Fatima hated the color green. It always gave her a headache if she stared at it for too long. It was sickly and unpleasant. Envious. Judgmental. And it reminded her of that dreadful shade of eyeshadow she wore to prom five years ago. Sometimes she still shudders thinking about it.

Nonetheless, it was the only nail polish in her bathroom cupboard that survived a pipe burst last week. And she had plans later that night, or as she had told her friend Jasmine, “A hot date with Saul’s Pizza and his friend Netflix.”

“Ugh, lame,” Jasmine had said to her over the phone. “Just one night, come on.” She had stretched the last words of her sentence into a whine. “You don’t go drinking with me anymore.”

“Jaz, I’d love to but I’m dead.” She had been cocooned into the cushions of her couch. Her cat, Moony, sitting against her abdomen, purring his whiskers away. “I can’t feel my legs.”

This was physiologically true, as Fatima had just come home from working a double shift at Rico’s Mexican Restaurant. It was almost midnight and she’d seen enough drunk customers for one day. She started fantasizing about going to bed without setting an alarm.

“Please, just for an hour, Mima...” But as Jasmine droned away on speaker, Fatima scrolled through her phone, selecting toppings for her online pizza order. She grinned when her redeemable points allowed for a free drink.

“I hate drinking with Carla. She always has to puke after, like, two shots.”

“Jasmine, I love you, but I’m sorry. If you need a ride home or if you run into Jason let me know.” She’d yawned and made sure the gesture was audible through the phone. “I’m just gonna stay in tonight, hon. Okay? Love you, bye.”

And at that, she had hung up, a part of her feeling bad for declining her friend's request, but another part of her feeling relieved, specifically her feet which were throbbing immensely.

So she’d decided a massage was in order. Then an ice pack and, why not, a pedicure. Her feet were sore, blistered, and she wanted to bring some life to them. Even if it meant smearing on her least favorite color in the whole world.

So here she was, nestled into her couch, thumbing through movies on Netflix, her toes drying against the coffee table. Her pizza order out for delivery. When something in the left corner of her eye caught her attention.

“What the—?”

Moony, who had relocated to the window sill, lifted his head in curiosity.

It looked like nothing at first, so Fatima squinted, sitting up a little, trying to get a better look. It was probably some dust or a scratch in the bookcase, as one of Moony’s risk-taking habits involved climbing all sorts of wooden structures. But it was bigger than that, darker, and when Fatima realized what it was, she shrieked, dropping the remote on the floor.

Moony meowed annoyingly and left the window sill to stretch out under the table.

It was a spider. A large, black arthropod that forced Fatima to bring the couch blankets up to her chin. She moan-cried into the polyester.

“Shitshitshit, no, come on, really?!” She watched its slender legs, thin and wiry as they hugged the bookshelf. If she looked away now, it would disappear from her eyes, and she’d have to light a match, burn down the apartment, and relocate to Canada. Rico would understand. He’d hire a replacement; his business was flourishing anyway. She gulped, the insides of her palms clammy.

Her phone suddenly vibrated from somewhere between the cushions. She yelped again, trying to grab the device while still keeping an eye on the atrocity of a creature sitting in her bookshelf. It was twitching towards her copy of Pride & Prejudice. As she sacrificed an eye to read the notification--Your Order is Almost Here!--Moony leaped out from underneath the table, and the spider scrambled out of view.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Who could she call? Not Jasmine, as her friend was equally terrified of spiders. Not any of her neighbors. Not her brother, as he lived four hours away. She predicted she’d have burned the apartment down by then if she had to wait that long. This forced another desperate moan-cry to emanate from her mouth.

Finally standing, she muttered to the intruder, “All I wanted was a lazy Sunday, but now I have to kill you.”

She looked around quickly for something to use to smite the unwelcome guest and found a slipper laying by the couch. She held it to her chest and carefully circled the bookcase.

Someone knocked suddenly on the door. “Saul’s Pizza, your delivery is here.”

Fatima gasped, jumped to unlock the door, and without a moment’s hesitation pulled the arm of the delivery guy into her apartment.

“Hey, woah—“

“PleaseohmyGodIneedyourhelp!”

She proceeded to explain the situation in one full breath as the guy, who’s name tag read Leo, stood there with a hot box of pizza and tired eyes. This wasn’t the weirdest thing that had happened to him that day.

He wasn’t technically allowed to, but if it meant he’d get to leave soon and clock out for the night, he agreed to deal with the unwelcome arthropod.

“I don’t get paid enough for this,” he muttered, examining the bookshelf with Fatima’s slipper in his hand.

When the spider emerged, Fatima screaming in both joy and disgust, Leo simply scooped it up into the shoe and let it free onto the open apartment window sill. It inched its way up the brick walls.

“That’ll be 14.73, please.”

Fatima beamed, fished the total out from her handbag, and squeezed in an unnecessary hug.

When he left, she smiled and said to Moony, “I didn’t think my savior would be so damn cute,” entirely ignoring the fact that Leo had donned a dreadfully green polo shirt.