I ducked back behind the marble column again and tried to slow my racing heart. A drop of sweat ran down my temple, and I felt my blood pressure rising. Maybe she was just trying to get a job from him. With the back problems she claimed to have, maybe she thought dressing up would impress him.

I looked around the post once more and saw Joanie take something from her lap and hand it to Henry. At first I thought she was giving him a white cloth napkin. Henry smiled as the object unfolded out of his fingers to reveal small, lacy panties. He discreetly put the panties in his jacket pocket and kissed her hand. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t selling him lingerie.

I’d seen enough. I left. I went back to work with all thoughts of food forgotten. Instead of going to my desk, I went to the bathroom and silently wept behind a stall door. I’d never felt so betrayed in my life. When in control of myself again, I went back to my desk and spent some time just thinking things over. As I did, the spider’s primal savagery silently invaded my mind.

I envisioned a huge, endless graveyard, with tombstones in every direction as far as the eye could see. A giant spider web stretched across the morbid landscape. In the center of the web was Joanie and Henry together, trapped like struggling flies. My giant spider’s body was crawling towards them and…

What was I thinking? I shook my head to clear my thoughts. My sanity was surely slipping away. My world was becoming an asylum of madness. What was happening to me?

I spent the rest of the day at my desk. I was too afraid to leave it. My fear was not for myself but for what I may do to an innocent co-worker if I were to interact with anyone. As the work day ended, I felt my very grip on reality beginning to slip. I can scarcely believe what I’d done to Frank Oz.

I drove the Blazer straight home and found my wife still gone. The back door’s glass was busted, and there were a few drops of blood on the wooden floor of the kitchen. I cleaned it up and also removed some black, needle-sharp hairs I’d found embedded in the door and hallway.

While in the kitchen, I opened a drawer and pulled out a pack of matches. Afterwards, I walked out to the garage and grabbed the can of gasoline. I brought both items into the front room and sat them by Delilah’s aquarium cage. The spider had to be destroyed.

So here I am on Halloween night where I began my remembrance. I guess this is where I finish.

I have only to re-enter Delilah’s mind one last time, get her over here and shrink her into the cage. I just hope I have the strength of mind to separate from her one last time. If I can, I’ll torch the arachnid and end the horrible link developing between us. I just need to do it once more. Beyond that, I might be lost forever, two minds melded as one.

Sitting here in front of the cage, my mind drifts once again out of my body. My thoughts float through the walls of my house. I travel through my neighbor’s roof and down through the floor into the basement. Delilah is still standing over Frank’s body. In my earlier panic, I’d forgotten that most spiders spend many hours completely motionless. Her size has not changed.

My mind settles in next to hers as I feel her primitive thoughts wrap around me like a lover’s embrace. Seconds after the merging of our minds, I sense something different about my spider body. I feel more in tune with it than I ever have before. This body has significantly changed since the last time I was in it. Immediately, I know what’s happened.

I look at Frank, now a demon to be despised through the senses of Delilah. While my mind was absent, she busied herself by weaving a web cocoon around Frank’s abdomen. A new set of fang marks in his chest indicated that she’d injected him with enough paralyzing venom to ensure he’d never move again.