There was a spider on the ceiling of my shower today. I sprayed it with tile cleaner, sloshed it with water, and let it die. It felt like murder.
I know it is an insect, that it does not and cannot share my solely human sentimentality about these things. For if I was a fly, it would've pounced and eaten me without much (if any) conscious thought. But somehow that makes what I did worse: I had torturously, stupidly killed a simple being on unfairly complex grounds. I witnessed something so innocuous, so mere, and instantaneously warped it into a threat. Why? Because it was above me? Because I was damp and naked? Because it was just a pinch larger than most house spiders? Because it existed in a way that came as an inconvenience to me?
All I could think to myself while I watched it futilely thrash, spin, and limp along the wallpaper was that I had succumbed to my cruelty; I had chosen to be cruel because it was easier; I had deemed it easier to kill than to not. What gave me the jurisdiction to choose the fate of another living thing? What gave me the inclination that I could ever hold that power?
And it made me sick to my stomach, observing in awe the minutes-long culmination of my impulsive preference for savagery. By the time my pathetic self had mustered up enough bravery to grab a plastic container and shakily slick the poor dangling thing into it, my courage had come too late and I knew it. I stared at its twisted body stuck against the wall of its new cylindrical coffin for a moment before turning away: placing it down on the sink rim and slinking back behind the shower curtains like an oily, shy theater kid getting booed off stage.
Even in the midst of water and my own self-deprecation, I hoped it wasn't really dead, that I'd step out and peer into the semi-opaque cup just to see it moving. But when I got out, of course, there was nothing. Not a twitch. The gnawing shame I felt over this fucking arachnid was so great I couldn't bear to look at it while I dried myself with a towel.
Now I sit atop my bed, writing instead of acting-- a usual for me-- with a little six-legged body plastered inside the polypropylene canister upon my bathroom sink. The overhead light is on, spilling out of the ajar doorway. My teeth are unbrushed, my hair unfixed and my skin uncared. I know I have to get up and face what is an objectively menial slaughter eventually but my God, I can only despise myself for this.