The spider in the vacuum cleaner in the cupboard in the room in the house might still be there. I was preparing to move out and vacuuming. Running the suction tube along the skirting board, I caught him in my peripheral, a black flash darting across the carpet. Before I knew it I had got him with the tube. Up he went.
He was a big guy with thick legs and the vacuum cleaner made a dull thud as it sucked him up followed by an uncomfortable groan as it forced him through the narrow filter and into the plastic box. There was a sickeningly soft tapping sound as he hit an inside wall. I switched the machine off.
The box features in place of the traditional vacuum bag and is transparent. Standing up straight and closing my eyes, I recovered myself and realised exactly what I'd done. I was going to have to see him in the see-through plastic box. All curled up dead, his legs crunched in, a spiky star. On his back so I see the body, the different segments underneath through the gaps in his spindly, folded limbs. My heart was thumping and my face felt hot with panic.
I I had to look at it. I wanted to get rid of it as soon as I could and carry on the house clearance. I looked down and I saw it. Movement. Dust in the box, moving. A thick pile of fluff and grey powdery filth, rushing through the muck. Then the black legs in the furry lump, first one then all of them. He's off the floor and onto the plastic wall, . Fast. Panicked and speeding, where am I, must find exit, rushing around on every inner surface inside the box in the vacuum cleaner.
Only for the first four nights in my new house did I worry about what was happening inside the box. After that I imagined he had died, or escaped to horrify someone else. Only occasionally now do I consider that he might still be there, in the box in my vacuum cleaner in my cupboard in my new room.
