It is Friday. I want to end the week with a terrifying experience I suffered last weekend.

The day is warm, the sun is bright, and I’m enjoying a nice drive on a busy highway. The radio is booming a favorite song (nothing by Milli Vanilli, trust me on this). The power of music causes me to break out into song.

It is then that I notice something dangling from the driver’s side sun visor. At first, I figure it was a loose thread that had floated and stuck to the interior material. I kind of cross my eyes for a better view. The object comes into clear focus.

A moderately-sized spider is dangling two inches from my nose. Its web is attached to the visor.

My first reaction is to flinch backward. I think I nearly tore the seat from the car’s body. All the same, this gives me no breathing room. In my panic, I nearly run into a truck in the other lane and receive both a middle finger salute and a lengthy horn eruption. Well, bugger that guy. I’m fighting for my life, and I am not sorry if my attempts to escape the situation caused him a moment’s discomfort.

Naturally, the shoulder of the road is walled off due to construction. There are no approaching exits. I can’t stop my vehicle in the middle of the highway.

Breathe, Sizemore, you can do this.

I shove the rising fear into the back of my mind. I estimate I have two miles until I can turn off at the next exit. That’s 3 minutes.

Sizemore, you can do 3 minutes.

The first half mile goes well enough. The spider stares at me. I stare at the spider.

Then it moves.

Not side to side. Not front to back. But down.

The damn thing is heading south and I’m not liking this one bit!

“No,” I cry out. “No, do not go down there.”

I see I’m at least a mile away from the exit ramp. The spider glides further down on its silk strand of terror.

The damned thing stops about three inches above my legs.

My voice becomes high-pitched and frantic. “No, you don’t. I’m telling you not to do this.”

And this spider, obviously a total OG, falls from the strand and disappears between my legs.

# # #

I eventually get off at the exit and pull into a gas station. I search my pants. I look under the seat. On the floor mat. Under the floor mat. In other parts of the car.

There is no spider.

I’ve no idea where it went after it disappeared. I like to think perhaps it made an escape when I was searching my body and the car. Because the other two options I can see are two my mind can’t handle: 1) The spider burrowed into my body somewhere or 2) It is still in the car, growing, waiting.