Part 1
20071
I was sauntering into my living room when Sam Gavelock2 appeared from the opposite door after an unwillingly routined morning workout on the porch. He ignored me, Sam, as he always does, and set off with his daily chores.
To enter someone’s house without their approval is one thing, but to so brutally disregard their existence itself . . . is villainous. Sometimes, I feel undervalued in my own goddamn house!
Anyway, I’ve gotten used to it, and nowadays I just mind my own business. I sit back and relax to savor the tasty food . . . the fresh meat I got today. I’m a recreational storyteller, and I was just writing this short story. I so wish I could read it out to you.
Before I move on though, let me take care of some unwanted visitors who’ve turned up here. If I do not return quickly, you can go on reading this alone, but don’t forget to tell me how it was, and if you’d like me to continue this story. This one, this unwanted visitor, is too small compared to Sam, maybe an offspring of his. Why does he have this newspaper rolled into his han . . .
“Daddy, I smashed the ugly spider!”, roared Sam’s offspring.
Oxygen binds to the Iron atoms in Haemoglobin, giving human blood a dark red color. But there are many organisms that don’t have red blood. We spiders, for instance, have blue blood, because Oxygen binds to the Copper present in Haemocyanin.
I’m Damian, a spider. Spiders come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. But not all are as friendly, as is the case with you humans. If I’m not cautious enough, someday my wife might eat me3. Anyway, let me tell you something that you’ll find interesting. So, I share my house with a human called Sam, and his family of one wife and two kids.
It’s not that I can’t afford my own, but I’m fine here since they use just one of the six walls in each room. Also, they help me out in getting my food by leaving the house dirty, which is really helpful. I’ve grown a bit slow with age and sometimes find it hard to catch prey.
When I was young, a few weeks at the most, something really horrible happened. Sam is usually very reserved and does not interfere with my life, but he has a very mischievous offspring. I was sitting tight on the wall, waiting for a fly to get caught in my newly-composed web, when this offspring of Sam’s came near me, with a pencil, and before I could comprehend his intentions, he started attacking me with the pointy end of the pencil. After around thirty failures, thirty times of me barely avoiding death, it hit my frontmost left leg. I was lucky it broke off . . . the frontmost left leg.
So, I was left with seven legs, three on my left side, and four on my right. As to why I was lucky, it’s because had the leg broken from anywhere else other than the joint, I would have lost a lot of blood, and thus would have been unable to move4. If a few of our legs get chopped off, we can still survive as long as we can balance. And those few legs also grow back when we molt.
It was painful, but I tried to run away as fast as I could since I don’t need telling that that brat would be ready with his next blow anytime. I started moving, but something was odd. I was moving in anticlockwise circles instead of a straight line. That was because I had learned to walk with four legs on each side. The kid was looking dangerous, with his two big eyes directly on me. I had to do something fast. I took a brave, painful decision. With all the strength I could muster, I used my forelegs to cut off my right frontmost leg too.
At first, it was stiff, but in a jolt of excruciating pain, it broke off, just like the left one. I was now left with six legs. This was not a big problem since I would grow them back again. The bigger problem was the kid. I started running up the wall as fast as I could, and quickly got out of his reach, even with a pencil.
I sometimes wish I was bigger and stronger, so I could break one of the legs of that spoiled kid. Or a few fingers, at least. Anyway, I find happiness in his getting beaten by Sam, which happens almost every odd day these days since he’s home. I plan to write my entire life out, for anyone who wants to read the stories of a dreamy, solitary storyteller spider.
Before I move on though, let me take care of some unwanted visitors who’ve turned up here. If I do not return quickly, you can go on reading this alone, but don’t forget to tell me how it was, and if you’d like me to continue this story. This one, this unwanted visitor, is too small compared to Sam, maybe an offspring of his. Why does he have this newspaper rolled into his han . . .
Part 2
2021
I’m a wretch, so
they sent me to the academy5.
Blasé6, I wait for it to be 10 o’clock,
when I can catch the bus.
Whatever, my breath haunts me.
And breathing is the only thing I do.
All day, till 10 o’clock.
I watch the fan, and I breathe.
The clock ticks avouch it’s not a dream,
every second, without fail.
Sometimes it rains.
I like it when it rains.
Perhaps.
I sit out when it rains7, and I read.
I read about the jihad in Afghanistan.
I read about the slaves in Mauritius.
And slowly,
I am beholden to the rain.
How it falls,
in an everlasting crescendo.
And I realize, how,
for the rain,
none of it matters.
The rain doesn’t know when it’ll arrive.
The rain doesn’t know when it’ll stop.
It’s a circle of life,
not quite unlike ours.
Except that,
we choose to suffer,
while the rain simply,
falls.
And it is 10 o’clock.
I catch the bus.
The bus floats,
ever so gently,
across my mind.
“Next: Harold Sam Gavelock.”,
I hear a yell.
“It wasn’t me”, I plead in Hell.
“It was Curiosity.”
…………………………………………
- Penned by H. S. Gavelock. ↩︎
- Son of Zane Gavelock, who’s father had immigrated to New Hampshire from Eastern Botswana. ↩︎
- Prevalent post-coital cannibalism by the female gives rise to the pop name “black widow”. ↩︎
- Such an occurrence, not uncommon with spiders, is termed as a “death curl”. ↩︎
- A boarding school in Wolfeboro, NH. ↩︎
- abstractedly, toward nothing in specific. ↩︎
- Usually during long, frontal downpours; not convective drizzles. ↩︎