We were listening to the radio when we discovered that nature was calling. 

 

As I got back into the car, I sensed, rather than felt or saw, a presence on my left hand. 

 

After my two experiences, I suspect that my fear of spiders will be with me until I die.

 

The first experience was the time when my best friend received a bite from a black widow spider. 

 

I looked down at my hand, but I could not see anything because it was so dark. 

 

I had two experiences when I was sixteen that are the cause of my arachnophobia, a terrible and uncontrollable fear of spiders. 

 

We stopped the car at the side of the road, walked into the woods a few feet, and watered the leaves. 

 

My friend then entered the car, putting on the dashboard light, and I almost passed out with horror. 

 

I saw the bandage on his hand and the puffy swelling when the bandage was removed. 

 

Then it flew off my hand and into the dark bushes nearby. 

 

I sat in the car for an hour afterward, shaking and sweating and constantly rubbing the fingers of my hand to reassure myself that the spider was no longer there. 

 

But my more dramatic experience with spiders happened one evening when another friend and I were driving around in his car. 

 

Almost completely covering my fingers was a monstrous brown spider, with white stripes running down each of the seemingly endless number of long, furry legs. 

 

Most of all, I saw the ugly red scab on his hand and the yellow pus that continued oozing from under the scab for several weeks. 

 

I imagined my entire hand soon disappearing as the behemoth relentlessly devoured it. 

 

At the same time I cried out Arghh! and flicked my hand violently back and forth to shake off the spider. 

 

For a long, horrible second it clung stickily, as if intertwined for good among the fingers of my hand.