Chapter 2: Spiders In her Hair

I finished my short story! But I had to revise the first few chapters. Here's chapter 2 (again). Enjoy!

...A few weeks passed. The new owners were fairly uneventful. They passed gas as they watched reruns of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune from beige recliners. The Man’s dentures rubbed on his gums wrong, so he would always take them out when he watched TV since he wanted to relax. But he would put them back in when he moved the lawn or went to get the paper, just in case someone stopped by to chat...which never happened.

The Mrs. seemed to enjoy vacuuming, and baking casseroles. Especially on Sunday afternoons. It reminded her of when they were younger and had family and friends over for Sunday dinners. The ritual of vacuuming and baking casseroles triggered deep memories of a full house bustling with conversation and commotion. They had not had company in years, and they never would--which frankly suited Sarah just fine.

Sarah preferred the quiet. On occasion The Mrs. would make her way into the formal dining room--where Sarah slept, and she'd bring that awful, cumbersome, whirring, sucking vacuuming machine with her. There was something rather unnerving about having something so loud and mechanical brush and roll and scrape repeatedly over your back. Sarah might have enjoyed the experience if she had let go a little. After all, she was part of the floor now. The vacuum might have felt like a good rubbing on her back and neck if she had let it. But Sarah was not interested in feeling. And enjoying a good back rub required doing so. The prospect made her quiver. It was much easier just to be annoyed with the thing.

Vacuuming sessions were easily the most eventful (and bothersome) part of Sarah's life during that time, with the exception of one instance in particular.

About seven years in, there was a dark house spider that lived in the corner of the dining room beneath the curio, which happened to be very close to where Sarah's head was......or USED to be. The spider would come out of her webbed hole in the evenings and try to catch a meal or two during the week. It was very clearly a female, as she had just recently eaten her partner, and Sarah watched as she slowly doubled in size with a bulbous belly. But it wasn't full of lovers' flesh. It was full of something else. She used to skitter about rather speedily. Now she teetered and wobbled and her belly dragged and touched the floor near Sarah’s head as she made a new home for her babies.

Sarah watched as Mama spider spun a sac beneath the cabinet with her spindly legs and deposited the fertilized eggs inside. Her body pushed out the tiny blobs in sort of a pulsing way as she filled the sac with her gooey offspring. Her abdomen went from large and shiny to flat and dull in a very short time. She hung around and fiddled with the sac for a few days, fastening it tightly on the base of the curio, protecting it and hovering over it. Then she eventually crawled away and dried up somewhere, no doubt dangling in the air as her leg caught on a wall or a sweater.

The sac, though, was very much alive. It was small, so Sarah found it difficult to make out all the details, but she did notice some movement occasionally-- something of a bulge and a fidget now and then, like twins punching their foreheads and fists into their mother’s womb, for onlookers to peer on and coo over as they thought they saw the baby kick.

And then it happened. On cue, a little crack...and tiny, wiggly, probing legs began to delicately tear open the sac, the way a young woman might carefully tear at a pastry when she found herself being admired and didn't want to appear greedy. Miniature things made up of eyes, legs, and exoskeleton found their way to the hole and pushed through, one on top of the other, emerging from the silk. Hundreds of them. Pouring out. Crawling in no particular direction but out. Which way to go next?

Some were black and shiny, others pale and matted. There must have been a few partners. The milkman first, then the cable guy. And the pool boy. All got what they came for, and were swiftly devoured. Sarah wondered if they felt their lives had served their purpose as their legacy of little ones sprang forth, full of fire, hungry for something...milk maybe? Or was it blood? They would know soon enough.

A gust of warm air blew out of the floor vent, and the babies suddenly took flight and zoomed and spun around the room, just as The Mrs. was coming in to dust the curio. She hadn't noticed of course, a very large and swarming number of tiny legged creatures that had landed gracefully into her fluffy hair and around her ears. Their little spiny feet had caught onto the wisps of hair, the fabric of her sweater. They travelled into her scalp, her eyebrows, down her neck and even nestling quite nicely between her sagging breasts that were held up with an old peach colored polyester bra from K-Mart, back when it was in business.

She never noticed a thing. She may have breathed a few in, eaten some for dinner, slept with one or two in her ears, bathed with them. Sarah almost found it amusing that such new creatures had found rest on such an old woman, of all places. She wondered if they would enjoy a little Alex Trebek and a glass full of soaking dentures on the side. She felt something of a chuckle begin to form in her throat, but quickly stifled the feeling and returned to the silent observer she had been….since….the incident...with the floor.

Eventually the little critters made their way off of the Mrs. and out into the world. They found homes in the carpet, the curtains, the curio. The front porch, the pantry, the kitchen window. They munched on dead flakes of scalp or dust, old bugs and flies, but it left them feeling...hungry. Still hungry. They would need to find real food. Such helpless little creatures, without their mother. Sarah remembered this, and always would. It reminded her of herself, somehow. Dead and lifeless, depleted and forgotten, unable to protect the helpless little soul floating about somewhere, helpless without her, to be devoured by the world.

It was another few years before the old couple began to decline altogether. The Mrs. went first. The Man followed. He fell depressed because he didn't have anyone fussing over him, and he missed her nagging. It made him feel like he mattered to someone. Upsetting The Mrs. was his way of keeping her close. If he was feeling lonely or bored, he'd leave a dirty spoon in the sink or forget to put the lid back down. It was sure to get a rise out of The Mrs. If he was lucky, they might go at it for a little while.

But that was over now. And he did not take to loneliness well. He joined her within 4 months.

The new family would be moving in soon. They had been in a few times since closing. They brought with them a little girl. She seemed to know certain things.

Chapter 3

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