SEBASTIAN by Isobel Smyth (manga ereader txt) 📕

SEBASTIAN

Sebastian had been a resident of our house for quite a long time.
According to Encyclopaedias a spider can live for two years.
Sebastian was a nocturnal creature. He lived under the bath and could be observed most nights sauntering nonchalantly on his eight long legs across the tiled bathroom floor only to disappear with ease under the skirting board that covered a maze of copper pipes.

We, the family, ignored Sebastian as he didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother him. We didn’t know if there was a Mrs Sebastian and a clutch of Sebastian juniors under the bath because he always travelled solo.
Maybe he had a lady friend across the vast expanse of the bathroom floor who enticed him to risk life and limb every night on that perilous journey.

Occasionally, a peaceful night’s sleep would be disturbed by ear piercing shrieks as some unsuspecting friend of our teenage daughter found herself up close and personal with Sebastian. Then one of us would heroically enter the bathroom and with much stamping and swiping of towels declare the bathroom a spider free zone, having quickly hooshed Sebastian back under the bath to safety.

Our son’s departure on his year long trip to Australia arrived and all the lads gathered in our house for the farewell party.
A good time was had by all, too good in fact judging by the chaotic scenes that greeted me the next morning with empty bottles and half empty cans strewn all over the house. A tall pyramid of empty beer cans stood like a work of art in the middle of the kitchen floor.
Two comatose bodies sat on kitchen chairs with their heads resting on the table using the seat pads as pillows.
Half open bedroom doors revealed bodies in sleeping bags covering every available floor space, tight together like brightly coloured sausage rolls.
I pinned a large notice with the message:
-BACK AT 2pm, HAVE HOUSE CLEAN- to the back of one of the kitchen table bodies and left the house... noisily.

On my return I found a reasonably clean house, overflowing recycle bins and hangover remedy drinks being doled out along with rashers, sausages, fried eggs and paracetamol.
There was standing room only in the kitchen as they regaled me with stories of the karaoke contest we had mercifully missed the night before in our living room.


Paddy, who was still wearing the note pinned to the back of his shirt, piped up with the usual ‘Never again, I feel cat’. Everyone laughed.
‘No,’ said Paddy. ‘I really mean it. I think I’d the DT’s this morning.
I saw this enormous black spider walking across the bathroom floor towards me. I fell over the bin trying to get out away from it.
It wasn’t there when I went into the bathroom later.’
‘That’s because I went in after you,’ said Martin ‘and stood on it, you big girl’s blouse - afraid of a spider!’ he laughed.
I heard a sharp intake of breath beside me as Lisa lowered her fork.
‘You killed Sebastian?’ she said slowly, horror written all over her face.
She looked at me then David and Joe and we all turned our gaze on the culprit.
‘You stood on Sebastian,’ I said.
Martin shifted uneasily, looking from one of us to the other, he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who’s Sebastian?’ he asked in a bewildered voice.
‘I killed a spider, a big ugly black one. Don’t tell me you name your spiders in this house, that’s weird.’
Lisa glared at him. ‘Just this one. Sebastian has lived quite happily under the bath for ages until you stood on him and scraped him into the bin.’
A little smile crept across Martin’s lips as he said ‘Eh, actually, I think he’s still on the sole of my shoe if you want to give him a decent burial in the garden I have a matchbox’.
With that the kitchen exploded into laughter as Martin ducked to avoid Lisa’s airborne sausage!

Publication Date: 03-21-2010

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