12. DVDs
Fingering the last bit of milk in the bottom of her cup, Elizabeth stared forlornly at the pile of boxes awaiting someone to unpack them.
She had spent the entire morning unloading their clothes from the honeymoon, ironing the miniscule wrinkles from Will's shirts, studying the view of the city from the kitchen window, and generally avoiding the massive task that loomed in her living room.
A glance at the clock informed her that she had spent twenty minutes drinking one glass of milk. Will's return home wasn't for another four hours. "Oh bugger."
She finished off her milk, rinsed the glass, and stalked to the pile of cardboard boxes. Staring them down with all the determination she possessed, the first box was opened.
Wedged in between rolled up newspapers were her books. "Here we go," she dusted off the first volume and set it on the empty shelf behind her.
Time was consumed as she would unload something, place it, move it, stare at it to decide if the placement received approval, perhaps move it a third time, and finally nod in acceptance before the next item was retrieved.
The flat began to take a whole new life as the shelves and closets were filled. The floor, however, began increasingly difficult to find underneath the discarded newspaper sheets.
Another box was popped open and DVDs shone up at her.
"Bugger." She hefted the box over to their television and began to stuff the DVDs in the cabinet. She was reaching for Singing in the Rain when something small and black skittered across the base of the box.
With an ear-splitting scream, she shoved the box away.
If there was one thing she absolutely detested it was spiders. And of course, they would show up when Will was away because anything else would be too fair.
She dove for the tissue box that had been placed, for some harebrained reason, all the way across the room. Swimming through the politics section of the newspaper, she scrambled across the wood floor. Business, sports, classified ads, and international news all went flying past before her hand closed on a white tissue.
That scrawny legged beast wouldn't take over her new flat.
She dove back into the fray of typed news. However, in her socking clad feet she lost her footing somewhere in tourism and went flying. There was a loud thump as she landed. With a now aching backside, Elizabeth crawled on her hands and knees towards the DVD box. The hair on the back of her neck prickled as she drew closer.
What if it had escaped? What if it was crawling towards her now on its nasty, grimy, little legs?
She faltered, the tissue in her palm growing damp. But she was too far in now. Enemy territory surrounded her. So, with wary glances at anything remotely spider shaped, she moved in closer and closer.
The box loomed before her and still the spider had not revealed its location. She extended two fingers and gently pulled back the box flaps.
Out came the spider, flying across the cardboard surface towards her lovely wooden flooring. The battle cry that sounded as the tissue descended would have been worthy of the tales of old.
The arachnid was elusive and slipped away from her grasp.
She dove after it, crashing soundly on the floor as she pursued. Somewhere the tissue fell from her grasp and when she finally cornered the spider by the side table and the couch she had no weapon to dispose of it.
Gone With the Wind became a sledgehammer on her floor in a stamping pattern as the arachnid scurried off. Newspaper was torn out of her way in a rampage towards the kitchen.
"Elizabeth?"
Her gaze shot up, the newspaper floating around her head like snowflakes. "Will!"
He stood in the doorway, hair and jacket tousled by the summer breezes, staring at her with a bemused and utterly confused expression. "Redecorating? Repainting the walls?" He ducked a newspaper sheet falling from the ceiling fan.
"Will! There's a spider! Quick!" She darted across the room and shoved the DVD into his hand. By sheer adrenaline, she pushed him towards the center of the room where the spider had been last spotted.
Grinning, he snatched up the tissue (Elizabeth was sure it reappeared out of malice) and continued her search.
"Ah." He bent over and wiped up something off the floor. "All better now."
Elizabeth had never sighed so heavily. "Thank you."