Love You Dead

113 Saturday 14 March

Norman was woken by his bladder, as he was most nights, and lay confused, trying to figure out where he was. The room was filled with an eerie green glow.

Green digits in the darkness said 3.03 a.m.

His head was pounding.

Where the hell—?

Then he remembered.

He swung his feet out of bed and his toes sank into deep-pile carpet. Steadying himself with his hands, he blinked, staring into the green-hued darkness. Heaving himself upright stark naked, he tottered unsteadily, feeling disoriented, worried he might fall backwards onto the bed.

Finally he trusted himself to take a step forward. Where were the light switches?

He reached down, groping on the bedside table for his phone. Then he found the lamp and the cord attached to it. A short distance along the cord he touched the switch and pressed it. Nothing happened.

The pressure on his bladder was worse now he was standing. The bathroom was dead ahead. He took a few steps and collided with something. A chair. The bathroom door was to the right. He groped his way forward, felt the door, pulled it open and went in, fumbling for the switch. It was to his left, he remembered. But his fingers touched cold, bare tiles. Was it on the right?

He eventually found it and pressed it, and instantly squinted against the bright light and the image facing him in the mirror. The tiny loo was through the door to the right. He pushed it open, went in, saw the light switch on the left and pressed it. Immediately a dim light came on.

He shut the door and lifted the toilet seat, and was about to relieve himself when he noticed what at first looked like a shadow moving down the wall.

Then when he saw what it actually was, he shook with fear.

A furry black spider, the size of his hand with orange markings.

It was staring at him. Creeping slowly down the wall, a thread unspooling behind it from the ceiling, as if it was abseiling. It was level with his face now. No more than a foot from his face.

Breaking into a cold sweat, he moved back as far as he could, his head pressing against the wall behind him, looking frantically for a weapon. Was there a toilet plunger?

All he could spot was the toilet-roll holder.

He could see bristles on the creature’s abdomen. And its eyes. Eight black, shiny beads staring at him, fearless, hungry, angry.

He moved a hand to his right, towards the toilet roll.

Rivulets of perspiration ran down his body. He tried to call to Jodie for help. But no sound came out.

He tried again.

But his voice was paralysed by fear.

He stared into the eyes. His hand touched the toilet roll. Tried to free it but it wouldn’t move. The spider crawled down another few inches. Instinctively he covered his penis and testicles with his left hand, and yanked hard on the toilet roll. Suddenly, with a loud clatter, it came free and dropped down between the wall and the toilet seat.

Then, like an acrobat, the spider swung on its thread away from the wall and straight at him, its hairy, spiky legs clamping onto his face.

He screamed. Shook in terror. Screamed again. Again. Again. Shook. Shook. Trying to shake the bloody thing off. A thousand pinpricks stabbed his skin simultaneously.

‘HELP ME! HELP ME!’

Suddenly, all he could see was a weak green glow.

The dial of the clock. 4.07 a.m.

He lay back in the bed, the sheets sodden with his perspiration, gulping air. And bursting to have a pee.

For some moments he fought it off, still filled with stark terror from the nightmare. He reached out his hand, found the bedside lamp cable, then switched it on. Instantly the room flooded with light. He stared fearfully up at the ceiling and the walls. At a framed oil painting of a rainy Parisian street scene. At another framed painting of a Provençal village.

He slipped out of bed and crossed over to the bathroom, pulled the door open warily, found the light switch and turned it on. He peered around before entering, then, even more warily, pushed open the loo door. He took a step in, snapping on the light and looking up at the ceiling and around at the walls and the floor.

There was nothing in there.

All the same, he was as fast as he could be, then went back out, shutting the door firmly, before rinsing his hands and going back into the bedroom, shutting that door firmly, too.

He climbed back into bed, wide awake and too scared to go back to sleep.

It seemed only moments later that his alarm was beeping and the room was flooded with daylight.

He was too relieved to notice his head pounding from all the Armagnac he had drunk the previous night.