It stares at Me

It stares at me. It stares at me day and night. I can feel it’s eyes on me while I work, watching quietly, judging me. It never speaks, never moves- it just stares. If it would even leave for a few minutes, go off to the corner to take a nap, I could breathe easily. However, he is ever vigilant in his post, never wavering.

There is a spider staring at me.

It’s a cute spider. He has big, button-like black eyes that shine down at me. His fragile golden body is thinner than an angel hair pasta. Looking at him, you can see the outline of his spindly legs as the light passes through.

And the spider doesn’t do anything wrong. He doesn’t harass the Water Cooler Ants, he doesn’t spastically run around my desk, he’s not building a web. He just stares. All day long.

I am not that interesting of a person when I work. The most I do is talk on the phone a lot. The phrase most people hear out of my mouth is my name being spelled over and over. Pike was much simpler.

My friend, the spider, is not even interested in my peanut butter. If I was a spider, the first thing I would do would be to leap into the vat of creamy goodness. Not this spider- he turns his nose up at the peanut butter. He would rather stare some more.

Then I thought he might be dead. So I gently poked the area next to him. He scuttled over a few steps, still staring. He obviously was not bothered by my red pen.

What could make this spider stare at me? I thought to myself. Does he think I’m a giant bug? Does he think I’m a mountain? Is he simply a bit slow in the head?

So one day, I asked him.

“Why are you staring at me, Mr. Spider,” I whispered, trying not to alert my co-workers to my insanity. “I don’t understand.”

The spider just stared at me. There was no movement, no flickering of understanding.

“Fine,” I said, “I’ll stare back.”

Squinting my eyes, I pushed all my mental power towards the spider. I made faces at him, I glared, and I stared. The spider did not move. He just kept staring. Frustrated, I threw up my hands and went back to work.

At the end of the day, I organized my best and turned off the computer. After I left, the spider blinked and crawled back to his corner.

“I win,” he said to himself contently, exhausted from staring. “I won. She blinked.”