Wolfgang

You want to know about the spider, don’t you? It’s okay, everyone does. I don’t mind, really. It’s just tough to know where to start, and my memory’s not the greatest these days… I guess it all started with a joint…

I had just dropped out of college, halfway through my fourth year. Apparently attendance is important all the time, and not just on test days. I hadn't smoked weed in months, having distanced myself from it after my second year in college and a painfully obsessive relationship with a crazy hot chica who'd introduced me to it. It would be easy to say that smoking weed was the reason behind my dropping out, but it wouldn’t be entirely true. I was just lazy and unmotivated, and I didn’t really know why I was there. The weed certainly didn’t help my situation, but like I said, I quit long before I dropped out. Besides, I needed a job, and there's no sense in failing the drug test before the interview, if you know what I mean...

I eventually found a job as a waiter at Stone Baked Pizza. The pay wasn't great, but tips were good, especially after home football games. Of course I made sure to wear the school colors on those days, and while I preferred the tables filled with cheerleaders and/or sorority girls, I took care of everyone equally and they seemed to appreciate that.

Once I had a job, I needed a place to live. I’d been kicked out of the dorms when I dropped out of school, and I’d been bumming around with various friends and acquaintances ever since. I hooked up with a couple of friends who were looking for a place, and we rented a house in the cheap part of town.

The place had holes. Holes in the ceiling. Holes in the windows. Holes in the yard. Holes under the sinks. Holes in the walls and doors. And with the holes came the bugs. Flying bugs, crawling bugs, buzzing bugs, stinging and biting and nasty bugs... Nothing stopped them. There were too many places for them to get in, so it didn't matter how many we killed. We were doomed to be overrun. Then one day at work I met Wolfgang…

I had quickly realized that no one at a pizza place cares if you toke up, as long as you do your job. I wasn’t in school anymore, and when you live in a bug infested shithole, weed’s a cheap way to make it a little more livable. As a matter of fact, the pizza place was a good place to score some weed, but that’s beside the point. On this particular day I was cleaning out the storage shed behind the restaurant. So I lit up a joint as I shifted the 50-pound bags of flour, stacked the boxes of super thick soda syrup, and cleaned the floor with a push broom. I was feeling pretty mellow, enjoying the warm heavy atmosphere of the shed in the sun when a huge hairy spider fell on my hand with an audible thump. I’ve always been jumpy about spiders; it's not that I’m afraid they'll hurt me, but they always scare the shit out of me with their quick sticky feet and make me jump before I realize I’m in no danger. I’d just taken a huge hit off the joint, and had been holding it in for a bit, sucking all the savor from the smoke. Burning smoke exploded from my lungs as I yanked my hand away from the spider. He held on though, and as I bent double, coughing and hacking, I involuntarily pulled him close to my mouth. Stinky nasty skunky smoke coated him, and he slowly slid off my hand onto the floor. I staggered away from him, intimidated by the three dimensionality of his legs... Bugs' legs shouldn't have depth, you know?

The coughing fit passed and I drained the half-gallon to go cup of Dr. Pepper I’d brought with me. Curious, I looked for the spider. He was huge, like grapefruit size huge, and sat on the floor where he'd fallen, blinking sleepily. Like a cat, he'd landed on his feet, and just sat there, swaying a little. Smoke still filled the shed, and I could see some stray wisps wafting from his furry body. Suddenly paranoid and nervous, I began waving the broom, fanning the smoke from the shed. The spider continued to impersonate a statue. I still had the shed to clean, and he was right in the middle of it. Staring at the massive shrink-wrapped packages of unfolded pizza boxes behind him, an idea began to blossom.

Smiling the vacant grin of the well and truly baked, I grabbed a large unfolded cardboard pizza box and laid it on the floor next to him, right side up. Then I carefully swept him onto the box. He helped, sort of, by lifting his massive muscular little legs one at a time, although he put forth no other effort. Soon I had him in the center of the box. He sat there, his eight eyes heavily lidded, a small strand of web dangling gently from his backside. Slowly, trying not to jostle him, I folded the box around him, although I didn't close it. I left the lid open at a 45-degree angle, so he would have shade should he need it. Then I set the box on an empty shelf and continued cleaning the shed. He stayed there, regal and silent like a king on a cardboard throne to go.

He hadn't moved by the time I finished up. It was time to go home, and I didn't know what to do with him. As I stood there pondering his fate, a fluttery moth crashed clumsily into my spider friend's roof. Stunned, it fell in front of him. With a speed I found unnerving after such a long period of statuesque stoic-ness, he grabbed and ate the moth. He then looked around, blinking sleepily, and leapt from the box to the floor. He proceeded to cleanse the shed of bugs. Like a crusader he waged war on them, mercilessly pursuing them and casually crushing them, wrapping them in a sticky solution. He then took them back to the box, one at a time, where he carefully secured them to the inside back corner before he began to gorge. My new friend had the munchies...

I closed the box and put it on the back of my bike, informed my manager the shed was clean once more, clocked out, refilled my cup and drove my stoned spider friend home. I decided to name him Wolfgang, since I thought he was a wolf spider and it was all I could think of in my current state. When we reached home I took him inside and set his box on the TV where it would be warm and opened it back up. Cute as a bug in a pizza box, he slept, snoring lightly. I checked his larder. It was empty.

When my roommates arrived I introduced them to Wolfgang. I didn't explain where he came from or why he was there; I just smiled and rolled up a joint. Nodding at Wolfgang, I hit the joint and passed it, then leaned toward the box, exhaling. Laughing, we smoked and passed and shotgunned Wolfgang. He sat there, swaying, leaning slightly into the stream of smoke. Both of my roommates got a kick out of this but I simply smiled and waited expectantly. The best part was still to come…

It took an hour and a half. We grew bored and began to play Nintendo, and soon forgot about Wolfgang, sitting motionless atop the TV like some weird ass flea market knick-knack. But finally he bolted, leaping out of the box onto the Nintendo, racing from there to the kitchen. Mystified and slightly spooked, the roommates looked to me for reassurance. I smiled confidently and nodded at the kitchen. They looked back in time to see Wolfgang bring the first of the centipedes from the kitchen and secure it in the back corner of the pizza box. Racing across walls, leaping from chair to table to shoulder to counter, he hunted them all: Roaches and mosquitoes and june bugs and scorpions and centipedes, silverfish and ants and even a small bat that had apparently been living under our house. He stocked his larder and then he sat down in his spot and began to feed. A stunned silence filled the house as the crickets hid in fear and my roommates began to smile.

Wolfgang quickly became an integral part of the household. He cleansed the house of bugs quickly, and then began covering the holes. He spun webs with crazy tie-dyed looking patterns, and some with black velvet Elvises and panthers and unicorns. He blocked all the major bug entrances, except for the ones under the house. There he built a twisted maze of snares and traps in order to maintain his food supply. And he grew, oh how he grew. He went from fist sized to rat sized to cat sized far too quickly. All we had to do was keep him high. It seemed to be a match made in heaven.

Until his tolerance began to grow as well.

Wolfgang began angrily demanding more and more smoke. We tried to explain that he needed to slow down and enjoy the high. He told us to shut the fuck up and smoke, and since the idea of a talking pothead spider was still funny even if he was a dick, we did.

The days blurred together as we smoked more and more. The pipe shattered from overuse, the walls darkened with smoke stains, and Wolfgang grew bigger and bigger. So did his tolerance. With scratchy throats we begged him to let us stop, but he wouldn't, and we realized that some time in the haze the dynamic of our relationship had shifted. We were the pets now, and he was master of this domain. He only let us smoke blunts now, tearing and ripping our lungs and throats with the massive burning chunks of cigar tobacco and cannabis, and we knew we had to do something or we would surely die...

One of my roommates suggested we fight back. He stood 5 feet 2 inches, the smallest of us, but he wasn't scared. Wolfgang was big, yes, but he was still only a spider and even a spider the size of a dog should be no match for three humans, right? Wrong. We never saw Wolfgang strike, but suddenly the rebellious roommate was headless and slowly falling to the ground. Smug in his power and control, Wolfgang began wrapping the body and sent us for more weed.

Frightened yet angry we picked up another 5 ounces, along with a bag of hydro, which is basically superweed. Then we stopped at the hardware store. We bought the biggest can of industrial strength spider killing spray we could find and soaked the weed. We also bought a can of lighter fluid. We’d kill this motherfucking bug even if it killed us. And then we realized that it most likely would...

We decided there was no reason for both of us to die, as long as Wolfgang met his end. Already he'd moved up from bugs to rodents and other small mammals. Missing pet posters covered the telephone poles in our neighborhood, giving the area an oddly Christmas like cheer with their mix of bright colors and promises of rewards for doing the right thing... Sitting solemnly in the car outside the hardware store, we smoked the dro, which we'd left untainted. We savored the high, knowing we'd never share a toke again. Then I flipped a coin. My roommate called tails, and time slowed as the coin spun, hanging there like a small glittering round thing you exchange for goods. Then it dropped, and rolled, and circled, and finally fell over in between the front seats, dead president solemnly facing up. Obviously. I mean, here I am telling you this story, right? My roommate nodded, and we finished the dro and headed home. Sublime was in the CD player, and a then still living Bradley exhorted us to let the lovin come back to us, because sometimes it's all you've got...

Pulling up to the house, my roommate grabbed the bag and we said goodbye. Telling me to cover the holes under the house, he got out of the car. Solemnly, I grabbed my can of lighter fluid and held my Zippo ready. Without looking back, he marched into the house.

Soon I could smell the poisonous weed wafting from the house. Wolfgang, however, had long since lost any sense of smell he may have had. That much pot smoke will kill anyone's nose, even a monster of a spider. He never knew what hit him. I heard my roommate begin to hack his final bloody hack, and then I heard Wolfgang scream, a high-pitched wail that sounded far too much like that of a child betrayed by its parents. Crashes shook the house, and I pointed the can at the biggest hole under the house, Zippo shakily cocked. But Wolfgang never made it out. I waited for four hours, shifting nervously from foot to foot, scanning the foundation of the house.

Finally I went inside. My roommate's body curled lovingly over the Nintendo, his staring eyes filled with broken blood vessels. Reverently I closed them, and then began to search for Wolfgang. It didn't take long. In the end he'd curled up in his pizza box, seeking the sanctuary he'd once found there. The box was filthy and rotted now, and I left it and him and my roommate and the Nintendo there. I put the can of lighter fluid to good use, and watched the place burn as the sun set. I started to roll a joint, then thought better of it. My mouth twitched on the left once, twice, and my left eye itched and throbbed and began to tear up. My roommate had left his pack of cigarettes in the car, and with a catch in my throat I lit one and drifted off to Marlboro country, closing my eyes. The fire kept me warm as the cigarette soothed my soul, and they found me there with the burned out butt hanging from my lip.

I don't remember much for quite a while after that, but eventually the haze evaporated from my mind and cognizance returned. The doctors sometimes ask me if I’d like to go home someday, but I don't really want to. They keep it quite clean here, and I have yet to see a single bug. I can’t smoke weed here, but I think I’ve had enough weed for one lifetime. Besides, I get all the cigarettes I can smoke, and you’d be amazed at how similar the effects of weed and tobacco are. In the winter they say there's a fire in the big fireplace in the lobby.

And the drugs here, of course, are wonderful...