There was a tarantula on my keyboard. I knew it because I could see it.

I surprised myself with my reaction though, there was no scream, no leap into the air, no explosion of shivering incoherent babble; instead I remained motionless. Panic manifested itself not in reaction, but in paralysis. As though I was a fly and had been bitten already!

Prickles of icy sweat formed on my forehead, dampened the back of my shirt; my hands remained poised, frozen in midair, the detached part of my brain processed the obstacle that had prevented my hanging fingers from connecting with the keys.

The irrelevant worry of finishing the invoice on time popped into my mind, nothing more than a weak counter to the black bottomless fear I felt. This worry soon dissolved as the sonar pings of my own growing panic slowly sounded out the depth of my terror.

The thing did not move; my unwavering, transfixed glare did not penetrate its hairy body: black, brown and orange, with a quiver in one of its legs.

I swallowed, fearfully recalled my hands and brought them slowly away from the horror. Did it sense me? Would it suddenly turn and move towards me? Would I be able to move or would I be frozen in place; would it crawl up my shirt and onto my neck?

The tarantula did move: it crawled slowly forward covering the S key with its grotesque head, uncovering the J key as its abdomen slid forward.

How had it gotten here? Why had this happened to me?

I pushed away from my desk, earning, no doubt, a raised eyebrow from my boss; so what? He’d sure move if there was a tarantula on his keyboard! Or maybe he wouldn’t? Maybe it was his spider, maybe it was a joke?

Hell of a joke!

But no, surely not? How had it gotten there? I had literally been poised to type the next number onto the spreadsheet. I hadn’t been away from the desk, my eyes had merely glanced at the printout. No way anybody could have planted a fist-sized tarantula on my keyboard without me noticing.

My brain was thinking all of these things while my feet were slowly pushing my chair away from the desk, slowly so as not to disturb the creature lest I provoke a furious attack. Could tarantulas jump? In fact, was it even a tarantula? I was no arachnid expert to know the difference between tarantula and other. To me a big hairy spider was a tarantula… that was enough.