Spiders

A man named Jacob lived in a house. It was an old building, large and filled with memories. Jacob had lived there since he could remember. He could never imagine living anywhere else, even though he may have been better off doing just that. For you see, Jacob’s house was full of big, scary spiders. And Jacob hated spiders.

Jacob hated spiders but he could never bring himself to dispose of them. For all the loathing he had for them, he understood that he could not stop them from inhabiting his home, as it was their home as well. They had probably lived there longer than him. And he knew they’d just come back if he decided to get rid of them. For the most part, Jacob ignored the spiders, which wasn’t very difficult. They mostly kept to themselves, spinning their webs in dark corners of seldom visited rooms and corridors. But Jacob would inevitably stumble upon one when taking a stroll along one of the house’s massive hallways. He hated that. It would ruin his whole day when he did.

Jacob, negligent as he was when it came to cleansing his house of the spiders, finally grew to accept them there. However, he was not ready to let anyone else get exposed to them. For the longest time, Jacob would refuse to let any one of his friends into his house, no matter how appropriate it seemed. Oh, it happened once, a long time ago. The person in question ran away when they stumbled upon a particularly nasty spider when doing their business in the bathroom. Jacob has never heard from them since.

Recently, however, something wonderful has happened. Jacob met Marie. Marie was a sweet girl Jacob had had a crush on for the longest time. After a long period of awkward advances, it turned out Marie reciprocated his feeling. Confident he would not face such disappointment again, Jacob let her into the house. The instant she saw the spiders, Jacob knew he had made the right choice. When she saw them, she merely smiled a sad, compassionate little smiled, looked him in the eye and said “I see you have them too.”