SPIDER DREAMS: Chapter One

As a spider silks a web to eat,
The spider shall eat to silk a web.

In its art it is purposeful.

Chapter One: Sex and Coffee

 Content for mature audiences 

Frustration and will of opposition, how to play in the snake’s naked coil without being consumed by her silver locks, arms wrapped tightly around thy neck and venom penetrating thy flesh. Taste the lure of love and be illusive. Pretend to recognize her luscious vein, a powerful will to reign, and her gentle motherly gain. Let the lion’s loin groan in desperation. A devil’s delight. A lonely surviving night. She has gold jewels and moonlight hips. We are a grand and repetitive cycle glowing with lust and want.

On a stage, like a play, preset destiny, they dance, the centipede and spider. Can you hear their music like a blind piano? The first glance they encounter, welcome, what is your name? With their weapons concealed, complications begin to reveal and he enters her territory. The centipede is a hunter. The spider is a gatherer. One has a nest the other does not. He enters her web. She welcomes him and the battle begins.

Let us dance. The piano hitting a high tempo, frantic like manic rain on a highway windshield, 70 miles an hour. Panic! How to escape, kill or be killed, love or be beloved? In her nest there is no regress. Predator becomes prey and he becomes the feast. Find your food or be someone else’s. This is love and this is life. There is no other choice but the blade of a knife. The endless shifting of power, the will of dominance and surrender, submissive male and female fidelity the precision of time dancing youth into oblivion. Balance and perpetuate, either that or be alone and masturbate.
It all may appear arbitrary until over. And sometimes, not even that can force it to reveal its ugly self, but when else is it more real?

In an unforgiving world all that matters are the marks left behind. This story is for all those who remember what is the real dream.

Part One: The Mother and First Daughter

Sedative water licks her body in warmth. Griping the smooth curve of her right breast I suckle the other. Sweet liquid enters my mouth. Her body is delicious and erotic. I feel sad and press firm with my palm. She moans while hiding her cute face behind white bubbles. “You’re a dirty boy,” she says.

The candles blow out. Gray smoke ascends. It is the ancient aroma from a time when sages were persecuted and forced to wander. It fills this small white tiled bathroom like a relic. Purchase one of these candles real cheap, two and half-dollars at the convenience store. They have liquefied heaven and her wisdom squeezed from her thigh. It is infused with the sweat of a pig in the form of melted wax tears. Time overlaps itself like layers of a thread. They are all one.

From oversized metallic machines, babies are born. They pour forth from the open wound. Steel jaws and razor teeth. Robots drink oil and have rubber made love. They kill wild animals for these rituals trying desperately to open the ocean’s vortex of the mind. These glands are difficult to reach without the proper instruments. Who are these people and what kind of questions do they ask?

A sensual hand, protective and empowering grips tight the fist of a gauntlet. She sits perched high and mighty upon a purple bronze throne dressed in black. Light drapes in shallow reflecting. It is smooth and weightless across her exposed diamond jeweled chest. The aging primordial mother has been neglected. We dangle from her withering breasts unable to let go. Fingers delve into her orifice feeling from the inside what it is like to be safe. We are the forsaken children of an unwanted god.

At last! I pulled the nipple from my mouth. This is not the flavor I ordered! Her breast deflates. She becomes uneven. I want a new menu! This warm milk has gone sour! And that’s when I turned to my side after blowing out the candle watching the smoke flutter and rise about the pale cotton curtains. It rolls in a dance dying before freedom. The light dims and I feel sorry. Have I forsaken our mother too before all her beauty and fertility?

My eyes, they feel heavy. I wonder how long I’ve been asleep. Leaking open to the world my hand merges into the wall. A cold chill in the womb of an empty egg sack, is this my time to be born? Have I already been here and do I want to come back?

Water begins to drain. A low gurgle sucks the liquid. I lift the plug above the surface feeling naked and heavy shivering. The beast has been running rampant through the streets, in our homes and down the drain. Spiraling colors shift through the inside of my mind. I hope there is a light on the other side of this tunnel. Maybe an angel with wings and rarity. Will this be a reflection of pure intention?

Lifting my head, water trickles down my face and disappears off the nape of my neck. For a moment I thought myself dead and standing upright. Awakening to the cold hard porcelain of an empty bathtub her voice not too far off in the background begins clawing at my mind. Sharp talons to the ears and I can hardly think straight these days. My golden goddess of pain and love, suck my veins dry and I will say, ‘good night my dear lover with a double tongued serpent’s tail, I love you too.’ How she attacks her victims and breathes through their lungs.
This is the first daughter I have come to know and live with.

I’ve been noticing her eyes. They sparkle and twinkle and I like to watch how they appear opal green, glistening, seductive clean just before she thrashes out with a crippling tongue to taste my ill intentions. I feel her grip on my spine retracting. My lungs are full of fluid and I’m addicted to her taste. Claws penetrate into my flesh. My desperate attempt to escape is as fleeting as her need to drink me into her body.

From my wounds red liquid spills onto the floor filling our glasses with wine. It burns next to my heart reveling how deep her dilapidated grip has been burrowing in. Peel me open like an orange. My wounds are gaping.

Why won’t she drink what I have spilt and be satisfied? What are her reasons and excuses in moments like these where I am bleeding like this? Her flesh penetrates into my heart like a cold sharp spear. This certainly will be a mess to clean in the morning.

Part Two: If I Could Sleep Forever

Of course I’ll come dressed and covered in the mud from the riverbanks. I’ll open my mouth and float down the stream. All the good crops reside on the shores of distant lands. This thick mud below the hill cleans and rejuvenates the skin, swim, swim, and be young again.

Cigarette smoke lifts through the room creating a thin gray atmosphere. Morning sunlight shifts and jumps through swaying tree branches outside. It penetrates the hazing cloud of the room illuminating the table before me. Subtle shifting conversations compete in this small space and time.

“Yes please, I’ll have a refill.”

“You’re going to meet with him tomorrow?”

“I’ve always liked that one too.”

“What flavor would you like?”

“Ok then, yes… Ok… I love you too.”

“Anything really. I’m not to picky.”

“And that’s when she said…”

“Blue moon is coming for me.”

“Anything with caffeine in it.”

“The stronger the better?”

“Save room for cream?”

“Please, just a little around the rim.”

“That will be a dollar twenty five.”

“Thanks.”

After filling my cup to a murky mocha brown I return to the dark corner beyond the rays of the morning sun. A small but hairy spider crawls instinctively like a mechanical predator down the crumbling brown brick wall. Landing on the table before me it creeps hesitantly into the light. Then retracts and scuttles over the edge, hurrying away as if afraid.

A long sip of coffee with delicious steam raises from the surface fills my senses. I fade back into the broken chair and drown to the muffling sounds that are as thick as the smoke filling this café. People like to chatter and I never really understand what it is they all have to talk about. As long as they keep to their business and I can relax without being bothered I’ll enjoy my morning coffee in peace. Their voices are like transparent details in a story never told. Temporary marks no one can remember. They resemble numbers and lines written on the walls and chalkboards of grade schools. We were always taught to be quiet and listen, sit and be attentive. What happens where there is nothing good to pay attention to anymore? Now all we watch and memorize are commercials.

How I want to spool my own web and rest, waiting for my prey’s arrival. Dinner time! All guests would be welcome with a wide shiny grin. Entertainment all around, bedazzlement, and enjoy your stay the riddle would say. Without walls, only a puzzle, complex and invisible and a little distracting that is how it’d be.

But, Damn it! The lever is under the surface. Pale fragile existence, this is soft and broken in distant tormenting laughter echoing in the void and darkness. I am growing numb with disillusion and dramas in my mind. Where do all the little elf fuckers hide? I cannot find where they go in the blue haze of dawn.

Is it like a snake, needing to shed its skin to grow?

I find “it” funny and sad at the same time. With all the shifting and shapes making colors and perpetuation becoming a complex dance of social masturbation. Seek pleasure and cherry poppin’ surprises. What else would there be to fill all our time?

For this moment, “Now” I find simple pleasure in my cooling beverage. I am Zen and the unZen; the discarded path and lost way. I am the dark walker who no one knows and no one sees. I am the forgotten one, the lost child, the useless sage wanderer.

It has come to my conclusion that everyone in this room exists solely for my uncaring entertainment. Narcissistic and a leather bag of tricks, all the clowns have come to town leaving behind their red noses and tears. The game they play won’t make sense but with the right set of eyes their smiles hide their real disguise.

The sun rests and I retreat home after finishing my voiceless conversation.

Part Three: The Second Daughter and Doc’s First Appearance

It wasn’t my time and I had to watch her eyes tear. How delightful it tastes to be filled with a dying mother’s intentions. She is aging before her children and emits her sorrows upon her daughter to bear. They weep and can do nothing about it.
I drink the second daughter’s warm embrace across the kitchen table spitting my soul into the fire. Even Jesus Christ couldn’t fill his cup this full. How bitter it tastes, the aged wine that wants to be drank. Whoever needs the moisture between her thighs? Penetrating enemy, the cavity will swallow. A hungry orifice of teeth and fangs can only chew. Still, without choice I have to enter.

And then to flee from her I return to watch the clowns chatter and continue to sit in the corner of the damp hazy coffee shop. Figures across the room look like ghosts. Mildew and mold collects on the furniture like flies to urinals.
Smokers and their enjoyable habits appear so delightful and repulsive. I can’t believe how many cigarettes the guy next to me has smoked without speaking. He is probably thinking the same thing.

“Hey buddy,” a funny looking fellow approaches me. “Think you could help a guy out with a light?” A thick orange mustache drapes down each side of his mouth and wiggle with every world he speaks. I nod to respond and begin searching my pockets to find a light. He swings a closed sleek black umbrella over his shoulder and takes off his tattered gray fisherman’s hat.

“Sorry,” I tell the short man. “I have no lighter,” and I continue with my business of no business. He sticks around wandering through the dim atmosphere and pacing in circles before me.

He leans in real close to my face getting my attention. “Not even a match, you don’t have?” He asks with stale breath warming my cheek. “Not even one single match?” He says pointing a plump index finger for emphases. His grime filled and jagged nail glints in the drab light.

“Nope,” I reply looking up.

“That’s to bad,” he mutters over a thick bottom lip. “I was told you could help me.”

“Me?” I ask, noticing his left eye wasn’t working the same as his right. He broke our stare to gaze over my head. It must be a marble.

“One moment and I’ll be back,” he said placing a wooden pipe between his yellow missing teeth. I watch casually as he lurches back to a full erect position using his closed umbrella as a cane. He slides across the room with a dead man’s leg trailing behind and approaches a young attractive female. A small brown leather satchel clatters at his belt. She hands him something and he returns slowly through the gray smoke curtains of the stage like a rusty nail penetrating soggy wood. With a giant collapsing puff of smoke he hinges at the waist and sits in the yellow soot-stained chair next to me. I suddenly envied him for being able to breathe smoke. It rises from his large dark nostrils in two long streams. How jealous I feel. Another deep exhale of a rising veil and his weathered face disappears. I retreat too and hide in my black liquid of life, tipping my cup up to my nose.

Finally after seconds of endless silence he shakes his match out and leans over the table, “I see you have found her.” He said to me.

“Found who?” I ask.

“We all knew you would.”

“Who knew what?” I said. This old raggedy man is getting on my nerves.

“I can see that I am bothering you, no?” He said. “What else are you doing today otherwise that you can’t talk to an old man such as myself?”

“What are you talking about?” I question setting the setting heavy coffee cup on the table perfectly back in its previous ring the bottom of the cup left behind. Like footprints in the snow no one will be able to follow me.

He began stroking the arms of his mustache with an index finger and thumb. “You haven’t realized her undying instinct and urges have you?” He asked. “It goes beyond control for such a situation. She seeks more than pleasure but needs completion.”

“Completion?” I mutter. “That is not my responsibility.”

“Oh but of course not,” He said ,winking a glossy pale eye. I take a long sip; slipping the lip of the cup past my tongue’s tip and let the last drop of cold coffee tear down my throat.

“Well friend, shall we consult them bones? Maybe they’ll shed some light on this silly situation.” He pulls the sack from his hip and twists the golden twine loose. Mumbling to himself he picks all the butts from the nearest ashtray and pours all the remaining material across the table between us. Then pinching a small portion of ash, he sprinkles it into the open bag. Without any warning he plucked a stand of my hair from my head. Next ,he spoke a word I’ve never heard and blew a large puff of white smoke into the bag.

In a crash of dried dust and bones, dice rolled across the table top with dead skin flakes. My little friend the spider had come back to visit but now lay crushed beneath what looked like a finger bone.

“Ahhh… hhha! I see,” said the little man still stroking his facial hair. “Just let me move this bone here. Yes. Ok, and that one. Yep. And this one over there and moving this one kind of like… ok, yes I’m seeing it… mmmmmhhhm… good good good, now it is looking right. I’ll just, yep, I think we have something here buddy.”

“What?” I asked. “You re-arranged them all! What kind of B.S. is this?” I sat up moving into his space. “Read the bones for what?”

He leaned in closer too, real slow and un-oiled, “well, don’t you believe in being the master of your own destiny?” his voice creaked like a dry raspy drain gasping for liquid.

“Master of destiny, what? Is that a human finger?” I pointed across the table.

“Yes, that was once a finger of a human who once was alive and doesn’t need it anymore. And wouldn’t you feel a little more confident with yourself and choices if you took your own fate into your own fingers rather then taking the word of a dead man?”

I tried choking down another cold sip of coffee remembering my cup was empty. “I suppose I’d…”

“Right, of course you would,” he said cutting in. “I’m glad we share a similar point of view. Now would you like to know what the bones say?” He relaxed leaning back into the old torn tacky yellow and green 1970’s pattern easy chair. “Them bones, they never lie you know,” and he continued to stroke the thick yellow branches draping below his nose and puff heavy clouds of smoke into the air above us.

“Sure,” I replied, “What do the bones say?”

“Them bones, they’re telling me now… Them bones, they say…” it seemed at that moment all the lights in the café dimmed and all conversations hushed to a low mute. I leaned in and over the table draping a low shadow over the scattered pieces of bones.

“They say,” he whispered in a rusty voice,” they say you are the payer and I am the poor.”

“Eh? What?” I said confused. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Well friend, we are in a café shop are we not?” He gestured around the room with an open palms dressed in fingerless gloves. “Yes, it seems to be yes, pralines and cream the bones are telling me, pralines and cream that you are going to buy for me. A warm cup of coffee, tip the pourer and I may guide you further.” The old man riddled on.

Confusion hit me. “What kind of deal is this?” I said pointing a finger “Look old man, I am not your squire and I am not one for conversation. I very much don’t like to be bothered by dirty beggars so you can take your gimmicks and scams and magic bones to dazzle someone else for a ride.”

“You do not believe me?” he asked raising bushy blond eyebrows to the brim of his tattered hat.
Agitation overwhelmed me. “You’re a crazy bum, probably living under the bridge by the river. You’re here out looking for a free meal or some sucker to leech from. You smell like piss, you’re filthy, and your shoes are falling apart.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he winced, sinking back into the chair. He waved his hand in a circular motion over the table, his shadow a crow over the ashes. “It’s not my fault. This is your manifestation of me and not my choice on how to be. I don’t enjoy smelling like this but it’s how you wanted to see me. What you see is what you know and what you know is what you see, do you understand?” He winked his one pale white eye again. “Now friend, how about that cup of coffee for a homeless rancid fool like myself? A deal I’ll cut you, yes I will. Just a little slack jack for another free reading of the bones that is all I ask.”

I thought for a moment and agreed to the deal. What harm could there be? So I went to the counter and patiently ordered the old man a cup of coffee and got a refill. I began to wonder what time of day it might be. The light outside still penetrated the tinted smoke store windows creating long cast shadows of plant arms creeping like skeleton hands across the floor. Lacey’s, the store logo stretched backwards across stone tiles beneath my feet and up my right leg. Someone began to cough profusely from the back of the building and I returned to my seat with two new cups of coffee. I dropped a small amount of change into the tip jar for the service.

Sinking down into the fabric, a sea of broken springs beneath my weight then I melted to the smoke screen in the air. The old man reached for his drink. “Thank you kind sir,” he said. “Consult them magic bones we shall now. I have another appointment and late I mustn’t be.”

“Let’s see what they say,” insisted I did.

“Well, oh well, let us see,” he began mumbling to himself while picking up the few remaining pieces on the dusty table and placing them back into the small brown satchel. Then he dropped a few drips of black coffee off his tongue and into the bag.

Shaking the bag, it sounded like shards of glass and then he dumped all the pieces over the tabletop again. The old man put a stubby finger to his lips burying his nose into the ashes and bones on the table. His one good eye wrenched for me, sharp and piercing. “Remembrance has no relevance while idle bliss does not kiss the palms of the gods. With any concern for all who learn, it was all as if it never took place. But, seeing how now is here and has relevance it is our fear that we must run the fool’s race. All the crying unborn children cannot imagine the pain they will have when they grow up. Waking to captivity is a cruel joke.”

I sat back digesting what he just said watching the short and quick gestures his hands made while picking the bones back up and placing them gently into their bag. He taunted the golden twine and attached it back to his hip. Tipping his hat forward with another wink he stood up embracing the warm cup of steaming coffee like the Holy Grail and said, “good day. Perhaps we will meet again. Thanks for the cup of Joe,” and in one quick motion he swung the long umbrella over his shoulder, whirled around and bounced with ease towards the exit. An internal giggling loomed within his black silhouette parting through clouds of gray smoke. Exit stage left, he departed the theater.

Copyright © 2018, Charles Denton
All rights reserved - No part of this story can be used without written consent.