Web Of Lies

• Olivia Brown, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2018

“I love you. I want you. I need you”.
I felt the lies crawl out of my lips like a spider emerging from its den.
Her eyes lit up the words and a smile hesitantly, then fully, flourished on her beautiful face. God, she was beautiful…It almost made me regret what I was doing. I matched her grin with one of my own and I enveloped her in my arms, marvelling at how she shook in my arms – truly shaken with happiness. I continued to kiss lies into her hair, whispering how much I cared and how I would be there for her. My hands sprayed across her lower back, my fingers linking like a simple spiderweb.
The feel of her in my arms was reassuring. I felt powerful. She was vulnerable and mine. I had claimed her as mine and she caught in the trap I had laid for her. Yet she didn’t struggle, as if my poison had already entwined itself in her veins and consumed her heart. Yet the poison is potent and they all wilt eventually. They all find themselves trapped.

Five days later a spiderweb appeared in the corner of my room, glistening with the morning sun and casting a stark shadow against the bare wall. The artist had not emerged to glean at its masterpiece and I didn’t dare touch the fragile strings. Instead I smiled at the web and left my house.

Night had descended and the woman I had seduced now lay tangled in my bedsheets, mislead contentment glazing her features. Filled with my own gratification, I allowed sleep to claim me yet as I began to drift, a malicious darkness claimed me…
I couldn’t breathe. The bedsheet felt too thin yet it suffocated me, closing in around my neck, grasping at my pale flesh. The room was too dark, the moonlight only reflecting on the spiderweb that appeared to have grown overnight. The darkness once again claimed me as I plunged in and out of my nightmare.
In the dark, my arm was outstretched, reaching for salvation, as thousands upon thousands of small spiders crawled across my body. They didn’t bite me, instead working together to create a unified web that encased my body in their suffocating silk. I soon couldn’t move, with only my arm left free to be a taunting slither of freedom. I groped around my body, trying to tear myself free, but the web only grew thicker. My throat was scratchy from muted yelling and when I reached to tear the web away from my lips I almost recoiled at what I touched – pincers and eight grotesque eyes.

I jerked awake, free from whatever silken prison I had dreamt up. My chest heaving for breath, I looked around my dim room. The woman was gone, distressed by whatever I had revealed in between my fight in the nightmarish haze. The spiderweb in my room had fallen apart – allowing the woman to fly free.