Spiders

(I’m not sure if I ever posted this one publicly; back when I still had a patreon it was there, but now … well, here it is. 2.1k words of trauma and spiders) Kids on one side of the glass, the spider on the other. There are three of them there on that sticky summer day, Grace and Florence and Ash, set adrift in the zoo’s carefully curated expanse while their three sets of parents get drunk and reminisce about old times. They’re all old enough to be left alone—and more than old enough to insist that they’d rather not have an older teen disinterestedly keeping an eye on them—but not old enough to be left to downtown’s tender mercies. There are kidnappers about, everyone knows that! And worse things too, lurking in the shadows and blasted across every news channel lest anyone might forget that the world is a dangerous place. ...

A looming spider, a horrid beast! Its chelicerae drip with purple-gold venom; it picks its way through the world on claws as sharp as needles! With each step its swollen abdomen dips to touch the ground; the air shivers before its mass. What a fate, to encounter such a monster! And yet— Its pedipalps hang thick with bells, each of a different size, each carefully tied to the rough hairs that coat those waving appendages; more bells adorn its legs. Some dangle from silken thread and some are held by rings which pierce through the beast’s chitin. ...

Through the fringes of the world She weaves her charms, smooth silver threads laid across rooftops and knotted umber sewn through sidewalk cracks. Each day brings with it a different color, a different place, all unremarked by the sightless things who think the world theirs. Her web weaves loosely through forgotten places and tightly through those much attended but hardly seen, enmeshed in the set dressing of lives lived without pain. So much remains unseen, unremarked, in those places; so much detail lost beneath comforting security. ...