A Senses on Saturday by happenchance
You ever have that feeling like you're being watched? That gut wrenching feeling that something is just slightly off in your world? Sometimes you feel it in the pit of your stomach and sometimes the hair on your arms or neck might stand on end.
Welcome to my day. It started off mostly as per usual but at one point I felt my hair feeling like it was "being fiddled with". This creeped me out at first but I brushed it off to my imagination playing tricks on me and thought that it was probably just a stray hair that moved with the breeze (there was no breeze) to justify my own silliness and play down the feeling of being watched and worst yet - touched by some invisible hand.
To be honest, it was a bit freaky as you are probably imagining right now.
I continued to work and while typing I felt the hair on my arms raise every so slightly. I brushed it off again to "temperature fluctuations" and tried to keep on working.
Then it happened!
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I felt something in my hair line by the back of my neck. As you can imagine my first instinct was "it's a spider" and that alone was enough to make me hold my breath but what exactly to do when you can't see the thing that you actually weren't imagining is now waltzing across your neckline and twiddling your hair?
In the blink of an eye, just praying to whatever gods or angels there may be that I don't get bitten by something poisonous, I reached back, grabbed the bugger and threw it down. It careened across the table and disappeared.
A shiver ran up and down my spine from my head, down my neck and then shot through me all the way to my tiniest little toes. I shook it off - this time physically and now all my hair on my neck and arms were standing bolt upright.
Would you have just walked away? Left it there, better to the unknown? It was lodged under some paper packed on the desk and I could hear it trying to scuttle around which freaked me out a bit more because I still didn't know what the freaking thing was!
Curiosity got the better of me so I carefully and slowly with the tips of my fingernails lifted up the paper furthest away from where the sound was coming from to catch a glimpse of what it was. While this was happening I didn't realise it at the time but it had clung to the underside of the paper (on it's back) and was scuttling upside down. As soon as I lifted the paper the bugger made a hectic buzzing noise that sounded more big wasp than spider to me and zooted out from underneath. I immediately let go of the paper and instinctively ducked for cover.
Bzzzz ~ THONK. Bzzz.... Thonk. Scuttle Scuttle Scuttle.
It was in the kitchen now. I sheepishly walked up half expecting some demon raised hellish looking creature to be eyeing me from across the room readying to strike again.
But to my relief, it wasn't a wasp or a flying spider or anything nearly that scary, but it was a fucking huge stinkbug. My imagination was having a field day with this one at the time.
ARgghhhh! That feeling of something that size walking on my neck sent more shivers down me and I got quite physically creeped out by it. You see those bulging eyes? No wonder I felt like I was being watched. And from my own back. It's a good think I didn't have eyes on the back of my head because being that close up and personal to this creature would probably have sent me screeching off like a homeless banshee.
Then, I cupped the monster with a glass and some paper and threw it out the window with a shrill of relief. "Bugger Off Someplace Else FFS!"
I couldn't get rid of that hair raising feeling for a good couple of hours and even now, my skin is still crawling. What a bugger he was! I can only imagine how extremely scary it must have been for him. Do you think his skin was crawling too?
Images are my own and the bug didn't seem to have been hurt during this incident as it could still fly perfectly well. I do not currently know if it sustained any psychological damage from this encounter, but it was returned to the garden to recouperate