It was the scariest thing she had ever seen. This awful dead thing… well, dying thing.

The thing twitched, and she jumped up with a squeak. She had been squatting over it, staring at the little thing she had stepped on by accident. Who would have known that she would have stepped on such a little thing on her way home from the bus stop?

She held her backpack straps tightly to her shoulder, afraid to get any closer now that the thing had moved, even though it looked so dead before. The spider was black, with several of its legs mangled and lying at odd angles on the ground now that it was squashed. Spiders were scary things to many six year olds, and she was no exception.

The dying spider twitched one more time before she decided to run from the monster on the ground. She made it home safely. Running to her mother, she grabbed her around the legs and pressed her face into her right jean pocket. "Oh! What's the matter sweetheart?" she asked while pouring some brownie mix into a pan.

"Spider…" was all she said.

"Ahh… well, it's alright now. The brownies will be ready in twenty-five minutes. You can wait with me, okay? We could watch Sesame Street."

"Okay mommy."