That Morning

Flash Fiction

That Morning

I started up the stairs. Still morning, but John and the kids were gone. John work, the kids school. I had lingered long enough to feel like I was avoiding something. It didn’t take much to know what, cleaning.

Our room was not bad, John tries to toss dirty clothes in the hamper, like a basketball hoop, and of course fails, picked them up.

The kids are still young enough to toss everything they’re done with too, and not to a laundry basket. Their rooms usually looked like a tornado had hit. Mostly I grab the laundry. They can live in a mess if they choose. One day they will change, or not… I changed; John didn’t…

I do keep the bathroom cleaner. Today it was good already. Towels on the floor, but no dirty clothes and no open tooth paste containers. As I turned up the blinds I noticed a spider on the window glass. The sun had just gotten high enough to shine right there.

Of course I worried. Maybe it’s too hot on the window, maybe it will crawl down and hide in our bathroom. Maybe it will bite someone! I had to get it out of the bathroom! Taking the water glass, I caught it, and with it covered, took it outside. I let it go once I got on the same side of the house as the bathroom window. You know, in case it lived there. I looking out later, it was up in the corner of the bathroom window! In a web I hadn’t seen.

Yes, it could have just been my imagination, two spiders do look alike… However, I named this one Anna, and she lived there all summer. And I never forgot her. I sometimes wonder if she remembered me?