Jasmin asked.
Maybe he should have felt embarrassed, but he didn’t. There was a goliath spider lurking in the room and self-preservation was key. No shame in that. He opened the door just a crack. “Pssst! Jasmin, get in here. There’s a big-ass spider in the room.”
“So why are we whispering?”
Didn’t she know that spiders had an acute sense of hearing? “Just get in here!”
“Where is it?” She must have had a death wish because she walked into the room and started searching for it, lifting their bags and checking under the bed. “There you are.”
He watched her gently lift it up, using both hands to cradle it. Shivers ran down his spine and he had suppress a gag.
“Look at this little guy.”
“He’s not little!” Kevin spat. “Do you not see that it’s the size of both your hands?”
“Isn’t he adorable?” she cooed, petting it like it was a poodle.
“I think that’s a relative term. My nieces are adorable. That thing is disgusting! And this is just my own personal rule, but anything with compound eyes doesn’t feature on my cute radar.”
“I don’t know why you’re freaking out. He’s more scared of you than you are of him.”
He cringed, watching how she let it crawl all over her hands. “I hate it when people say that. Did you see him screaming like a girl and running into the bathroom? No, Jasmin. That was me. Now can you get it out of here?”
She seemed too smitten with its grotesqueness to focus on his request. “He’s a giant crab spider, Olios Giganteus. They’re native to Arizona. He’s not poisonous, so you don’t have to worry.”
She went on to give him an entire biology lesson about its habitat, what it ate and even how it mated. Kevin found it fascinating how she could sound so smart while doing something so stupid.
She was completely captivated as she watched its thick, hairy legs hook over two of her fingers. “He really is a beautiful specimen, isn’t he?”
“Aw, Jazz. How touching, and I really hate to be the one to ruin this sentimental moment with common sense, but…there’s a motherfucking SPIDER in your hand!”
She walked closer to the bathroom and he had to fight the urge to slam the door shut again. “Do you want to touch it?”
“No! Get it away from me!”
“Grouch!”
She disappeared for a good few minutes. Saying goodbye was probably heart-wrenching for her. He only came out of the bathroom when he saw her return empty handed.
“Are you happy now?” she asked, glaring at him like he was the bad one. “Scared of a defenseless, little spider.”
“It wasn’t little.” He didn’t know why it was necessary to point that out to her again.
It was called a Giant crab spider. There was a reason for that.
“And yes, I was scared. I’m man enough to admit it.
Your problem is that you’re too na?ve to sense danger.
You see me, on the other hand, I know how to not get dead, and I do that by avoiding big-ass fucking spiders. ”
“Pansy!” She smiled and his lips tilted up in return.
“You wanna order pizza tonight?” he asked. “I could use some comfort food.”
“Yeah.”
She unpacked her toiletries while he made the call to place the order.
It was a rather uneventful evening. The sockets sparked every time they plugged something in, so no movies tonight, and the electrical issues became a real problem when the temperature started to drop.
The lack of heat didn’t bother him, but Jasmin was a shivering mess.
Her teeth chattered as she ate her pizza, and a hot shower after dinner didn’t seem to help her either. The complaints had not stopped and Kevin was a tad irritable when they finally decided to call it a night.
Her bed was only a few feet away from his, which made it impossible to drown out every annoying sound she made. The knocking of her teeth. The constant shuffling of the sheets as she tossed and turned. He was exhausted and he just wanted some peace and quiet.
“Jasmin, can you please settle down and go to sleep?”
“I’m trying.”
She was still for all of two minutes and then the shuffling started again.
“It’s really not that cold.”
“It’s freezing, Kevin.”
More tossing. More turning. More complaints.
“Fuck, Jasmin. Go. To. Sleep!”
“My toes are frozen and my fingers are blue. I can’t even feel them.”
“If you can’t sleep, at least stop moving and stop talking. Just lay there quietly.”
She pulled the covers over her head, but he could still hear her muffled moans of distress. “I can feel my heart rate slowing down. I’m already starting shrivel.”
“Shut up.”
“When your body gets too cold, your enzymes become inactive. It’s only a matter of time before all my organs stop functioning. Goodbye, cruel world.” She coughed dramatically, as if she were really dying. “Jack,” she croaked. “Jack!”
“Are you reenacting Titanic?”
“Jack…I’m so cold.” From there she broke into song. “I’m so cold. I’m so cold…wahoo-ooo. I’ve got this ice-box where my heart—”
“Jasmin, shut up!” He didn’t know whether to laugh or scream in frustration. “You’re so fucking annoying. I can’t deal with you anymore.”
He got out of bed and took his blankets with him. Shaking it out, he laid it neatly over her bed. She popped her head out from under the covers. “What are you doing?”
“Move over.” He lifted the covers and she was still looking at him in utter confusion. “If I have to listen to you for one more second, I’m gonna punch you in the throat. So. Move. Over.”
“There’s your Triple S aggression again.”
She didn’t argue further and shifted as much as she could. It was a single bed so there wasn’t much space once he climbed in behind her.
“Oh, this is nice.” She shifted until her back was flush against his chest, trying to steal as much warmth from him as possible.
“This is what my pick-up line was all about, Kevin. You are now sharing your hotness with me. Heat is naturally flowing from a warm body to a cold one. I love thermodynamics.”
“Me too. Now will you shut up and go to sleep?”
“Yes.” She pulled his arm around her, letting out a small sigh, and he could feel her melting against him.