The Spider
Nobody was around in the grey end of a Sunday. I strolled past the deserted park; the swings and slide failed to evoke the joy of old. The park looked cold, sequestered, and threatening in the dim light. It was strange and eerie to see not a soul there!
Usually, there were stoners on the bench at the back or somebody walking a dog in the field ahead. The road was dead quiet. It had rained all day and the grass was wet. The grass soaked into my shoes and my toes got cold. I had been walking for an hour but I hadn't moved more than a mile. The trees were beautiful, more beautiful than usual. The clouds were low and overbearing, they tightened around the town. I was high, whatever that meant, and getting high was my daily task. Usually, there were people around, but all the people I got high with had evaporated into the dark parts of the town. I walked home by myself. I was high enough to forget that I had school the next day.
The weed was losing its fun but if I stopped smoking it sped up everything. I walked towards the field. The glow of the street lamps was in the air. The field was slippery from the rain and I marched towards the light on the other side. Then the field gave away and I fell into a hole. I fell deep down onto rancid mud. Above me the orange light shone down from the field. I tried to climb out and found the wall vertical and wet. I felt my way around until the wall ceased and I found open space. In this moment of fear, I had two choices I could shout up to the field or I could follow the passage into the abyss.
I tried to shout but my mouth wouldn't open. I tried to talk and it opened but no sound came out. I looked into the dark and a bunch of eyes flashed and vanished. My heart raced and my mouth remained shut. Blindly, I went into the tunnel which was high enough for me to stand upright.
As I walked, my shoes squelched in the mud. One by one, they got stuck and I lost them. Soon my socks were gone as well. I walked in the mud barefoot. I felt the wetness between my toes. I had never smelt death but a psychosomatic response made me think of death. I kept thinking about those eyes and I knew I had seen at least four pairs of red eyes. The creature must have been a spider with all those eyes. The logical side of my mind made it off as a hallucination.
Spiders were small and those eyes were the size of grapes. As I moved further, I heard a scuttling to my left. I didn't want to look but I did, and what I saw struck terror into my lungs. The red eyes stared bright and then vanished again. Ahead of me, I saw a flickering silver shape. The legs didn't move towards me but away. They were Phosphorescent silver legs scrambling away from me. I followed but I had no control over my limbs. The tunnel was lit up by the glow of the spider. It expanded as I walked, there were red eyes everywhere glaring out of holes in the walls. I wanted to run but I couldn't, and I couldn't scream.
On the floor, little silver spiders scurried over my feet and sent tingles up my legs. I felt trapped and it seemed as if my fate was to be devoured alive by these spiders. The mud was getting deeper and my pace slackened as I fought to keep moving. In the distance, I gazed into eight lamp-like eyes. They were big. This was the mother of them all. A spider descended onto my head and I felt its legs tapping against my ears. I knocked it off with force. The action brought the room into a tense halt. I stood inert as I was hypnotized by the great, gargantuan, gruesome eyes. The eyes moved and then its giant legs emerged on either side as it brought itself out of its nest. It stood twenty metres off of the ground and its abdomen was like a hairy bulbous bus. In my whole life I never heard a spider making a sound. This mother began to chortle and scream through its pincers. I got hold of my vocals and finally screamed. Spiders descended around me filing me with their hairy legs. I passed out….
It was early in the morning when I woke up. Why was I lying in a ditch? I looked at my bag and found that it was spangled in fetid mud. I was really hungry and I opened the zip to look for something to eat. Inside the bag was a silver spider leg about the size of my arm!
Hasan Maruf teaches English as a First Language in DPS STS School, Dhaka. His interest lies in diverse genres of literature.