"Honey," he said, "Have I got the hairdo for you! It's called 'The Beehive.' It's all the rage now. The smartest women in America are wearing it. And here's the beauty of it: all you have to do to preserve it is spray it in the morning and wrap it up in toilet paper every night. It'll stay for months."

Andre ratted and teased until her long black hair stood up in a beehive shape on top of her head.

Dolores knew she couldn't afford to have the beehive redone very often, so she followed Andre's instructions carefully. She sprayed her hair every morning. Each night, she wrapped it in toilet paper and slept on her back so that she wouldn't mess it up. After several weeks of spraying and wrapping, her hair became like a helmet.

One morning, she awoke with a terrible pain in her arm. She looked down and saw a swelling with a angry red spot in the center of it. It terrified her and she raced to the doctor.

"You've been bitten by a black widow spider," he said.

Dolores replied, "It must have happened in my sleep."

The doctor treated the bite. Three days later, she returned to the doctor's office with bites on both arms.The doctor immediately put her in the hospital.

"You can't be bitten many more times or you'll really be sick," he said. "You must have an infestation of black widows in your apartment."

When Dolores finally got well, she searched through her apartment. Spider webs were in every corner. She called in an exterminator who fumigated the place. That night, she felt safe and secure for the first time. When Dolores awoke the next morning, the first thing that met her eyes were spider webs in all corners of the room.

How can this be? she thought.

She called the exterminator and told him the spiders were back and their webs were all through the house.

"That's impossible," he replied. "I put enough poison in there to kill anything living."

"You've got to come back and spray again."

The exterminator agreed to return on Wednesday.

Tuesday morning, Dolores was awakened by a tickling sensation on her cheek. She opened her eyes and looked up. Spider webs stretched from her face to the bedstead, the lamp, and the pillows. In each web, she could see a black widow spider. As a shudder ran through her body, the spider webs began to shake and the spiders scrambled toward her face. She screamed and jumped out of bed. She looked back at her pillow, expecting to see the spiders. But there were none.

"Where did they go? Are they in my hair?" Dolores ran to the bathroom and started unwrapping the toilet paper from around her head. Then she realized she was going to need help. I can't do this alone, she thought. She quickly threw on her clothes and ran down the street to Andre's.

"Andre, you've got to help me."

"I can't," he said. "I'm sorry, but I've got a shop full of customers." Dolores pulled a woman out of the salon chair and sat down.

"There's something in my hair. Get it out!"

As Andre began to unwrap the toilet paper, black widow spiders spilled out of Dolores's hair, down her shoulders, and onto his arms. Both of them began to scream.

Hundreds of black widow spiders dropped to the floor and began crawling around the shop. Andre's customers screamed in horror. The shop echoed with the hysteria of Andre and the women racing to the door, black widows climbing up their legs. Once everyone had pushed through the door, they looked back. Dolores was still inside. They watched in disbelief as she grabbed a pair of electric clippers and began cutting off her hairdo right next to the scalp. They watched as the beehive fell to the floor and burst open. Inside were millions of spider eggs, ready to hatch.