SPIDERS

                                                                     CHAPTER ONE      

         “Hello. I’m Doctor Sanderson. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

         “That’s alright. I’m kinda used to waiting in doctor’s offices.”

         “You are? I’m very sorry to hear that. I’ll try to make sure it never happens again. At least, not in my office.” Doctor Sanderson paused long enough to take a seat behind the large maple desk. “Okay then? Let’s see here. Your name is Tom Sibel, and you were referred to this office by a Doctor Kenneth Mathews, is that correct?”

         “Yeah. I’d only been seeing him since we moved here a couple a months ago, but he had to close his practice for personal reasons. Actually, it was Saint Sister Mary of Croix Hospital that referred me.”

         “And it says here that you are recovering from a head injury?”

         “A closed-head injury, to be exact. My third!”

         “Your third? My god! How did this all come about?”

        The man sitting in front of Tom Sibel looked to be the typical stereotype of psychologists found in most popular fiction. Wearing a brown suede jacket – one size too small – with patches on the elbows, Dr. Sanderson appeared awkwardly overweight. His unkempt, graying, scraggly beard was in sharp contrast to the few strands of left-side parted hair failing to cover the overwhelming baldness on the right.

         “Isn’t it all there in the chart, doctor? I been electrocuted twice, as well.”

         Doctor Sanderson flipped the three pages inside Tom Sibel’s new patient folder several times: as if the action would force the appearance of the missing information.

         “I don’t seem to have anything except the personal profile that you completed in the waiting room today. Just a minute. Did you say electrocuted? Twice?”

                                                                                         [1]  

         “Jesus Christ, Doc! I had to wait three weeks just to get in to see you, and I don’t want to spend the next three sessions going over my medical history. I told the goddamned nurse at the hospital that I was a new patient, and she promised that she would make the necessary arrangement to have everything sent here.”

         Dr. Sanderson, eyes furrowed in fake deliberation, pulled softly at the tuft of hair beneath his lip. “Now, did you give her all the necessary information regarding addresses and telephone numbers of your previous treating physicians?”

         “I sure as hell did. All nine of ‘em, Doctor Sanderson. Faxes too!”

         “Nine? Did you say nine?”

         “Sshhtt! If you consider all three closed-head injuries together, then I guess nine isn’t really all that many now, is it?”

         Doctor Sanderson paused to consider the situation. Frustration was evident in his voice. “Well, I will not make you wait another three weeks before I see you. Even if I did, there is still no guarantee that your records would even get here by then.” He paused for effect. “Why don’t we just go over the information you’ve given here, and then we’ll see what we can do about the rest, later. How does that sound?”

         “Thanks, Doctor Sanderson. Thanks a lot.” The weight of Tom’s original concern began to lessen. “I’m sorry if I came across the wrong way, but I really needed to see someone soon. You see, these dreams are beginning to tear my family apart, and—”

         “Hold on there, Tom. You’re getting way ahead of yourself, and way ahead of us. By the way, do you mind if I call you Tom? It makes things a little less sterile, and a little more personal.”

         “Oh, okay. I didn’t mean to… um, yeah, call me Tom.”

                                                                                         [2]

         “Okay then, Tom. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? You have an hour, or more if necessary, so why don’t you just lie down there, and answer a few questions for me. Okay?”

         If Tom had not known any better – and who was to say that he had – he would have sworn that he had drifted into a college textbook scenario, or a 1950s Metro Goldwin studio film. 

         The room was larger than necessary, and lined with books on three walls – floor to ceiling. Tom recognized this as Doctor Sanderson’s effort to impress his colleagues, while introducing confidence into the fears and trepidations harbored by his mental patients, because, after all, any person this well-read must surely be competent in his profession. Upon further consideration, Tom decided to let the books serve as a personal warning to be on his guard at all times: he knew that no man could ever read all those books, and he did not trust anybody so pretentious as to attempt to deceive in such a subtle manner.

         The fourth wall, complete with three pairs of French doors, overlooked Lake Missaukee from a sloping grassy fifty-foot elevation. Although Tom was sure that the watery view was intended to suppress violent tendencies while inspiring a false sense of safety and calm, he also knew that the doctor could not possibly have planned for the endless summers of draught, and too many too-mild winters. The water had receded nearly seventy-five feet from the shore’s cement retaining wall, leaving gray mud, dead fish, and rotting seaweed in the immediate view. This combination of refuse produced a foul odor noticeable from the parking lot, which explained Doctor Sanderson’s refusal to open a single window on such a beautiful, sunny day.

                                                                                         [3]

           A single floor lamp glowed in the corner behind Doctor Sanderson’s desk, and Tom thought it irresponsible of the doctor to waste electricity. In front of the desk sat two antique oaken chairs with green leather padding: one of which Tom currently occupied.

         The only other pieces of furniture present were the twin four-drawer filing cabinets, and the black leather fainting-couch used by Doctor Sanderson’s patients.

         “You want me on the couch, doctor? Now?”

         “Unless you’re more comfortable here. Whichever you prefer.”

         “Well, if you’re not gonna be able to help me today, I guess I’ll just sit here.”

         “Now, hold on a minute, Tom. I did not say that I would not help you. Quite the contrary. I want to help you in any way I am able, but first I need to make sure that what I have here accurately pertains to you.”

         Tom rose from his seated position in front of the desk, walked to the only door not made of glass, and opened it.

         “Look out there, doctor. Do you see anyone else? Huh? Is there anyone else in your waiting room that you would confuse me with?”

         “I’m sorry, Tom. I do not understand.”

         Waggling his left index finger in a circular motion above his head, Tom blinked in utter contempt for the man not able to follow his lead. “You don’t have a single patient here, other than me. Right? And you told your receptionist that she could leave for lunch. Isn’t that also correct? So tell me, doctor, how could you possibly confuse what I have written on those pages as information belonging to anybody else? Huh? Can you tell me that?”

                                                                                         [4]

         The chair squeaked as Doctor Sanderson leaned back. Holding his hands fingertip to fingertip, as if praying in church, he responded with badly feigned regret. 

         “I’m very sorry, Tom. You are right. There is no one else here that I could confuse this information with, but I must admit that is not really my agenda here. You see, by going over these papers in a question-and-answer exchange, we open a dialogue with one another, and begin a trail of trust. Do you understand what I mean? We have to start somewhere, so why not start here?”

         Having noticed the condescension in Doctor Sanderson’s ten-second lecture, Tom lashed out verbally. “Because I already know that I’m Tom Sibel, I’m five-foot six, one hundred and sixty pounds, sandy red hair, I’m near-sighted…” to accentuate his point, Tom tugged at his wire rimmed glasses, and then shook them, “… I have a beard that needs trimming, a wife that needs closure, and a seven-year-old daughter that needs her daddy back. I was born in 1961, in Dearborn, Michigan, and I now live in Lake City, although I couldn’t give you two god-dammed good reasons that make any sense as to why we ever moved here: except that my wife’s family goes back a couple hundred generations, and she thought it would be a nice place for me to recover. NOW! Does that about cover it?”

         Pretending to follow along on the papers as Tom spouted specifics, Doctor Sanderson handled this tirade with the calm of a seasoned professional. Rising from his rolling desk chair, he motioned to the fainting couch with a warm gesture of invitation. “Well now. I guess that about sums it up nicely, Tom. Is there anything else that you want to tell me before we begin?”

                                                                                         [5]      

         “Yeah! Let’s just skip the patented where-are-you-now-and-what-part-of-reality-do-you-relate-to questions. Okay? It’s Thursday, September 2, 2003, George W. Shrub stole the presidency, before him it was Clinton getting blowjobs in the White House, and before that it was Shrub Senior and his asinine Thousand Points of Light. Are you with me, doctor? Right now, we’re unofficially at war with Iraq for oil, and I don’t want to put any of those damned cartoon frames in their proper chronological order or count numbers backwards.” Assured that the doctor was not paying close attention, Tom paused for effect. “What I do got, doc, if it’s of any interest to you, is spiders in my head.”

         Doctor Sanderson was impressed. “Okay then, Tom. It sounds like you have already been through the usual barrage of introductory reality checkpoints, so why don’t you just…… you got what in your where?”

         Tom leaned his head back, and then laughed sarcastically. “I was wondering if you were paying attention to me, Doc.” For greater effect, he rose from his seat, and, forming a gun with his right hand, Tom pointed the index-finger barrel at his temple. “I said: I got spi-ders in…my…head!” Lowering his thumb, Tom executed a faux firing.

         Doctor Sanderson had trained himself for many years to avoid sudden adverse reactions to any statements made by his patients, no matter how bizarre. As a general practice, he would simply stroke his beard, or tug at the whiskers just beneath his lower lip, until the statements sunk in.

         “Hmmmm. Spiders in your head, you say? You are speaking figuratively, are you not?”

         Tom responded first by shaking his head slowly, in disbelief. “I thought that was the reason I was here. Aren’t you supposed to figure that out for me?”

                                                                                         [6]

         “Hmmmm.” Doctor Sanderson decided to avoid the question, thereby avoiding an answer that Tom surely would not want to hear. Instead, he continued with a diversion.

         “Now, you said something earlier about dreams, Tom. Are these spiders that you talk about the same as those in your dreams?”

         Tom returned to his seat. Leaning forward, he calmed his voice, and returned the condescension. “Hold it, Doc! I may be losing my grip on reality, but I think I would know if I physically had spiders in-side-my-head. Do you think I would be standing in front of you right now, walking and talking, if I truly had spiders in-side-my-head?”

         Doctor Sanderson felt the tides of control shifting back. Practiced self-righteousness oozed from his lips, and bit at Tom’s ears. “Now, remember Tom: you came to me. Isn’t that right? I am the doctor, and you are the person with a problem that needs to be unraveled. Now, I’m going into this thing blind, with no personal information or medical history. You have to allow me to ask questions no matter how silly they may sound. Is that agreeable to you?”

         “No! It’s not a-gree-a-bull to me. You don’t understand, Doctor Sanderson. You couldn’t possibly.”

         “You are correct, Tom. I cannot understand. That is, not until you help me a little bit. Now, I do understand that there was a mix up of documents—”

         “Not a mix-up: a Fuck-up.”

         Doctor Sanderson continued as if no interruption had taken place. “… and we are both in the dark here. I know nothing about you, your head-injuries, your history with these dreams, or your current state of mind.” Doctor Sanderson paused to raise his eyebrows, and lower his chin, as he peered over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses to accentuate his point. 

                                                                                         [7]

         “On the other hand, you don’t know the first thing about my practice, my methods, or me. Therefore, I think this places us both in a precarious situation regarding trust: and that is where we must begin. Trust. Somehow, we have to find a common ground for the basis of that trust, or we cannot proceed. Do you agree, Tom?”

         In a brief moment of consideration, Tom realized that Doctor Sanderson was not the person at fault regarding his tardy medical records. Furthermore, he began to understand his own responsibility in this mix-up because he had never bothered to check on the progress of his records transfer after the initial request. In silent defeat, he extended his right hand. 

         “You’re right, Doctor Sanderson. I was getting a bit ahead of myself. I guess it’s not your fault that I got spiders in my head.”

         Doctor Sanderson shook Tom’s hand. “Okay then, Tom. Do you see now what I was saying earlier? Since we have no history together, we must decide where to begin. 

Unfortunately, our fated beginning was a moment of confusion that, fortunately, has now passed.” He motioned to the couch with a sweeping gesture of his left arm. “Now, would you care to lie down?”

         “Thank-you, Doctor Sanderson. Yes. I would like that very much.”

         Tom decided that the fainting couch was much more comfortable than it had first appeared. With his feet crossed, and hands behind his head, he drew a deep breath through his mouth, and then released it slowly through his nose.

         “Say, Doctor Sanderson. If you want this to be personal, like you said, then tell me something, will ya?”

         “That all depends, Tom. What do you wish to know?”

         “I was just wondering what your first name is.”

         Hidden from Tom’s view, Doctor Sanderson wore a wry smile of self-satisfaction as he answered, “Doctor!”

                                                                                         [8]

                                                                   CHAPTER TWO

         Three days after his first meeting with Dr. Sanderson, Tom felt no better about his life than he did going in. The dreams had continued uninterrupted, and the ninety minutes he wasted with the good doctor had come to nothing. Sitting in his Lazy Boy, near the crooked bay window of the two-level Victorian style house he had purchased two months previous, Tom considered his options.

         Three psychiatrists within the last year had all told him the same thing. Either he had to check himself into a ward at one of the many local hospitals, or he had to begin to deal with his problems honestly. His thoughts were suddenly interrupted.

         “AHHHHHH! TOM! Come quick. Come quick. OHHHHH! Get it! Get it!”

         The familiar scream from Nethia, his wife of ten years, signaled another minor catastrophic event taking place in the kitchen.

         “Tom Sibel! You get in here this minute!”

         “Coming, dear. Coming.”

         In an attempt to appear urgent, Tom pounded his feet as he walked. The sound of the loose floorboards echoed his movements into an implied hurried attitude.

         “What’s a matter, Nethia? Wha’d I do now?”

         “Get your ass over here. Look! Look! It’s another G-D spider. It’s huge!”

         Before approaching the area indicated by his wife’s glare, Tom snapped a paper towel from the roll on the counter.

         “Okay. Okay. Where is it?”

         “Right there! On the sink! IT’S LOOKING AT ME!”

                                                                                          [9]    

         Tom chuckled to himself: yet not completely. A slight grin sitting on the left corner of his lips had betrayed the sarcasm in his thoughts. It was the reason that Nethia smacked his shoulder as he passed. 

         “You wipe that grin off your face, mister. It is too looking at me.”

         “Aw, come on now, Nethy. It’s so small: how can you tell where his eyes even are?”

         “SMALL? You call that small? It’s the biggest one yet. Just kill it. Please.”

         With his shoulders raised, and head hunched down, Tom began stalking the spider as if sneaking in camouflage. “I’ll protect you M’Lady. Stand back.”

         “Don’t let it jump. Be careful. You’re gonna miss it again, and it’ll hide down there behind the stove with the rest of em.”

         “Shhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. We’eh hunting jumping Spida’s wiff eyes.” Tom’s Elmer Fudd impersonation did nothing to relax his wife.

         “It was too looking at me. Ewww…. just kill it and stop messing around.”

         Tom knew that Nethia was right. Many a spider had escaped his attack by jumping to safety. Somehow, the spiders he had encountered since moving into this house seemed to be able to sense his movements. Nevertheless, in light of the fact that his wife had just advised him not to miss, Tom knew that if this one escaped, he would be on the receiving end of her frustration.

         “Okay, honey. Okay. I’ll take care of it.”

         “Watch it. It’s moving. It sees you coming.”

         Eerily, Nethia seemed tuned into the event in ways Tom could not appreciate. As he approached, the spider did indeed seem to turn to watch its would-be assassin.

         “Jeez. Did you see that, Nethy? It almost looks like it IS watching me.”

         “I told you! They do!”

                                                                                         [10]