It's done. It's over. It's dead. Finally.

It was a spider the size of which warrants burning the place down if in the U.S. How big? If I spread out my fingers and then clench the middle knuckles, that's about how big. Now I don't have huge hands, but never mind, if you're comparing the size of a spider to your hand, it's fucking big. An Australian might have thought it cute ("You call that a spider, mate? 'At's more like a pet, give it a name" Sorry, my Australian accent is terrible. I hope yours in your head is better).

Taiwan? I haven't heard of anything this big showing up in anyone's home, but I have seen larger in the great outdoors on hikes and thought, "I'd hate to find one of those in my room". How does a spider that size even get around in the city? Uber? And if they can get around in the city, why have I never seen one outside. Then it somehow just shows up in my apartment?

It was the stuff of nightmares or horror films. It made its first appearance back in August, more than four months ago. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when I turned the corner and could see into the bathroom with the faint ambient light coming from out the window, I noticed the dark splotch on the floor that wasn't supposed to be there.

Quickly assessing it was some sort of bug, I sucked it up that I would just have to deal with it. I didn't fetch my glasses because . . . why? I didn't want a clear look at whatever it was I was likely going to have to squash. I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door to keep it from escaping, entering the field of battle. Then the fucking thing took off! Holy shit, it was fast. I realized it was a spider and faster'n you could yell "fuck me in the ass!" it had scampered a bit up the wall and back down and out of the bathroom through the crack at the bottom of the door. I threw open the door freaked out at how fast it moved.

It disappeared behind the large cabinets that line one wall of my apartment. There was nothing I could do, it was safe there. I probably waited a bit to see if it might come out but knew it probably wouldn't. It ran scared and was going to stay where it was safe. Aside from lightning speed, things I noted before peeing and going back to bed include: 1) It had excellent eyesight; 2) It's strongest instinct was fear; 3) Did I mention it was fucking fast?

Yea, I went back to sleep. Long time ago, lesser spiders in the room would've kept me awake. But I've actively worked on minimizing irrational fears such as those of spiders, and there was no point in literally losing sleep about a situation where I couldn't do anything.

Thing is, I knew it was there. I knew it wasn't just going to disappear, find its own way out. I knew it was still there when I woke up, and over the course of weeks that fact became manifest.

Furniture lines that wall of my apartment. Three large closet cabinets with my desk and a steel frame shelf, where the wall behind it can be seen, between them. The spider could move freely out of sight under and behind the furniture. If it moved on the wall behind the shelf, I could see it but there are too many obstructions to do anything except note it and shudder.

It did make appearances over the course of weeks. I kept a sneaker handy to hurl at it if I got the chance, and once did but more to scare it. I knew there was no chance of hitting it and there's still a sneaker mark on the wall. The miracle was that I didn't create my own disaster by knocking a bunch of shit over, which with my luck I would've expected to happen. There were several ghost appearances where I swore I saw it in dim light but wasn't 100% certain. 99% when it was right under me while at my desk and ran back under the closet. 1% chance it was my imagination.

It stopped making appearances sometime in October. I optimistically hoped it had escaped, but knew that was unlikely. More realistically it had starved to death. I mean, what was it eating? I continued to terrorize myself over it and stayed vigilant; frequent visual room scans, not only left and right but up and down, especially going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

It met its sad end tonight after over two months without a sighting. I came home, turned on the lights, took my shoes off and did a room scan (that's something I routinely do after coming home, not because of the spider. I don't know what's my childhood trauma that justifies being so paranoid. I just don't like surprises and anything can happen in this world). Then I turned around and there it was on the wall right by the door.

Of course I hesitated. I froze. That gave it a chance to get behind the open closet door against the wall by the door. Note that I saw it and that it hadn't bolted. It was probably a good 15 seconds from when I entered the room and spotted it and it was just sitting on the wall. As scary and huge as it still looked, this thing was tired and likely emaciated. I kicked at the closet door but knew the gap to the wall was enough not to crush it.

I picked up a sneaker I had just taken off and pulled the door away from the wall and there it still was. It hadn't run to safety in the gap between the closet and wall. I took a thwack at it and missed and it reacted but didn't run. I followed up with a solid bonk and that knocked it wounded off the wall and to the ground. The coup de grace was easy and undramatic. You don't want to squash something that big. Kill it with blows. Blunt force trauma. And I could because it was already almost starved to death. If it was healthy and vital, any shot I might have would've been a frenzied, scream-like-a-girl, splatter-force blow and the clean-up would be even more disgusting and traumatic.

I did feel bad for it. Partly because of a book I had just finished at the library about the Armenian Genocide. When I first struck and missed the spider, it didn't run; likely too tired, too incapacitated for instincts to fully kick in, not unlike the starved, skeletal Armenians who were force marched by the Turks into the Syrian desert to their deaths. With the second blow it seemed to be like "why are you doing this to me?", not unlike when the Turks rounded up Armenian men and marched them away from their homes and villages and massacred them without mercy. Could I show it no mercy? At least now I know it's gone. That's the way it had to go. That's not how the Turks felt about the mass murder of Armenians after the WWI effort, allied with the Germans, failed. If I was a Turk, I'd be like "Spider? What spider? It was coming right at me" and then gone on killing spiders for the next five years.

Postmortem, I did as the Australian in my head said and named it Gonzalez. Speedy Gonzalez.