CHAPTER TEN
Alex fell asleep. He had to squeeze himself into a strange position so he could, but he managed, after some wriggling around, to push his knees up into the upper right corner of the box and kind of twist his body so he could turn his head to his side.
He couldn’t sleep on his back. It was impossible. He never did at home. He always slept either on his belly or on his side. Most of the time he slept on his belly but he turned his head to one side, usually to the right and he always tucked his hands under his pillow so he would sleep over his forearm. It was so annoying having to put his arms somewhere, especially now that he was getting older and they were getting longer and at night when he was trying to sleep, seemingly always in the way. The only time he ever slept on his back was yesterday when he was drugged and forced into a small wooden box.
He didn’t really dream about anything in particular. He dreamt he had a car made out of a match box and it was propelled by a two liter soda bottle that sat on the roof. And it was a real matchbox. It was the real size and everything. But somehow he could squeeze in and there was plenty of room and he propelled down the freeway and he drove underneath cars and he bounced over little pebbles that to him were like giant boulders.
Then he woke up screaming.
He felt something on his foot.
It was creeping.
It was crawling.
It was a spider.
“Ahhh!” he screamed.
He kicked his feet against the end of the box, over and over and over again.
“Shhh” hissed the voice. “He’ll hear. Don’t be a friggin idiot.”
Alex tried to contain himself. It was no use, though. He could feel the spider crawling up his ankle and it was so light and tingly and he could feel each tiny leg lifting and stepping onto his skin and he tried to shift his body, he tried to twitch his muscles and shake his leg so that the spider would fall off.
But it didn’t.
It crawled up his leg and then it crawled onto his thigh and then it must have crawled onto his underwear because he stopped feeling it creeping about and that was worse. Now he was worried about where it might be. Would it crawl back out of the box or would it crawl along the sides and then close to his belly and then under his chin. Would it crawl into his mouth or would it crawl into his ear? And would it lay eggs in his hair? And if so, how long would it be till millions of spiders crawled all over his skin?
Who knows?