Scary Roommate #1

There is a long, convoluted thought behind this decision, and I'm not sure why I think anyone might be interested...but I'm going ahead with it anyway. You'll have to follow along for the next few weeks for this to really make sense because it's much too long to put down in one post.

So I'm starting off tame and ending up crazed, and your job is to tell me if you recognize where the real life event I relate was fictionalized and put into one of my books.

Or maybe more than one of my books!

All these mini stories are true, and all have to do with places I've, uh, resided.

This week's story takes place in a garage. This was no converted garage. It was your basic, swing-up door variety, with not even a service sink, let alone bathroom.

If you're wondering what in the world I was doing, living in a garage, well, I'll just simplify it by saying, Hard times.

There are no nightlights in garages. I guess I could have rigged something up, but I kept telling myself I wasn't staying. I had a desk lamp that I'd switch on, but other than that, it was me, some basic supplies, a backpacking mat and a down sleeping bag.

Oh.

And a black widow spider.

Just one.

I think.

The garage was actually fairly new, and the only junk in it was me and my minimal stuff. And at first I didn't know about the spider because it wouldn't show itself when the door was up. But one morning I did notice it, and boy did it freak me out. I slept with that monster dangling above me? It wasn't, like, lurking in a corner. It was right there! Above my sleeping bag! It could have dropped down and...and...creepy-crawled all over me! Or, what if I was sleeping on my back with my mouth open?

Aaaaaaagh!

I t tried to catch it. Or, you know, smash it. But I didn't exactly have a broom or long-handled weapon to work with and the sneaky booger got away.

I stuffed my bag back in its sack, worried that it would otherwise crawl inside it and lay in wait while I was away. (I had developed a phobia of black widows long before this garage--developed over the years by them dropping out of attics and roof tiles and air conditioning units.Oh. And there was the one that dropped out of the workstation at a hair salon right past my knee!) Anyway, when I came back that night I checked all over for the spider and it was nowhere to be found. I went to bed, but the garage was pitch black when the light was off, so I would never be able to see if it was rappelling down it's sticky thread to come chomp on me. So I kept clicking on the light, kept checking the rafters. Eventually I fell asleep, but in the morning when my alarm went off and I clicked on the light, there it was again, dangling overhead.

Aaaaaaaagh!

To make a very long, sleepless story short, I never did catch that sneaky spider. Instead, I moved out.

To where I'll tell you next week. For now, recognize anything in this story?