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It's a commonly held myth that we swallow an average of seven spiders in our sleep over a lifetime. It's also widely known that FDA regulations concede to allow a certain number of insect parts per jar of peanut butter, like wing scales and roach feet. We turn a somewhat blind eye to these facts because simply put, it's easier (not to mention less gag-inducing) not to think about them.

As a child in North Carolina, I held a superstitious belief to check the inside of each new roll of toilet paper for granddaddy long leg spiders. A few years into that thus-far unfounded belief, I checked the roll to actually find a daddy long legs scurrying out of the middle and over my hand, which was rippling with disgust. Screaming bloody murder, I dropped the toilet paper and let my bladder fill for a few more hours. This confirmation of my suspicion only intensified my psychotic derangement regarding these spiders. I had also heard somewhere that daddy long legs are poisonous enough to kill you, with one caveat - they have no mouths with which to bite you.

No mouth with which to bite, you say? Your apprehension may be somewhat allayed by this bit of information, now assuming we're safe from the wrath of the Long Legs, right? Oh, quite the opposite my imprudent friend - they can still kill, should you swallow the body of one. Anyone who's ever seen a granddaddy long leg spider knows that its name hails upon it for obvious reason, as its legs consist of eight long, hair-like moving strands that protrude from its tiny particle body, ascending and descending, landing around it on the ground in equal spaces, thus portraying the eerie look of a disembodied, floating spider head.

Shudder. I'm probably going to have nightmares for a week now.

After the toilet paper incident, like the typical, self-centered human being I was, I would have visions of waking up to a maniacal daddy long legs perched over my mouth, stealthily lowering its tiny, poisonous body into my unsuspecting face hole. I pictured the spiders of the South, in acts of willful martyrdom, amalgamating into one giant conspiracy theory whose sole mission was to kill off all the humans and take over the universe.

As time went on and this scenario, in fact, did not come to fruition, my fears eased with each passing year until confederacies of evil spiders poisoning me in my sleep seemed a distant, foggy dream. Ever since moving to New York City, my current nemesis has been the mutant subway rats that stalk me home from work, although unlike my spider conspiracy, I'm pretty sure that every other New Yorker feels exactly the same way.

- Patty Scull

Patty Scull's essays and poetry have been published in The Other Herald, Stepaway Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, Short and Sweet NYC, and she is a contributing writer to Broke Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.