Phobia

Legal disclaimer: "Flikken Maastricht" or anything that's associated with it does not belong to me. I don't earn any money with this story.

Author's remark: Dit verhaal is in engelske taal, omdat ik duitse ben en niet zo arrogant te geloven, dat jullie net als duits als engels kunnen lezen en verstaan. En want mjin engels is nog steeds veel beter als mijn nederlands. Jammer! Maar dankzij de schrijvers van fan-fiction en "Flikken Maastricht"vallt het me steeds makkeligder. You're the best!

Veel plezier!

The full moon stood high at the summer night sky over Maastricht. The last bars had closed,the last party-goers had found their way home. The town had calmed down and only now and then you could hear cars passing by. St.Bernardius Straat laid fast asleep.

Since it was unusually hot many, many windows stood wide open to let some cool air into overheated houses. Perfect for housebreakers.

A little one with eight legs crawled slowly, oh so slowly into a darkened space through an open window. Well, it didn't know it was a window. It was just an opening. How big it was the small spider couldn't grasp – it wasn't important for its goal or in its genetic make-up to make any estimation of this sort. It was hungry and on the hunt for smaller insects. So it crawled into this big, dark space. Inside it was still warm, but not as warm as the hot tiles it had crawled over to reach the opening. Slowly it moved towards a wall and began to climb down.

Hours later dawn sent its very first rosy-coloured fingers over the night sky; the small spider had climbed down one wall and up again another one. It was still on the hunt for prey.

A short while later birds sang their early morning song and Eva van Dongen, fearless police woman, turned in her bed, half awoken by the loud chirping outside of her open window. Drowsily she blinked a couple of times to sharpen her focus.

Her colleague and best friend or her best friend and colleague (let's call it a matter of perspective), Floris Wolfs, laid peacefully dormant in his room at the "di Ponti". If you looked hard enough you could make out a small smile. People in the know knew that it was a sign that he either dreamt of his daughter Fleur or of the beautiful woman who slept in her room across the corridor in the former B&B.

As said, it was a peaceful early morning in peaceful St. Bernardius Straat in peaceful Maastricht. Birds chirped and sang.

But suddenly their song was pierced by a loud and shrill scream that came out of Eva's room.

Startled Floris Wolfs sat up in bed. What had interrupted his sleep? Before he could get his bearings, his door flew open and banged against the wall.

"Whaa..." he couldn't finish his question because his colleague and best friend or best friend and colleague or let's just say the love of his life jumped onto him and into his arms.

"Kill it!" She gasped clinging to his upper body, sitting on his upper legs and knees over the thin bed cover. "Kill it now!" she demanded fiercely.

"Eef? " It wasn't that he had never fantasized over this particular scene where Eva came into his room in the middle of the night to straddle him and make demands he would only be too happy to fulfill, but somehow this was a vastly different scenario than any his vivid imagination had come up with.

"Spider" she gasped and gripped his shoulders hard.

"There's a spider in your room and you want me to kill it?" He asked for clarification. His brain wasn't at its best before his first coffee.

"Yes! NOW!" she hissed.

"Ahm...." To be perfectly honest, Wolfs hated the small crawlers with a vengeance. When he had been a small boy he had run into a huge spider web and had come very closely eye to eye with its small weaver. It had been a traumatic experience for both of them.

Cool-headed analyst that he was, now that his brain had got the chance to catch up, he identified four possible ways to handle the situation:

Option 1: Forget about the spider and grip Eva's hips, throw her onto her back and himself on top of her and act out fantasy no. 464. Most probably outcome: a fiery-red imprint of her hand on his cheek and /or a hard kick of her knee into his "family pride".

Option 2: Make a joke and demand that Eva do it herself. She was an independent woman of the 2000s after all. Most probable outcome: one dead spider and one angry colleague /best friend/ love of his life.

Option 3: Do the eco-friendly thing, catch the little monster and put it out. Most probable outcome: He and Eva would be half dead in fear that the spider would quickly crawl off the sheet of paper and be gone and/or return before he could reach the window and set it out. Eva would be disappointed in him because he failed his mission and he would be afraid that it would somehow find its way into his own room.

Option 4: Kill the poor, but horrible thing. Most probably outcome: Eva would be happy and look up to him as her hero.

Oh well, he had killed before to protect her.

"Eef, you need to get off of me." He moved his knees slightly upwards to emphasize his point when she didn't bother to move.

"Oh, of course." Hastily she crawled away from him and got up from his bed to follow him slowly into her room.

"So, where is it?"He asked gravelly to mask his repulsion.

"Over there, by my bed." She pointed out.

Indeed, there it was. A spider sat on the wall. As spiders go, it wasn't that big. Objectively speaking, it was really rather small. But to the pair of police officers who caught the deadliest and most violent criminals of Limburg-Zuid, it had the size of a Tarantula. Anxiously Eva gripped the back of his thin sleep shirt and watched as her colleague/best friend/undefined emotional entanglement took her thin book from the bedside table and hit the enemy swiftly but not without considerable goose bumps. But that she didn't know and would never learn, if Wolfs had any say over the matter.

Now that the danger had passed she hastened to release her grip on his shirt. God, this was embarrassing. What must he think of her? Fretting over the image Wolfs had to have of her now and wondering whether it was a good or bad thing that he saw her in a weak moment she let herself get tucked in by him. It couldn't get any worse than it already was was her perfectly acceptable justification.

"Try to get some more sleep, okay?" He gave her hand a quick squeeze before he turned to leave her room before he took his chances and acted out fantasy no. 464 with a slightly different spin. His shiner and their future children's permanent migraine would be worth it....

"Wolfs?"

"Hmh?"

"Thank you." She gave him one of her by now all too rare bright smiles. By breakfast time she would present again the strong, unflappable woman he knew and perhaps even admired and pretend that the last five minutes never happened like all the other five minutes that made up years by now. But only people in the know would count things like that.

"You're welcome," he said softly before he left walking on air. Later that day it would be business as usual, but for now he'd like to know and savour that - for five minutes – she had allowed him to be her shining knight in armour.

As said, it was a peaceful early morning in peaceful St. Bernardius Straat in peaceful Maastricht.

Birds chirped and sang. The sun coloured the sky in a pale yellow.

In the former B&B "de Ponti" two colleagues/best friends/unidentified emotional entanglements a.k.a. love of their life were fast and peacefully asleep. Big smiles graced their faces. People in the know knew that it was a sign that they were very happy and dreamt about wonderful things.

Slowly one leg after the other got uncurled – all eight. A quick function test after the big fall revealed that all systems were fully operational – except....the headache was killing it. Disgruntled it crawled away looking for new hunting grounds.

Kindly leave a comment when you go. They make my days shine brightly.