Miss Hathaway’s Spider (Short Story)

Miss Hathaway’s Spider is a short story by James Van Pelt. It appears in Talebones (1998), Strangers and Beggars (2002), and Curious Fictions (Oct. 11, 2018). It received a Nebula recommendation and an honorable mentioned in the Best of the Rest II anthology of small press fiction.

Word Count: 4,568

Author's Note
From Curious Fictions:

''This is the second of my Halloween-themed stories for October. I've done readings with this story before. The teachers in the room chuckle in places that other audience members don't. I have taught high school English for thirty-seven years. It's inevitable that I would occasionally write about the classroom.''

I'm also a bit of an arachnophobe.

Characters

 * Miss Hathaway - a meticulous teacher of fifteen years with a spider in her room
 * Jim Bag - a mediocre student with a tendency to dangle modifiers
 * Mr. Book - a vice principal who speaks in platitudes and doesn't know Helen Keller from Anne Sullivan
 * Mr. Clean - a janitor who isn’t an exterminator
 * Guidance Counselor Mitty - who is committed to communicating with parents
 * Melba Toast - a student caught in a spider web

Summary
Miss Hathaway has a spider in her room. When she first notices, she asks the janitor, Mr. Clean, to take care of it, but he refuses on the grounds that it’s not his job. Two weeks later, the spider has grown and she goes to Mr. Book, the vice principal. Mr. Book manages to convince Miss Hathaway that the spider isn’t a problem and she can teach despite it.

The week after Homecoming, Melba Toast, a student of Miss Hathaway's, complains of a web on her desk. The web has grown to obscure a corner of the room and the spider is big enough to distract Miss Hathaway and her students. Ms. Hathaway assigns an essay about the spider.

The day after Thanksgiving break, Mr. Book comes into her room, furious she wrote a memo to the principal about the spider. He declares that as far as she and her students are concerned, there is no spider. Melba accidentally touches the web, and the spider descends upon her, wrapping her in its web, while Miss Hathaway does nothing.

The next day, Miss Hathaway speaks to Mr. Mitty, a counselor. He tells her they save more students then they lose.

Miss Hathaway realizes she's no longer afraid of the spider. it approaches and she embraces it. When she comes to, she's hanging from the ceiling, wrapped in the web, watching a substitute teacher looking for lesson plans.