Content warning:
As with all stupid things, it started with a dare. I could have chosen truth, but I was twelve and shy and sitting next to my crush. Telling someone exactly how I felt about them was unthinkable.
I could never tell how he felt about me before I ate the spider. I am not sure why he gave it to me to begin with. Maybe he just hated my guts and wanted to see me cry. Maybe he already knew how I felt and wanted to hear me say it in front of everyone, in front of him. To him. All I know is that he shuffled close, held up a fist, and slowly opened his palm to reveal the three-inch ogre.
“I dare you to eat this.”
Boys and girls shifted in their seats, letting out nervous giggles. I could tell they were all in on this. I should have known the moment they asked me to join. Go on, they would have laughed. Go on, make her spill or swallow. Even twelve-year-olds know how to have a strip show. But my feelings weren’t meant for the pole.
I do not remember what ogre tastes like.
I only remember how his hand felt in mine. A little grimy, a little moist, and very very soft. For one second, the tips of my fingernails—I made sure he felt them—dug into the skin of his palm as I plucked the thing off his hand and shoved it in my mouth to the claw.
Watching the looks on their faces as I chewed was the funniest thing I ever did. Dickheads, I thought as I chewed. Dicks, dicks, dicks. Eyes, legs, pincers. By the time I was done, there was no one left in the playground except for the boy I would have once kissed, and all I said to him was, “Not bad.” And I’d thought they were the ones who knew how to have fun.
He stayed away from me after that. The only kids who would hang out with me were DIY emos or aspiring entomologists. I was neither. I just hated being pushed.
Spiders can survive a fall from thirty thousand feet.
I opened my eyes the next morning and felt the vacuum running downstairs from under the covers. I lay still, trying to figure out if this was a dream or an earthquake. Slowly, I grew aware of every hair on my body twitching and standing on end.
Bedbugs?
I wrenched off the sheets to find my arms and legs covered in—cotton pajamas. But I could still feel—or hear, or both, I was having trouble telling apart my senses—a clear rumbling from downstairs. Mom had gone from the kitchen to the living room and was now turning up the power, sending goosebumps down my arms. I switched on the light and squinted.
Every bit of fuzz on my arm was moving like antennae, making gentle turns in the still air. But the air was not still, never still. There was a steady current all around me, the ebb and flow of subtle vibrations, swirling motes of dust and cells fallen away from my skin during the night. Even the wiry hairs between my armpits were jerking in their pores. Cold sweat broke and pooled in their roots at the thought of what that ogre might have done to me. Scared of what Mom and Dad might see if they found me first, I forced myself to turn and face the mirror on the wall.
No extra eyes. No black-and-brown stripes. No sharp fangs.
So I was lucky. I felt a little better.
Until my alarm went off. I flicked my wrist at the clock until Mom hollered down the hall for me to get ready for school. I turned it off by hand. Guess I wasn’t that lucky.
Spiders are one of the most vibration-sensitive creatures, second only to cockroaches.
School was impossible. I had never realized how talkative people were. If I listened—or felt—hard enough, I could make out the conversations at the very back even when I was sitting in the first row. Homework, boyfriend, lunch money, porn … I put my hands over my ears and, of course, the teacher chose that moment to notice me.
“Is my class not interesting enough for you, Shay?”
I flushed and uncovered my ears. Gritting my teeth, I willed myself to calculate the area of the triangle on the whiteboard, when someone said my name under their breath three desks away.
It was the one girl from the playground who had texted an apology and tried to say hi to me that morning. I couldn’t remember if I had returned her smile. Probably not. I wanted to look more angry than alone. Her name was Andy. Andy Sands. Did Andy feel sorry for me? I could forgive her if she stopped saying sorry and started talking about the things that actually interested her. Maybe then, we could find out that we both liked scary movies and start watching them together.
“So she can’t come?” She was asking a friend.
“That psycho? No way.”
“She’s not that bad.”
“Tell you what. She can come if she can eat a spider again.”
“What?”
“At the party. In front of the camera.”
“Basically you’re going to let me invite her if she makes everyone puke and leave early.”
“She can do it before we cut the cake.”
I held my breath. Did I want to hear this? What could be the area of an average slice of chocolate cake? Does the size of the slice you get say more about you or the host?
“I’m not making her do that again.”
“Then forget about it,” Birthday Girl sulked. “Why do you like her so much, anyway?”
I exhaled. Andy Sands. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t invited anymore. I flushed again, but this time with a different sort of heat. I couldn’t resist turning my head to get a glimpse of her.
She was making a face.
“I don’t. I just don’t want her bitching about us to Higgins, that’s all.”
I was the first to make it out of the classroom when the bell rang, head held low so no one could see the psycho cry.
By lunch, I was ready to lose my mind and only kept myself sane by stealing a jacket from the lost and found. It helped to hide my arms. I wasn’t sure how much more gossip I could take before spilling everything to everyone about what they were all saying about one another. Truth, I thought. Truth all the way.
Mom immediately noticed the jacket when I got home.
“I just borrowed it. Got a little cold.”
“Are you sick?”
“No, just tired.”
“No headaches? No fever?”
“Mom, I’m not sick.”
She took off her glasses and took a closer look at me.
“You do look tired.”
She didn’t move from her couch but she didn’t look away either. I knew that look. She was waiting for more. But there was nothing more I could say without landing myself in the shrink’s office. Or worse, without her marching off to school and stirring the hornet’s nest.
For the first time, I saw our relationship with painful clarity.
She can’t know me too well.
I only told her what she could take, the smallest beans on my plate.
“Math class was a lot. And I didn’t get invited to a birthday party.”
She stood up and gently laid her hands on my shoulders.
“Whose birthday is it?”
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t even know her that well.”
“Do you want me to ask her mom to invite you over?”
I groaned.
“Mom, don’t. I’m not six. It’s nothing, okay?”
“Okay, okay.”
I was about to brush past her and make my escape, when she pulled me into a tight hug. For a moment, I just stood there, a little stiff.
“You know you can tell me anything, right?”
“Right.”
“And I’ll always be here, ready to listen. Right?”
“Right.”
It made me feel sorry for her. Almost guilty. Sometimes, it seemed as if I was the only thing that mattered to her. I would have liked to take all her attention, all her affection, and pretend they were all that mattered to me, too. Instead, I hugged her back as hard as I could. But I still couldn’t say anything.
Because she would never believe me if I told her I could hear her soul pulsing between her ribs.
At first I thought it was her breathing. My arms, settled around her ribcage, could pick up minute vibrations breaking through her clothes and onto my skin like tiny ripples. I pressed my ear against her chest but it wasn’t the rhythmic thwup, thwup, thwup of her heart. The ripples were irregular, more like an instrument than an organ. I squeezed her tighter. The music grew louder. How do you describe the sound of a sand-beaten rock that has stood its ground for a long time and has promised to stand there for decades more?
I couldn’t let go for a long time.
When Dad came home in the evening, I gave him a long hug and he just took it without asking any questions. Maybe he’d had a long day at work and had wanted to hug me all along. Maybe he was just tired. Maybe he was just hungry.
Maybe he just didn’t care. It was always hard to tell what he was thinking. He wasn’t much of a talker around us. At the moment, I didn’t care that he might not care. What I really wanted to know was, would he care if I told him that he was nothing, nothing at all like Mom? If she was sand and rock, he was running water, flowing somewhere that sounded distant. As I watched Mom kiss him on the cheek with the oven gloves on, I had an uneasy feeling that she would care, very much.
After dinner, I lay down on the bed and held still as if I was dead.
What did I sound like?
But I couldn’t hear myself.
When Geeky Barry wouldn’t shut up about net-casting spiders at school the next day, I added my own observation to his rambling.
“Spiders know each other better than we do.”
Over the years, I taught myself to listen to people. Not just to their words but to their souls. I kept my distance from those whose music hurt my ears. Not that loud or shrill people are bad people—just not my people. My warmth to some and distance from others was apparently inexplicable, and so, unlikable. I didn’t care. Being liked by the people I liked was more important than being liked by everyone. If this was how spiders lived, I wanted to weave a web and join their world. There, could I be so shamelessly clear and defenseless?
“Um, behind you …”
A voice broke through my thoughts. Apparently, the girl who sat behind me in algebra was afraid of moths.
“Oh.”
Pretending to have just noticed one sitting on my shoulder, I moved to the window and gently brushed it off outside. She would have screamed if I just flicked it off in front of her face.
Too bad. I’d been saving it.
When I returned, she gave me a look of awe. I caught the word “brave” in the whispers that followed.
I wasn’t brave. Just hungry. If I could, I would have simply popped it into my mouth when no one was watching. Moths looked like flying Rice Krispies and ants marching in the sun reminded me of raisins. Neither of them were as sweet as I’d imagined, but that was okay. The nuttiness made up for it.
“Wanna have pizza at my place?” Barry asked after class. “I can show you all my latest beetles. I don’t have as much time to collect them now, but there’s still some cool stuff you might want to check out.”
Barry always found my attention flattering, and I found that convenient. We both loved his bug collection at home—for different reasons. So I munched away at my pepperoni and stared at the dozen glass containers inside his room, not bothering to hide my absorption. The larger species looked delectable, crunchy on the outside and juicy on the inside. I felt hungry even as greasy chunks of cheese and dough slipped down my throat.
That evening, we talked about dung beetles.
“They live on the things we won’t look at twice,” he murmured pensively as he fed Seth, who was thankfully not a dung beetle. “It’s honestly smart. We buy cars and houses and have kids with gold, but they do the same thing with poop. The stuff that’s everywhere. You think that’s disgusting?”
“It’s just food for them,” I said simply. “What’s wrong with food?”
“Exactly,” he agreed. He gave me an appraising look. “Just goes to show we all want the same things. It’s only a matter of how we get there. And I say they do it better than we do.”
“I agree,” I said quietly. Sometimes I wondered if Barry was not half-insect himself. At the very least, he understood their perspective. The thought was comforting. If I ever got to tell the truth to someone someday, it could be him.
“So you’re not eating that?” I joked, eyeing his half-finished slice. He snorted and stuffed the whole piece into his mouth.
As soon as he was done, he cleared his throat and stood up.
“I want to give you something. I think you’ll like it.”
He went to a corner of his room where he kept what he called his “pixies.” The pixies changed on a weekly basis. Today, he had a winter moth, a common green darner, and a large monarch butterfly. He handed me the butterfly, cage, feeder and all. It held onto a broken twig and held perfectly still as I looked.
“You want me to have this?”
“You deserve him,” he said loftily. “Not everyone can see the world through their eyes. But you do. Isn’t he pretty?”
He was. He looked like orange drops and licorice. It was the only reason I took him home.
Once in my room, I opened the cage and carefully cupped the butterfly in my hands. His wings tickled my palm. Was he trying to escape? Yet I could indeed see the world through his eyes, and knew that he of all creatures would understand what I had to do.
Yes, I thought, crushing the fluttering wings between my teeth. What’s wrong with food?
I never saw Barry again after high school.
Instead, I turned nineteen and met Dave.
Dave and I met at a bookstore inside campus around closing time and he decided to talk to me because we wanted the same book—except there was only one copy left and he wanted me to have it first. Can I borrow it after you finish? What do you study? I live in the dorms, by the way. What about you?
We exchanged numbers and met a week later at a cafe. He paid for a waffle and ice cream that I pretended to enjoy when I really would have preferred the mosquitoes attacking his legs. He never even noticed as we talked. On our way back to the dorms, I bought him some bug spray. He gave me a questioning look.
“You’ll have some nasty bites when you get home.”
I could tell he wanted more than just the book from me. It took me much longer to figure out what that was exactly, and by the time I’d figured it out, he had added a heart next to my name on Messenger and I was head over heels for his black curls.
Little things about him drew me in. The way he enjoyed thunderstorms and lightning indoors; the way he counted the stars at night and talked about them as if they could see and hear everything under the sky; the way he never took out his phone in front of a burning sunset, not even for a picture; the way he liked to take my picture and stare at it for full minutes; all of it made me wonder, how would your soul feel on my skin?
The world was very quiet on the evening we first kissed. I’d long learned to tune out car engines running a mile away and talking strangers on the other side of the street, but even then it was very quiet—as if the whole city was asking us to take a moment. We stood under a tree in a darkened corner of the park, away from the lights, and by the time our tongues had untangled for the first time, I was all out of breath and shaking just a little with his large hand drawing circles on my back. I was not his first kiss, but he was mine. How glad I was that he was mine. Breathe, he whispered. You should breathe. I breathed. And as I breathed, I felt his soul beating against my heart through a sheen of sweat and the thin fabric of our summer clothes.
Rare.
Dave was a rare soul.
It was the only way I could describe him. Had I ever felt anything like his soul?
I wanted to touch it.
I’d always liked the sound of rain falling outside. But hearing the rain falling inside him was not enough. I wanted to open my mouth and let the raindrops drip onto my tongue. He was just that lovely. Afterwards, I couldn’t hold hands without feeling a desperate urge to pull him close and feel him pulse against my skin.
I am quite certain Dave never swallowed a spider in his life. But he wanted the same thing as I did—to hold me closer and still closer until one night we couldn’t stand to break apart and refused to go back to school. Hand in my hair, he whispered a little secret from the stars, tonight will be our gift to ourselves, which really meant he wanted me to take him as my gift and to give myself to him as his.
We unwrapped our presents in the dark.
With every piece of clothing gone and the delicate flesh around my hamstrings pressed flush against his shoulders, his soul was maddeningly close to mine, all around me up against my breasts and stomach and in between my thighs, flooding me with a pulsing rhythm I’d never felt anywhere else. It was so beautiful, I wanted it. I wanted it on and in every part of me, and I meant all the way in, not just in the double-entendre way but in the way food slides down your throat into your stomach to become a part of your cells and blood and hair. When I finally felt him inside me, his soul was very nearly throbbing against my own, so very nearly that it was madness not to let them join and fuse.
On the brink, I bit into his throat and tore my teeth down his torso. I retraced my track once, twice, three times before my jaws broke past his chest and closed around his heart.
The females of many spider species, with debatable frequency, devour their mates after procreation in a grisly practice known as sexual cannibalism.
I fled. I put his body under the mattress, changed everything I had to cash and took the first plane to the other side of the country.
California.
My stomach was still full of Dave after the six-hour flight and fifty-minute bus ride. I didn’t know if I could ever feel hunger again. I waited for a nauseous wave of guilt that never arrived. A bit of wistfulness, yes, at the thought of the family he had left behind. He had often talked of his family. I could tell they were close. But nests are always emptied in the end. He had grown as I had grown and we had mated because it was time. That was nothing to be sad about.
I took a nap before touchdown.
I checked into the dingy motel, the farthest I could find from the airport. There was no elevator. I walked up to the fourth floor, taking care not to step on the gum stuck to the stairs. I opened the door to the smell of stale cigarettes.
I was, finally, at peace.
A kind of serenity had taken over me the moment I finished his heart. No longer consumed by the desire to possess the most beautiful soul in the world, I was satiated. Because here it was inside me, humming away like my favorite song put on repeat, seeping into my whole being, note by note.
I dumped my backpack on the floor and scoured the news for any sign of alarm. Nothing yet. The small bloodstains were negligible. In all probability they would be taken as a “lady thing,” some period blood or another virginity lost. Dave, slightly underweight and of medium height, had not been hard to hide. It was a shame we couldn’t talk or eat or sleep together anymore, but what did that matter? In a way, we would always be together. I curled up on the thin sheets in a fetal pose and gently rubbed my belly.
Are you happy, Dave?
I was tempted to fall asleep then and there, crooning lullabies to him. But being a runaway with three hundred bucks in my pocket meant I had no time to lose. Reluctantly, I sat up. A shift at a diner or a cafe would have to do for now. But I knew better than to go around looking like Shay Daniels. I ditched my makeup, dyed my hair black, and cut my hair with a pair of scissors from the nearest supermarket.
I was lucky Jade was sick of running the place on her own. As it turned out, though, it wasn’t the only reason she hired me at her cafe, half an hour away from the motel by bus.
She was tall and tanned with red nails and a dark red ponytail to match. However, what caught my attention was neither her healthy build nor the splashes of color, but the tattoo.
The spider on her bicep.
She gave me the menu to memorize. I ordered a coffee and settled down in a corner to study. I soon found myself drifting, hypothesizing about her tattoo. I could have gone up and asked her what it meant, but I doubt I ever would have, had I not caught her openly staring at me for so long. Her look made me uneasy. Surely, she didn’t recognize me? After squirming in my seat for an hour, I drained my cup and approached her first.
“I’m sorry, is there a problem?”
Jade merely raised an eyebrow.
“You were staring at me,” I said accusingly.
“I was only staring because you were staring at me. I caught you like five times.”
I blinked.
“Was I?”
She gave me a pointed look. But she seemed more amused than annoyed.
“I don’t mind that you want something from me, only that you won’t tell me what it is.”
I blushed and finally asked my question.
“I couldn’t help but notice your tattoo. It’s, um, great.”
“Thanks.”
“So what does it mean?”
But Jade had a question of her own.
“Are you busy today?”
I shook my head. She smiled.
“I’m closing early today. I’ll buy dinner and you’ll get to know your boss better.”
She took me to a local diner that served burgers with just the right amount of lettuce, but I only picked at my food. She was staring again.
“You’re really not going to eat anything?” I asked for the second time, trying to deflect some of her attention away from me. She smiled as if I’d said something funny, but did not reach for the menu.
“I’ll have something when I get home.”
“We could have gone somewhere else if—”
“I’m good, so please, eat.”
I caught her tone. She was willing to pay and willing to talk, so what was my problem? Grudgingly, I dug in. Even normal food tasted heavenly after two days of fasting. I was halfway through and practically licking the salt crystals off my fingers from the fries when she spoke.
“So you still enjoy food.”
I looked up, nonplussed.
“I thought you might prefer something … less processed. Like me.”
“And what do you prefer?” I asked, trying not to sound impolite. Inside, I was on my guard.
“Bugs.”
I stopped chewing.
“Please swallow before you forget you were eating. I don’t want you to choke,” she teased. I swallowed. Before I could decide whether to laugh or be offended, she added, “I’m only telling you this because I know you’ll understand.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked warily. She was right. I did understand. But how did she know that I would?
“Relax, you don’t have ‘the mark’ or anything. At least, not to anyone else. It’s only something I can see.”
“What can you see?”
“That you’re like me.”
“What are you like?”
“Let me tell you about my tattoo.”
Jade ate a jumping spider the size of her pinkie nail when she was eight. Her brother hid it under her pillow as a prank, but two things worked against him: first, Jade liked to play with bugs; second, Jade was an exceptionally heavy sleeper. So when the tiny spider crawled up the side of her face and into her mouth, she was dreaming of cotton candy and merely chewed it to pieces along with a healthy dose of air that made her burp when she woke up in the morning.
“But I knew something wasn’t right. The world around me had changed. Our house was suddenly full of colors I couldn’t place and no one had taught me to name. At first it was frustrating, trying to explain it or draw it so people would understand. I only gave up after Jonathan told me what he’d done.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “You can see colors?”
“You don’t?”
“I hear sounds. Or at least, I feel vibrations and most of the time I process them as sounds.”
“Most spiders are like that. As far as I know, I’m an exception.”
I kept myself from commenting on the way she referred to herself as a spider. She went on.
“It took me a while to figure it out, but I can see colors on the UV spectrum. Ultraviolet alone is pretty cool, but when it’s mixed with other lights or colors, it’s not like anything I can describe.
“That’s how I got into painting. I became obsessed with looking at the world. It’s even more beautiful than people know, and I want to share that. And they make pocket money at flea markets. Those paintings in the cafe are mine, by the way. Did you like them?”
I honestly hadn’t noticed them.
“I guess. I was kind of busy looking at the menu—”
“And me,” she smirked.
“And your tattoo,” I corrected, blushing. “Is that why you got it?”
“That spider changed who I am,” she said simply. “I’m not exactly human anymore, am I?”
Are we more or are we less?
I didn’t ask. The thought of Dave’s body in the motel room was not very encouraging.
Her eyes moved to my hair.
“It’s rare to see perfect black,” she commented. “Your hair’s so black, even under the light. It looks good,” she added. “Really shiny. Did you dye it?”
“I just wanted to change things up a bit.”
“Becoming half-spider wasn’t enough of a change for ya?”
“How did you know?”
I was beginning to envy her powers. If only that stupid boy had given me a jumping spider instead. Jade looked straight into my eyes and I could only believe her when she answered that she could see my soul.
“But only in the sunlight,” she explained, eyes roaming freely over and around my face. The last of the daylight fell across me through the venetian blinds. It was an orange sunset, the kind Dave would have stopped to look at. “It gives off this light around you, like an aura.”
I put down my fries, suddenly self-conscious.
“Do you see everyone like that?”
“Most people are a mix of the colors of the rainbow. I’ve never seen white. A little bit of black is common enough. Gold, silver, and jewel-tones are rare, but they’re out there. My advice? Don’t get close to emeralds.”
Her excitement made me smile. I could tell she couldn’t talk about this to anyone else.
“And what am I like?”
To my disappointment, my soul was not much of a mystery to her.
“Red, green, blue, and grey.”
“That’s it?” I asked, trying not to feel offended.
“Simple doesn’t mean bad,” she offered. “It’s what made me trust you. Lots of animals have auras like ours. Or at least, yours.”
“What about yours?”
“Funny thing is, I don’t know what mine looks like. Mirrors don’t work on the soul.”
She talked about herself with such ease and yet, she did not know the most important thing. The night I heard my family’s souls, the night I’d held so still under the covers to hear my own, came back to me and I felt a rush of sympathy. Now that I knew, I wanted to help her know, too. Our kind was a puzzle. She was a piece we couldn’t afford to leave incomplete.
“I could tell you. I can hear you.”
Jade’s eyes sparkled.
“Can you hear it now?”
“Not right now,” I said, looking away. I was suddenly shy. “I can only feel it when I’m close.”
She immediately crossed over to my side of the booth. She had an expectant look on her face that I couldn’t observe for too long. I lowered my eyes to her black t-shirt.
“Give me a minute.”
I brought my ear to her breasts, taking care not to hold her.
“You don’t have to hold your breath,” I added with a low laugh.
Jade’s chest rose and fell under my cheek.
Endless ambience, like television or radio static. I stopped my other ear with my hand, trying to focus. Through the white noise, I could make out the sound of wind. No, of flying. The pitch and volume constantly fluctuated, creating the impression of planes, helicopters, birds, butterflies, and every other flying object I could think of passing high over the clouds. But the moment I lost focus, all I could hear was an airy hum like the breeze—or static.
“Is that a good thing?”
I told her it was a simple thing.
Like me.
We ordered two beers and talked into the night, trading stories about the most unusual souls we had met over the years, and any tidbit about jumpers and net-casters that could clue us into our future as Arachnoids.
That was what she called us. After trying in vain to find more people like us, she’d given up and dubbed herself Arachnoid.
“And to think you were here all along!” Jade laughed. “Or weren’t you? I should just kill myself if you’re from around here.”
“Am I glad I’m from the East Coast.”
I spun some lie about being sick of a school that was way too close to my parents’ place.
“So you ran away?”
“All the way here.”
“Do you even have a place to stay?”
“Sure.” I avoided her eyes. “For now.”
But Jade wasn’t happy with “for now” and she wasn’t happy with a motel room that smelled like cigarette butts. She would be happy with me staying at her place. I could eat and sleep and work for half my wages. I would have gladly worked for free.
It was late when I packed what little I had and moved into Jade’s one-bedroom apartment. An easel stood between the kitchen and the dining table; brushes and palettes and paint tubes were littered across the chairs; shiny silk cushions clashed with the worn fabric of the couch, now my bed. It wasn’t home, but it was a home.
Jade scoured up some midnight snacks from the cupboard. At first I thought they were Oreos, but on a closer look they were actually compressed black ants. She had jars full of them and all kinds of pressed, dried, jammed goodies. She let me try her favorite—handmade moth-mallows. I couldn’t stop at just one and had a second and a third. I could imagine her having them with hot chocolate on Christmas. I smacked my lips.
“I’ll take beetles over burgers any time.”
The next morning, she made grilled-bees sandwiches for the both of us. I ate every crumb.
After eating more insects in a week than I’d ever eaten in the past seven years, one morning I woke up to a strange weight in my stomach. I went to the bathroom expecting shit or blood, but ended up with sticky white chunks oozing into the toilet bowl.
“You’re catching up fast,” Jade remarked when I told her what had happened. “Don’t worry, it’s just silk. It took me over a year on this diet to make silk, but I guess your body’s younger so it adapts faster. You’re really going on full spider-mode, huh?”
I hoped my age was all there was to it. I had told her nothing about Dave. By now his body would have rotted enough to stink up the room and attract worms. It was a shame that I couldn’t eat him whole. I would have liked to spare even the mere shell of him the ordeal of breaking down into roach fodder.
Had Jade never loved the way we loved?
“Sandy!”
Roused, I looked at her. Her hand was on my arm.
“C’mon, I said I’ll show you my loom.”
She used to make cushions and handkerchiefs along with her paintings and sell them at the local flea market. Nowadays she only wove the cloth and advertised them online as genuine spider silk.
“I can teach you, if you want.”
I swallowed.
“Can’t I just make it stop?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe, if you changed your diet. I never tried to, though.”
She didn’t say anything more, but her proud silence said enough.
I don’t turn my back on myself.
I nodded.
“Show me.”
She took a wooden spool no thicker than a tampon off the loom, then washed it with soap and warm water.
“Just stick the end inside and gently pull out. You’ll see a bit of silk stretching out. You should keep the strand coming as thin as possible while turning the spool so it wraps around like thread. No pressure though. It’s your first time, so it’s more than understandable if it gets a little choppy and chunky here and there. Think you can do that?”
“I don’t feel anything coming out right now,” I muttered, trying hard not to blush. The thought of sitting on her bed, stripped and spread, made me look down at the floor.
“It’s not like having a period, so you should be able to control it. But if you need some help …”
She went behind me and wrapped an arm around my waist, the palm of her right hand on my lower abdomen. I could feel her breasts pressed against my back. Would her soul flutter against my spine if I held just still enough not to breathe?
“You’re going to use the muscles around your lady bits, okay?” she explained. “Suck them in like you’re trying to hold your pee. Nope, not quite there yet. Strong enough so your tummy doesn’t touch my hand.”
I leaned into her for support and kept going until I felt something warm and sticky pool in my underwear. It was mildly disgusting, but the way she held me in her arms made me want to pretend I wasn’t there yet. But I had visibly flinched. Chuckling, she rubbed gentle circles on my stomach.
“Now I know where you get all those bugs,” I said, pretending to be more uncomfortable than I was just so she would keep petting me.
“It feels weird, right?” she said sympathetically. “I promise you’ll get used to it. It’s better than letting all that silk go to waste. We can’t pull an apartment out of our asses like real spiders but at least we can pay the rent.”
She left me alone. Once the door closed, I took off my clothes and leaned against the headboard with a pillow—her pillow—under my back, spool in hand. Breathing in, I began to spin.
The minutes were hypnotic. I spun and spun and spun and it felt like I was spinning the whole room around myself like a web. I began tuning into Jade moving about on the other side of the door and imagined her cooking in the kitchen, leaving the dishes in the sink for me to do, brushing her teeth in the bathroom, settling on the couch for TV with a cushion that now smelled more of me than of her, making me imagine I was spinning the entire apartment for the both of us to live, where there would be just us with no visitors but always coffee stains on the silk rug—or was it blood?
It took me half an hour to empty myself.
Of the more than forty thousand known spider species, all but thirty lead solitary lives in adulthood.
“Do you think we’ll have eggs or babies?”
It was one of those random questions I asked about ourselves on lazy nights before bed. Some of them were genuine. Others were more intended as a distraction from the news. Any day now, there would be reports about the body all over the cable. I could sense it in the pit of my stomach. Jade shrugged against my shoulder, our bodies slouched against each other on the couch.
“I never thought about it too deeply,” she replied. “Doesn’t really matter to me.”
“Why? Not big on kids?”
“Not exactly on my list of new year’s resolutions,” she said, not turning from the TV. I looked at the TV as well, slightly taken aback by her distance. Being in on her spider business had made me feel like I was in on everything about her.
A new reporter appeared onscreen. My stomach tightened. Before I could stop myself, I was firing another question.
“What about relationships?”
I felt Jade’s shoulder stiffen against mine.
“Relationships?”
“Yeah,” I plowed on. “Like dating. Do you do those?”
“Why, do you want me to?” she asked smilingly, like a flirt. Like a joke. Still not looking at me. I began to feel like an intruder.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t really date, that’s all.”
“Got it,” I said shortly, hoping to end the conversation there. Her evasiveness had reminded me of every reason why I should have avoided the topic in the first place. I felt stupid for having brought it up at all.
She finally turned to look at me.
“What about you?”
For a brief moment, I met her eyes and was startled by their sudden intensity. Like she was looking for something. Searching me. My turn to look away.
“I don’t have a lot of experience with it,” I said truthfully. Reluctantly. I was sorry I’d pressed her at all. Not wanting to appear too secretive, I went for a vague answer.
“I only had one boyfriend.”
“Really?” she gushed like a teenager. I couldn’t help but smile. Her enthusiasm was disarming. “High school sweethearts?”
“No, I met him in college. He was nice.”
“But?”
“We—we broke up before I ran away.”
“What happened?”
“Things just didn’t work out,” I said lamely.
I glanced at her and saw it again, that keen look. I stared back at her this time, trying to figure out if I was being paranoid. She just shrugged.
“My relationships never lasted, either.”
I thrilled at her sudden vulnerability. I stayed quiet, unsure what to do with it. She went on.
“I think it’s because of me. Because I’m too different.”
I began to realize that maybe she had taken me in because she was lonely. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. It made me want to put my arms around her. My hand twitched. I grabbed the remote instead and discreetly turned down the volume. If she kept talking, I could eventually turn off the TV.
“We are too different,” I corrected her.
I could sense her eyes on the side of my face. If gazes had weight, I was feeling it now. I wanted to move away to where she couldn’t look at me so closely, but at the same time, I was thinking, may I count your freckles too?
“Was it hard for you, too?” she asked, voice dropping low. Confiding. She leaned her head against my shoulder as if it ached thinking about it. Swallowing, I turned off the TV and dropped the remote. My palm was sweaty as I laid a hand on her hair. I couldn’t see her face but I could imagine her closing her eyes at my touch. I kept mine open, hoping she felt as wide-awake as I did.
“It was good while it lasted … but he never made me gourmet butterfly meals, so.”
Jade snorted. “The food was definitely one thing that could have been better,” she agreed. “At least the sex was good. Did you know that spider sex only lasts for, like, fifteen seconds?”
To hear her say it so close to my ear, to remember that pleasure and searing bloodbath as her arms brushed against my own …
“Sounds exciting,” I managed.
“Half an hour ain’t bad at all.”
“Not bad at all,” I echoed, struggling to keep down the memories of my last night with Dave. She couldn’t know. Jade lifted her head to look at me. I couldn’t hide the blood rushing to my face—or was it draining out? My voice sounded distant even to my own ears. Her gaze lingered for a long time.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“Can we talk about something else?” I whispered back.
She immediately started to apologize, making me feel worse. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away from me. “I didn’t mean to bring up anything …” She trailed off and bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just hope he didn’t hurt you.”
“He didn’t,” I said quickly, but the tears were already coming. It was terrible how true it was. If only she knew. If she did, would she want me at all? In her house, in her bed? I suddenly realized I was desperately afraid, and not only of the law. I ducked my head but her hands were already on my cheek, wiping away tears.
“I think he did,” she said quietly. “You say he’s a nice guy, but maybe he wasn’t. Not always.”
She sounded so sympathetic, so sure that it couldn’t possibly be the other way around. Her conviction pained me. It tainted the transparency of our relationship and the beauty of what I’d had with Dave in a way that was completely unfair, most of all to her. It wasn’t her ignorance so much as my dishonesty that did it, and I knew it.
There was a stab of guilt. Momentary panic. The two most meaningful things I had in life, slipping from my grasp.
“I don’t know what he’s done to you, but—”
“Trust me, if anyone got hurt, it was him,” I said defensively. Tiredly. I stared down at my knees, picturing her look of confusion. Suspicion. Speculation. I couldn’t think of anything to say that could save me now.
Her next words caught me off guard. She sounded curiously calm.
“Well, I’d rather it was him than you.”
“I doubt you’d say that if you knew what I did.”
“Try me.”
The words trembled at the brink of my lips. Jade brought her face close to mine.
“Tell me … You can tell me. I found you all in one piece and that’s all I care about.”
I longed to believe her. I sighed. With my breath went all my fight. I slumped forward against her until our foreheads met with a bump that should have hurt, would have cracked if we were glass. I wanted to turn to glass, let her see right through my soul.
“You won’t care about anything else?” I mumbled. A gentle hand, then two, settled on my back.
“Nothing else.”
“Not even if I did the very worst thing I could do to him?”
There was no hesitation.
“Not even then.”
“I think you already know,” I breathed.
She squeezed me in her arms.
“I’m glad,” she whispered fiercely into my ear. I shivered as her breath sped down my spine. I did nothing to loosen myself from her grip.
“I’m glad you told me. And I’m glad you did it. I did the same thing.”
The only difference was that Jade had gotten away with it. She was living alone far away from this place when it happened. Everything had gone wrong—or rather, too right—with her first two partners. After Kayla, she had stopped trying.
“For what? Running and hiding and ending up alone again?” She shook her head. “I only did what I needed to do. It’s only natural. But that doesn’t mean I want to do it again. For us, that’s also natural.”
I didn’t have to imagine her loneliness. Even before the spider, I had known it. And try as I might, I couldn’t deny that I missed Dave. More and more, every day. What I’d thought was the weight of his soul had only been the weight of his flesh, sitting in my stomach, slowly digesting and dissipating like so much food. I couldn’t imagine how Jade had endured it twice. I knew that somewhere, in some form, his soul existed within me. The way I clung to her only proved that it simply wasn’t enough.
“I’m not going to get away with it,” I whispered in the dark.
Tonight, both of us were sleeping in her bed. But we no longer touched. She lay as far as possible from me across the mattress. I wasn’t hurt. I knew she was only trying to reassure me.
“They’re closing in. I can feel it.”
“No one’s looking for you yet,” she said hopefully. “We still have time. We could run away, go out of the States.”
I was shaking my head before she finished.
“I’m not running anymore,” I murmured. “I don’t think I can. I didn’t exactly do a perfect crime. I’m not making you run again, either.”
“So you’re just giving up?”
“So I’m just letting go.”
Slowly, I slid a hand under the blanket and held hers. Let go, I tried to tell her with my eyes. It rested in mine for a minute before pulling away, just as slowly. Probably because she didn’t trust herself. She should have known she didn’t need to.
Tingling with anticipation and fearing nothing, I closed my eyes, and drifted.
I did not have to wait long.
The next morning, I took a hot bath. I meticulously brushed my hair. I borrowed Jade’s makeup. I turned on the TV to let it run all day. No work on Mondays. I lounged on the couch, a plate of scrambled flies balanced on my knee. Jade joined me—reluctantly. Our legs couldn’t touch or else the plates would slip and break. I was torn between finishing quickly and savoring each bite, each wing, each flake of pepper. Any minute now, I thought to myself. Any minute.
The weather report was fascinating today.
“What am I supposed to do?” Jade asked, restlessly picking at her food. “Hide you and buy time? March you up to the police station?” She gave up trying to eat and set her plate on the floor. “Just let me do something. Anything but just waiting.”
It was the first time I was seeing her so agitated. In some twisted way, I was touched without being moved to ease her distress. I set down my plate and drew up close to her. Had I ever been so bold? Our knees touched.
“I think I love you.”
She might as well have had that look on her face if I’d told her I hated her. Her brows were wrinkled as if in deep concentration—or restraint.
“Sandy—”
“It’s Shay.”
She stared at me, at my shadowed eyes, at my lips colored the same as hers.
“My real name is Shay Daniels.”
Nothing between us now but inches of thin air. Jade’s voice was shaky.
“Guess what, Shay Daniels?”
There was wailing in the living room. Our eyes snapped back to the TV. A woman was crying and talking at the same time, burbling out something to the reporter. So she was it. His sister? His mother?
I closed in to kiss Jade and her arms were instantly around me as if to shield me from those cries. I gladly plunged into the embrace. She pressed me hard against herself and for the first time I felt her soul fluttering against my nipples. My hands were riding up her back under her pajamas even as I felt it, asking for permission to take them off.
She took them off herself.
What seems to have been a night of young love turned into tragedy for college student Dave Mickelson.
I took my clothes off.
His body was found hidden under the mattress of the motel room where he was murdered.
Her lips were all over me.
The suspect, who has now been on the loose for twelve days, is a female student from the same school.
Our thighs crisscrossed over one another.
The police have tracked her to Los Angeles International Airport in the state of California. Posters are being put up all over town even as we speak: she is a young woman of five foot three weighing 105 pounds with long blonde hair and pale skin. If you spot her, please contact—
I opened my eyes as her fingers started digging into my flesh, her nails practically quivering in their sockets with the effort of keeping both of us in place right where we were and how we were, not a fraction farther or closer. Her face had become contorted with more than just pleasure, it was hunger, and I knew then and there that I wouldn’t survive her, Jade with all the speed and agility of her species. I did not want to. From the moment I was seen after seven years of silence, I never wanted to. Our little world was spun out of silk and to belong there was to float in gossamer. I would never leave.
I’m sorry, but I’m giving you what you want.
Jade’s eyes were as wild as her words.
“You’re shining, Shay, you’re shining, and the light’s inside you but I can see it, it’s so clear, it’s glowing under my hands like fire and it’s warm, it’s warmer than anything I’ve ever touched and wanted and I want it—want you—closer—”
I wrapped my hand around her neck and pulled her face towards me, knowing she couldn’t resist making me hers, all hers, and no one else’s. I imagined dissolving into nothing but myself within her body, entangled in the meshes of a being that ached to welcome every part of me, my soul entwined with Dave’s soul, our souls entwined with hers.
The thought alone was enough to bring me over the edge, right before I felt teeth sink into my breast to devour me to the claw.
Editor: Hebe Stanton
First Reader: Hebe Stanton
Copy Editors: Copy Editing Department
Accessibility: Accessibility Editors