the amazing adventure of man spider

worried this is a little bit long for you all to bother with – perhaps i will edit it

*

Hmm, I thought, I feel a bit funny.

Perhaps it was something I ate, I thought, as I negotiated my way up the ivy. Maybe it was that wasp. I normally stick to flies. It was kind of tangy. I avoided the stinger, of course. Then again, it could have been that huge man I found dead on the lawn. I had eaten little pieces of his flesh, nothing major, just a few things. The blood that pooled out from his head was the same colour as the grass, maybe a bit more luminous. I was sure that shouldn’t be the case. Maybe he wanted to see a doctor about that. Well. It was a bit late now.

I don’t really know what a doctor is. But he should have seen one. I am certain of it. Somehow.

As for me, well, I think I could use a psychiatrist. To fix my head. I could recline my legs into my body on a silken couch he wove just for me and just talk about these thoughts. I’m not used to having thoughts. I’m more used to eating flies and building webs and stuff. That used to be enough for me. Just, lately…

I dunno.

It’s odd. It’s like these thoughts are too big for my head.

I decided now I was high enough, so I dropped down on a thin sinewy thread and began spinning for the morning’s catch. It was probably best to numb it out with good old fashioned work. It was more or less going to be your standard hexagon shape. I’m not pretending to be a pro but I do a little bit of DIY, you know, a little bit of design around the web, I try and take some pride in it. I was thinking of going to Ikea and getting myself some cutlery for next time I wrap up a still-buzzing fly in thread so I can eat pieces of it whenever I’m hungry. It’s nice to put something on for the guests.

“Alright?” said a thin, raspy voice, and I saw Charlotte’s dark figure, her round abdomen glinting a seductive red, her long legs splayed out as always, showing off.

“Evening Charlotte” I said. She was a black widow. I didn’t want to get too involved. I’d heard stories.

“Nice hexagonal web you’ve got going.”

“Cheers. I figure it’s always best to stick to a design you know works; no point being adventurous with octagons, nonagons, all of that.”

She looked puzzled. “Yeah. So, I was thinking, how about we mate? I could do with laying some eggs, you know.”

“Charlotte, don’t you ever think there’s more to life than mating and eating flies?”

Most of her eyes looked at me. “Like what?”

“I dunno. Truth. Beauty. Finally doing something about those fucking sparrows.”

“They come, they eat. What can we do but run and hide, and rebuild tomorrow?”

“That’s what I mean. There’s nothing permanent in this world. It’s like even this hexagonal web –

“ – lovely, by the way – “

“ – thankyou – is just temporary. I’m thinking about an extension, a patio, a little furniture, maybe a leaf to recline on here and there, a bit of soil for effect, and…”

“James, what are you talking about?”

“Just…it’ll be gone tomorrow. It makes me wonder why I bother.”

“Because you must eat.”

“But tomorrow I will be hungry again.”

“So tomorrow you must eat again” she rasped impatiently. “Are you going to mate with me or not, anyway? I’m feeling hun—erm, horny. You arachnid Adonis. Take me now.”

I sighed. “I wouldn’t want to bring younglings into a world such as this.”

“For fuck’s sake James. Grow a pair.”

I wasn’t sure I even had a real pair, never mind a metaphorical pair. I had never thought about it much before, and now that I was feeling so nihilistic I didn’t want to think about it. Charlotte disappeared up into the sky.

Once she was gone I had an idea.

I don’t know where it came from.

I scuttled across the garden quickly toward the dead human and – this might sound unbelievable, but I swear – picked up one of the pieces of broken bottle from near his head. It was big. I felt really stupid, like a spider pretending to be an ant. I know. I told you I was feeling funny. But I picked it up between the mandibles and looked at it with all my four eyes, hardly believing what I had done, and the next thing you knew, I was up in the ivy again.

And then – I promise you – I began to saw at the leaves with the sharp edge. It sounds like it should be difficult, but really, it came naturally, as though I had somehow gained all the abilities of a human. Maybe it was to do with drinking that fluorescent grassy blood; at first it has tasted funny and hurt my mouth and made me feel ill, but now, well, it was pretty handy. The small pieces of leave fell from high up on the ivy down into my web. There was hardly any wind and after a while I had sawed so many leaves you could hardly see the silver threads at all. This, I thought, would get me a feast. If I even wanted one. What was the point, after all, I thought, leaning my exhausted dark body against a leaf to rest before the day came.

When the sun woke me I was groggy at first. I heard a hiss in the distance and the usual birdsong hullabaloo. I wanted to go back to sleep, to crawl under the leaf and not worry. My web felt heavy, as though it were about to break. But the hiss came again louder.

“Help!”

The entire plant shook as the sparrow fluttered past. It was pecking and pecking above me.

“Charlotte!” I cried out.

“James! Help!” she hissed across the air. The sparrow pecked at her web, blinded momentarily by netting across its eyes.

“I’m coming Charlotte!”

I scuttled up the wooden parts of the fence, nearer the end of the garden than the house, and gripped a splinter piece in my mandibles.

“Hey! Birdbrain!” I shouted. It twittered and sang like the mad psychopathic beast it was and swooped at my legs. Charlotte was hidden in a leaf; I could see her but she was safe. It went for me instead, its heavy wings flapping against me. I nearly fell, but determined not to, I ran straight at it and jammed the splinter into its breast.

It bled a satisfying red and fluttered madly around, wings flapping everywhere. Charlotte’s web was all but destroyed by it. I just missed being impaled by its evil talons and scuttled up the ivy.

“Come on!” I shouted. The bird was enraged.

“My web!” she shouted, lamenting the loss of a few flies when her entire life was in danger.

I ran on without her, inching along an overhanging leaf above the bird, bungeeing off the end. I landed more or less on its head. I sank my teeth into the bird’s neck. It let out a piercing cry and flew sharply to the left, but I held on until it hit the windowpane and fell, limp, to the ground. I ran quickly across open ground, exposed, into the soil and straight up the fence, hoping that it was the only bird in the area.

“James!” Charlotte said to me. “My hero!”

I wondered if I was too spider to blush.

“You’re incredible! It was going to k–It’s as though you’ve all the powers of a hu-man! A human spider!”

“Thanks, Charlotte. Any time!” I said.

“But my web…”

“It’s alright” I said to her. “I’ve caught a caterpillar.”

“A caterpillar?!”

“Yes.”

“But h-“

“Don’t you worry how.”

“But you didn’t even build a web!”

“Actually,” I said, feeling smug, “I did.” And I lead her to it, covered in leaves and stones. The caterpillar looked terrified at us. “Please,” it said, “please…”

But we set about binding it up ready to eat, so that it would keep. It was huge and would take us days and days.

“We are going to be two fat spiders!” I said happily.

“Do you mind,” Charlotte asked quietly, “If I sleep here tonight? With you?”

“Not at all,” I said.

Something brushed me in the dark.

“James…”

“Ch—charlotte?” I whispered.

“I want you, James.”

“That wouldn’t be right” I said. “I saved your life, that doesn’t mean you have to…”

“..but I want to, James.”

“But…but with powers like mine, using tools and thinking and stuff like that, you have to…”

“Shhhh” she said

“…comes great responsibility…”

“Shhh.”

“Charlotte, I…”

“It’s OK, James.”

I felt her legs wrap around my abdomen and head. I tried to struggle away.

“James,” she breathed.

“Charlotte…”

“I don’t like eating caterpillars, James.”

“What do you m—“

“But maybe our children will.”

I felt her teeth sink into me, and from the sharp rush of pain and I tried to scream. I flailed my legs around but it was no use against her. She bit again and I felt the world begin to slip away.

this short story is called “mary poppins”

I was sure the entire time I waited in the elevator listening to the tinny shitty music. It was Calvin Harris inviting me to dance with him, but I did not want to. I wanted to kill myself. I hoped he would understand. And then when I got to the top floor and had to climb up the big reverberating scary stairs to the roof access door it seemed appropriately ominous. My footsteps echoed and I felt alone and I was sure.

I had a brief moment of doubt when I put my first foot off of the edge. Whoa! I said. I felt giddy and silly and weirdly happy. It was intoxicating being there in the wind, wondering if the tiny dotty little people on the ground could see me and if I was going to land on somebody attractive or not. I hoped so. Killing an attractive person by being a projectile seemed exactly the kind of thing that would appeal to me. In a way it was a shame I was too high up to tell. I wondered if I could get away with a shorter building. I realised I was procrastinating from my first definitive action in years. I had had enough of that. It was like a lifestyle choice, the way I pursued it.

I decided that walking off was silly and I needed to jump with both feet. But I felt stupid so I backed up to the roof access door first, so I could get a run up. I wondered if I was going to flail my limbs about as I fell. I’d feel foolish then.

I was doing it again.

“Fuck it!” I said, like I had taught myself to do when my nonsense was interrupting something that made sense. I sprinted and jumped.

Falling seemed to take a very long time. The ground was rushing up towards me like an angry, disappointed, hurt face. The wind was inflating my puffy grey jacket that I had never liked but been bought for Christmas. I wished I had worn something else. I would be dead in, well, soon, and strangers would think that I was just a man in an ugly jacket. They would probably use it to identify me. I didn’t like the idea of that.

It had been quite fun, toying with the idea, wondering about suicide, getting bored of collecting pills and instead trying to aim my body at the long haired blonde woman I dimly registered, but hitting the ground seemed

well I didn’t want to, anyway.

I had an idea. It wasn’t a very good idea. I felt silly for having it. I didn’t want to die with this idea as the last one in my head in case it leaked onto the ground when I made impact and some CSI type of character in the future realised it.

My father was a scientist. I know what he’d do with an idea. He’d test it. That’s what he did. He tested his relationships with people, too. Sometimes they broke. I didn’t know why, but I wanted him to be proud of me. Or maybe I wanted to play a sick joke on him. Either way, he’d feel something when the CSI guys told him my last thoughts.

I was either going to hit the ground, or I was going to learn to fly very quickly. Happy thoughts, like Mary Poppins said.

I had tried this before when I was a child, watching the film. I thought of the happiest things I could think of, of ice cream and of my teddy-koala-bear and of cuddling my mum. I shut my eyes really tight and wished and when I opened them I was still on the sofa. Maybe that’s where it started to go wrong. But I didn’t need to fly so much, then. Maybe Mary was testing my faith and now, I would be able to do it.

Anyway. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts can make you fly! I do believe in fairies! I don’t have a better idea! I shut my eyes tightly and realised how much the wind had been hurting them. I thought about the girl I had dated twice before I met my ex-girlfriend. I thought about when we had kissed and how exciting that was and all the possibilities and how my head crackled and fizzed the entire way home. I thought about my niece drawing that picture of me in my flat with my telescope and my spider plants, with my big crayon eyebrows and a red biro smile. I thought about the time I helped the old woman who dropped her purse and how proud it made me and her big, toothless smile. I thought I should have thought about all this earlier.

I opened my eyes and I knew I was further down. The ground seemed huge and sad, like the lonely whale that swam in the Thames.

Supercalafragalisticexpealadocious. Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious. Nothing. If anything I was falling faster. Maybe I needed an umbrella. I tried flapping my arms. I tried to think of the happiest I had ever been and it seemed very far away. I suppose most suicides can say that, really.

I decided not to give up. I shut my eyes tightly again and thought about my friend Brian. He had come back from Costa Rica or somewhere like that, somewhere that spoke Spanish and was poor. He had been doing missionary work. We met in a Starbucks after not seeing each other for two, maybe three years and drank coffee brewed by Ethiopians in probably not dissimilar conditions. I had felt warmth in my belly and warmth in my heart and inspiration as he told me about building a pump and a well for the villagers. He helped build a church as well, but I didn’t like the evangelist undertone, so I didn’t think about that. He described sunrise over the Atlantic, or the Pacific, whichever, the ocean. He was tanned and bright behind the eyes and he said I could come and help, and I had said no because I had just got an internship at a solicitor’s firm and that seemed important for some r

I heard a crack and I felt myself stop moving and for a moment I thought it had worked.

Pearls

We sit by the duck ponds, talking shop, reminding ourselves we’re all highly educate animals now and we’ll soon have paper to prove it. I tuck my trotters under my snout and relax with the songbird and the bookworm. They’re my friends, and they’re not too shy or modest to dole out pearls of wisdom, even before swine like me.

The bookworm wraps itself in a daffodil and quotes a bit of Wordsworth. The songbird twitters a chuckle and adds a bit of Bob Dylan. It just sounds like words to my floppy ears, but I don’t mind. The bookworm and I have both found truffles when we dug for them, but it sees the soil so much clearer than I do. And the songbird, being sensitive to the thermals and the wind, it finds things I don’t as well, or at least it sees things from a different angle. I always find myself in between the earth and the sky, never involved enough in either to work out what it’s really all about.

They’re so clever they sometimes talk over my big, pink head. I know what I like, even though it looks to everyone else as though I’m just rolling around in mud. And sometimes, caked in dirt or standing in a strong wind, I feel that I can understand things like they do. But other times, they will fly so far away, or bury themselves so deep, that I don’t understand anything but my own porcine limits.

Stars

“Fucking hell.”

The glow from the barbecue was dying with the light and your dogs sat panting and exhausted around us. I had come nearly two hundred miles from the capital to see you, but my eyes longed for your countryside as well as your smile. The stars were much brighter than I’d ever seen them from home and I was so out of my depth I had no words for what I was looking at. The closest I could come was “fucking hell.”

Later, I would look back at that night and remember huddling into the sleeping bag you lent me, full of the lager from the ice box and hearing all the unfamiliar sounds. Crickets, birds, the stream, and things I didn’t know the names of. I would remember it in my room while I stared at Canary Wharf and listened to engines and sirens and helicopters. I would think about that night again as I looked up at London’s night sky and felt disconnected from the drama I could hear.

I looked up at the off-black sky and wondered about light pollution and if the few stars that glimmered were only planets. Without you to tell me what was really going on up there it suddenly seemed like a large, lonely galaxy. I can smile again now, but I couldn’t see most of the stars from there at all, and because I no longer had you, I was foolish enough to think that meant they weren’t there.

‘Sup world.

I are serious Reidsan; this are serious business. SHORTLY TO CONTAIN WRITING AND THAT.