My Lady Widow

Set upon a lonely corner of an otherwise dreary setting there is life. The cellar of a woman’s home, where the humidity is unbearable, a myriad of broken pipes fixed with half hearted attempts and a plentiful supply of plumber’s putty, the very old heater that quakes to life every now and again with the groans of age and threats of sputtering to death without a bit of concern to those it warms. There’s a laundry bin where she keeps her clothes, a pair of long black stockings sitting atop it all, even if they didn’t really belong there. Even if it was all just to set the illusion that she had been on a date with a lovely stranger recently, if only to make herself smile and wonder what happened. Yet still, perched in the corner of stone, just beneath long wooden braces for the flooring above, the beams shaking a little with each step, rests the red hour glass of a spider, as she wistfully and seemingly unaware of many things tends to a small web, breaking off bits here and there where her prey was long dead, the drained corpses of a few flies, and one prize in particular of a small roach falling to the ground as she spun silk from her backside and checked, re-checked, and checked her work again, tirelessly, mechanically, like a mad seamstress struck by God’s words to create a tapestry in his honor.

This spider lived the life of most any spider, save for a slight… adventurous streak, if one could call it that, the few times she adventured upstairs to seek fresh prey. No one can really tell simply by observing her if she was, perhaps, checking in on her single benefactor, the woman almost always busy with work and keeping the house tidy, scarce any time at all to herself aside from watching a bit of late night television, to which the spider would often accompany her in the soft glow of the set, spinning a single strand down a few feet to admire the dancing lights, and perhaps in hopes that it would attract some flies to yet another, though far more busily assembled, web high above, where the woman paid absolutely no mind at all. The woman was fiercely tidy. She was also fiercely lonely, the spider sometimes riding the woman back to her own room, though this was on very rare occasions indeed that she’d attach herself to the human’s person and accompany her, to scurry off before our lady widow was discovered and watch from the ceiling. Watch as the woman wept… and wept again, pouring her heart and tears into a journal. A disturbing testament to the instinct to live combating the wish to die. How lonely she was. Fearing what it seemed most every person did, and losing all hope. The fear of dying alone. The fear of disappearing from the annals’ of history and fading away as a scant memory by a small, secluded sermon followed by paid workers delivering her grave to a plot, and lowering her down. The spider often found a few flies in this room, the humid springs and heated summers welcoming all sort of vermin into the welcoming home. Were it simply for the fruit flies… or to ensure her benefactor did not dare to use that razor blade tucked between the pages, no one could tell to clearly. Whether the spider stared down in interest of her plight… or simply out of fear and instinct, lacking such trivial thoughts of loneliness, replaced instead with only that. Instinct. To live. And carry on.

This unbeknownst visitor maintained her silent vigils over the house, keeping it clean much in her own way night after night, day after day of the being startled as the heater sprung to life, churned with fury and brimstone, then relinquished it’s hold over the vents and succumbed to dead silence. And it wasn’t until the final year of our spider’s life that she found the one thing to make even herself whole. The muggy summer air outside had created just a large enough gap in the cellar window. Just large enough. And the damp air of the cellar seemed just right, for one evening. An evening in which a small, brown spider came through that crack, it’s eight legs carefully beating a path inside, before freezing altogether and scouring the room with tens of eyes, seeking one thing this pitch black night. And there he found it. In a tiny, forgotten, out of reach corner. High above the ground. Resting in a web that shone lightly with humidity. The tiny brown spider approaches, his front legs raised, his stance fierce despite his size, especially next to our lady widow. And various taps of legs upon the web danced, beating a rhythm begun long before them, so familiar, though they both did this but their first time. And with not much else the tiny brown spider alighted the widow, their backsides pressed tight. An exchange is made of some sort. Far too tiny for my eyes to make out, and far too insignificant given the next action of our lady widow. As the floor boards above them shook ravenously, the sounds of their now mutual benefactor screaming into the night with the grunts of a second voice. The widow turned in place, grasping her lover. And plainly, without any thought what so ever really, ate him, her mandible scraping and gouging into his eyes as he pleaded in pitches inaudible to human ear’s for mercy. And he died, as her human counterpart screamed with admiration and ecstasy, the house falling silent once more as the door slams closed. The small brown spider’s body drifts to the floor, tumbling down stonework, his purpose in life fulfilled. To bear young. And to die. The sobs of the woman above as the widow feels her abdomen swell already. And the night is over.

I’m not entirely sure what to say about this action. The pregnant spider, having laid her eggs as they gestated within a cocoon of their mother’s silk, simply decided that she had to see her lady friend, scurrying across the shaky, creaking beams of wood, hurriedly climbing each step with purpose. Perhaps it was… a sense of pride in her accomplishment. Or maybe it was of concern of the constant sobs each night, the spider passing the trash can of the downstairs bathroom, pausing for a second as something new and very strange sat on the floor. A long, white stick thing. With a bit of color on it. It was shaped like a plus sign, for some reason. The spider gave not so much as a shrug as she continued, straight to the living room, staying to corners and hiding in pitch as she crawled up the ceiling and hung delicately above her. It is important to note that, while birthing is a very natural thing in the great world, it can have it’s consequences, much as anything can. The web of our lady widow this evening was not a shiny strand beautiful silk. It was dull… almost completely dry… the poor widow having spent so much time on her children’s cocoon and the constant spinning of new strands to her web having worn out many of her functions. And as the web seemed to creak… yes, it gave a tiny creak… it snapped in air. The spider was at a loss altogether now, as she simply dropped from the sky, right onto the woman’s head as she sat up, turned the TV off, and made haste to her room. It wasn’t certain what the spider was thinking as she fought strands of long brown hair for dominance, attempting to flee with so little strength. And as the woman sat on her bed, her eyes red with tears, the look of someone without… anything in the world really to care for her, brown eyes reflecting a loss of life and conscious action as she slid her diary out from under the bed and took the razor blade out from the pages. But it was clear… that she needed help. Perhaps God stirred the wind about the spider, freeing her from the embrace of brown strands to climb quickly forward. Perhaps he had a higher meaning for this lowly creature as the spider, in her rush, fell once more to the pages of the diary she had seen so many times before, the woman screaming in fear. Or perhaps… it was karma. Or just circumstance as the journal slammed closed over our lady widow, the razor blade dropping to the floor and sliding beneath a heavy dresser as the woman recovered her composure and tossed the journal away from her. Perhaps… it was simply nothing really, as she then cried herself to sleep, stroking her hands over her belly and questioning why the world had done this to her. And I can’t really say if she would have had any compassion for the murder she had just committed. Of another single mother in the world, now smattered across two pages of text.

Several weeks passed and, as all children must, the widow’s efforts saw fruition. They didn’t waste any time as they scuttled across the place, each one soon finding the crack in the window before creating tiny strands of silk, catching the wind and sailing on to other places. All except one. One with a thoughtful gleam to her eyes, matching the shine of her carapace. Their she stayed, taking over her mother’s work before her, laying fresh strands of silk across a web with pride and mechanical detail. There she stayed for several months, journeying on occasion to watch the woman’s belly swell with child, a little more each day, keeping her company on the ceiling above while she ate her flies and other prey. Where she watched the woman fight so hard to stay alive. To eat. To breathe. To stop crying.

And she was their when a tiny bundle returned home with the woman one evening, gurgling and giggling gently, the woman now so much thinner as the spider scurried after her. The bundle soon lay within a crib now, as the child’s mother went straight to the bath for a few minutes, the spider lowering on a single thread of the finest silk imaginable downwards. And with a single, chitin clad arm she waved in return to this new being in her home. The baby waved in reply, smiling as the spider sailed upwards once more and disappeared from sight.