Spider

Based on the prompt for the Stop Writing Alone in September.

The prompt here involved an insectoid and some slimy slime from the slime planet and some other bits that I didn’t get in. This prompt sort of fitted in with a story I was already writing (about a man who wakes to find himself in hospital with an orchestra of spiders living in his head). For the sake of clarity I should point out that this is not based on a true story. and I am aware that spiders are not insects. Apart from the seagulls bit that I used as a springboard it was all written on the night and polished afterwards. Apologies for the abrupt ending but it is still very much a work in progress.

“Nice little spot you’ve got here,” the spider said. “Do you want a lodger?”

And that was it. No by your leave. No introduction. No explanation. No polite circumlocutions. Not even a hello and an exchange of names. Just straight to business.

“That’s a hell of a view by the way, it said. “I bet you never get bored with it, do you?”

“Well,” Carter said, “truth to tell you do get a bit tired of it after a while, when it’s all you’ve seen for days.”

“No pleasing some people. What are you in for?”

Well let’s see,” Carter replied. “My head’s all bandaged up, my scalp appears to have been removed and you just crawled out of a trapdoor in my skull. What do you reckon? Ingrowing toe nail? Hemorrhoids? Foot and mouth? Or some kind of subdural infestation?”

“The spider shrugged each of its shoulders in turn. It looked like a mexican wave sweeping round a very small stadium.

“Point taken,” it said. “But still no need to be snarky. Just making conversation. Anyway, I stopped by because I’m thinking about bringing my wife this way tomorrow. She’s never been up this high and I think she’d like it. It’s lovely and quiet.”

As it spoke there was a sudden outburst of squawking and three of four seagulls, grey backed, their wicked yellow beaks splashed with red, landed on the concrete ledge outside the window where they stood, opening and closing their wings for balance, tapping their beaks on the glass and staring intently at the spider, whose agitation was causing his web had begun to quiver rapidly

“I think you spoke a bit soon there,” Carter said. “Don’t worry. They can’t get in.”

The spider appeared to bridle a little at this.

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” it said. “I wasn’t scared. They just took me by surprise. Yeah. By surprise.”

It was sitting upright on its spinarets, propped up on two hindpairs of legs, squeezing the claws of the forepairs into tight balls with which it made a series of weaving, feinting gestures, reminiscent of the lion in the wizard of Oz, towards the gulls, who responded with a further chorus of screams.

After a while it appeared to get bored and it climbed down onto the coverlet and into a position where it was hidden from view by Carter’s leg.

“It’s just birds,” it said. “I fucking hate them. All of them. Not just the arachnophages, although you can probably understand that, and I do have particularly strong feelings about them. You know what they’re like. ‘Mummy, mummy, can we have a leg each? There’s plenty to go round.’ Anyway, it’s not just them, it’s all birds. Ophidiophages, meliphages, coprophages, I’ve shat ‘em. Carnivores, piscivores, granivores, frugivores, nucivores. Or nuciphages if you prefer. It’s more or less a neologism so you can go down the latin route or the greek. Of course nuciphage is half and half and you shouldn’t really cross the streams but let’s not be pedantic about it. Anyway, greek or latin, it’s all the same to me. And you know what I hate most?

Myxomycetovores. Yeah that’s got you. What do you think? No. Don’t bother. I’ll tell you. Myxomycetes are slime moulds. You do the rest. And do you know the worst thing about slime moulds? I’ll tell you. Nobody knows what they are. They’re not animal, not vegetable, not fungi, not lichen. They’re just stuff and they all come from the same place - the planet of slime, which sounds like some kind of superstore for buying slime, like Wilkinson’s World of Books or Charlies World of Chocolate or Babbages World of Cabbages. Slippery Pete’s World of Slime. Anyway myxomycetevores. Creatures that eat slime moulds. Wherever they get it from it’s just disgusting.

I can’t stand the nasty, dirty chirping, plumiferous little bastards. I hate ‘em. Don’t you?”

Which left Carter with a dilemma because, truth to tell, he had no strong feelings about birds at all, other than that they sometimes made good eating and were liable to shit on your car and that they usually waited until you’d just washed it before launching their deadly white scattershot fusillade. He considered admitting this to the spider, but it was clearly a creature of firm opinions and having been without conversation for several days he was enjoying its company and he did not wish to antagonise it, and risk losing his new conversationalist, so he tried to sound non committal.

“Well, I agree with you for the most part,” he said but I don’t think they’re all bad. I’ve met some good ones.”

The spider tilted its head to one side, raised several thousand compound eyebrows and gave him a long hard look. Realising that he might have gone too far Carter said quickly -

“Only one or two of course. Mostly they’re awful.” and he stared down towards his pillow as if he were examining the stitching.

The spider shook its head and muttered something about finding out one day, but it didn’t stalk off in a huff so Carter thought it wise, the crisis having been averted for the time being, to change the subject to something less controversial.

“So, what we were talking about with your wife,” he said. “Is it a bit of a holiday? A few days away from the web? Or something more permanent?”

“Well,” the spider replied, “ the truth is we need to move. We’ve been up on long term geriatrics for a while. It’s ideal for us. Nice and warm and quiet, but it’s getting awfully crowded up there. Not enough residential places available, that’s the long term problem, and it leads to bed blocking and that leads to overcrowding. It’s getting so the corridors are carrying so much traffic you’re taking your life in your own eight feet every time you try to cross from one bay to the next.”