She looked like darkness itself. The light of the fire illuminated her perfectly. Her dress was of white and emerald green, embroidered with Midas love. The light caught the threads and sparkled. The flames rebounded from the shine of her hair. The fire’s light refracted in her eyes, this side of paradise.

It also cast a shadow of her darker self.

The spinning wheel spun. Her hands worked feverishly. Her eyes barely moved in their intensity, apart from the occasional flicker. When this occurred, the light shone in the literal glint of her eye. Multi-faceted, refracted: she was spinning a story.

***

Bedtime advanced and passed. The child finally slept. The tale told, spun out. The bed looked small in the equally tiny alcove. Lydia had woven the blanket. She approached, used it to cover her child. A woman wrapped up a child out of love. Cocooned…smothered it.

The perfect delicate shell of her face grew distorted. The hands that had so recently patted down the blanket grew claw-like, fingers moving, groping as feelers that tasted the air for vibrations. The spiders ran up over the quilt, hovered at the child’s throat, and then withdrew. Lydia grew confused.

A crackle from the fire drew her back to the warmth, to the spinning. She wore unwashed jeans and a tea-stained top that shimmered white, emerald green, and gold. There were more tales to be told. The voices were speaking in her head. Threads of thought too fleeting to grasp escaped her. She had been someone…else, once.

The flame divided the darkness and the light. Eight prominent eyes scanned the corners of the room. She was sure she was alone here…yet she was not. She was never alone.

The fire cast a shadow of her darker self.

***

The child cries.

She’s hungry. Feed her.

She just wants to upset you. She knows you hate this noise.

Lydia turns her head. It is the middle of the night. The child sleeps. There has been no sound. It is her memory then.

Lydia wonders if she ever cried when young.

“You?” her sister laughs. “You were never one to show your emotions. Your dog died and you didn’t cry. People died and others wailed. You sat in the corner, a voyeur to their pain.”

“I tried.”

“You lied. You mimicked us when our mother died. You didn’t understand what we were feeling.”

“What use tears?” Lydia frowns. “They serve no purpose.”

Her sister stops her fussing, her constant cleaning. She looks down. There is something like pity in her eyes, though Lydia knows if she complains she will hear she is paranoid. “That’s half your problem,” her sister tries to explain. “If you understood what it was like to feel something, maybe you’d be more human.”

Lydia glances at her, turns away her gaze, mutters. “You just want to trick me again.” She sits, staring stubbornly into the fire. Her legs are crossed; one hand lies between her thighs. The other presses against the top of her exposed knee. Her knee is bare because like many things, her jeans need mending. The fabric has many holes. There is nothing sensual in the position. Right now, she needs to keep her hands still. She remains silent. Her sister sighs. Her footsteps fade, as does she, as she walks towards and passes through the wall. Around Lydia, the world crumbles into decay. Dishes sit dirty in the sink. Clothes lie in unwashed heaps. Flies buzz around the overflowing bin.

Lydia grins. She spins.

A dark cloud rises up. The unfortunate flies are stuck. They bleed. Lydia considers she may kill them, or she may decide to sit and watch them die, let them linger, suffer. This interests her: the death of others.

***

Someone has gone. I am supposed to feel grief. This is funny. I am supposed to laugh. This hurts. I should cry. Was it always a lie? The sun shines; Lydia feels cold. A blizzard rages; Lydia is oblivious, warmed by her isolation. She hasn’t eaten; she should feel hunger. They tell her she has fed; she cannot remember.

“Take your medication.”

She nods, smiles, slips it out of the side of her mouth.

She promises to be good.

***

A silk wrapped present lies unopened.

So, he thinks he can buy me with something that sparkles.

It’s a trick. He seeks to keep the peace. He wants you to believe his lies.

The secret voice explains that a male will wrap a gift in silk for an aggressive mate.

Does he think I’m dangerous?

Aren’t you? Aren’t we?

Notes thrum out of history. She frowns. She looks down at the page of the book. Arachnids. A male once plucked soothing tunes on her web. Males approach bearing unwanted gifts: life.

A note resonates. Lydia looks up. The child sleeps on.

***

“You’re not well, Lydia.”

Lydia shakes her head. The matted web of her hair is a nest for insects. They buzz in her ears, run around inside her mind. She stares at the psychiatrist, sees the trickster. He calls her hateful names: schizophrenic.

“No. It’s not me. It’s her. She’s the one who needs help. Why won’t you listen?”

Why don’t they hear? How can they ignore what I’ve said?

They’re all mad. You’re the only one that’s sane. They hate you for that. It’s a conspiracy.

Lydia laughs, listening to voices others cannot hear, her lips pulling back from stained teeth. She is a carnivore. All living creatures are insects for the feast. She forms her lasso but catches only mist. Nothing is solid to her touch. Inside, the vibration of her world is vivid. Outside, it is unclear. Her venom paralyses her prey. She has yet to break human skin. The shells of beetles crack. She was agile once.

The silk of her hair has dulled with age and time; they would like her to think it has dulled with madness. She tries to cut the threads, but they have hardened. She will spin a parachute and disappear into the air. This world is too small, her state of mind too fragile.

What is the point of tears? What is the point of laughter? What purpose does this feeling serve? Would one call it anguish?

Lydia turns her head. The male will be her next meal.

***

“The child wants things from me I cannot give.” Lydia feels stifled, though she wants to light a fire, breathe in smoke.

“In what way?”

“What kind of question is that? I don’t know. I’ve just told you I don’t understand her. I don’t understand this need all of you have.”

“All of us?”

“You…humans.”

“You’re not human?”

“I am…something other.”

But I walk and talk as they.

Be a spider. Weave the fabric of the universe to your liking.

“Why are you smiling?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

***

The child is crying, screaming, ranting. Turbulence raises dust from the floor. A tornado twirls about the room, a tempest of tumultuous wishes, needs and dreams. Hovering motes strike thy eye and blind. Her mate protests, and then leaves them in the stickiness that’s left.

Lydia paces. She talks to the spiders that weave their webs in the shadows. She knows the child-creature watches this. Perhaps the child is fascinated; perhaps she is afraid. Who can tell what strange wickedness and imaginings exist in such an alien mind?

***

She looked like darkness. The blaze of the fire shone light wholly upon her. Her clothes were a costume, a weave, interconnecting threads. She should have been a part of some pattern. Her strand escaped the spinning wheel probably from the day she was born. At the other end of the string, the cord severed.

Hell on earth shone from the green of her eyes. If there were no afterlife, oblivion would be paradise by comparison.

The firelight also cast a shadow of her darker self.

The spinning wheel stopped. Her hands stilled. Her eyes never moved. The shadow cast upon the ceiling moved instead. It descended.

Lydia waited. She had given up. She was the insect.

***

The whispers stopped and passed. The voices slept. The tale told, spun out. Lydia looked small in the bed, in the tiny alcove. The child no longer slept here. She had left long ago. Lydia pulled the blanket over her, but the weave fell apart and separated. She had one wish left; she wanted to understand this thing they called love. She wanted comfort. She would sleep in her parents’ bed, their grave.

The hourglass would soon run out. The sand was red.

A pop from the fire drew her back to the warmth. The flames almost extinguished, she rose to stoke the embers.

The imperfect husk shook with muscular spasms. She would soon find it difficult to breathe. She had poisoned herself; deceived.

So, she had not been paranoid. Her only sin was she had failed to recognise the enemy. How could she have known her mind betrayed itself?

The flame separated the night and the day. Eight legs scurried.

They have left me…

The voices were gone. Lydia would die alone.

The face in the mirror was unknown. She had been someone…else, once, altered in legend. Her tale told, this her fable.

The ancient ones played games. Lydia spun a web and cocooned herself.

The blaze no longer cast a shadow.

A writer from the UK, Sharon doesn’t get out much these days. She’s too busy creating numerous and vibrant worlds to share with others. Although approached on occasion to write reports and publicity material, her focus will always be storytelling. Her work often crosses genres, and since having her first acceptance in Roadworks magazine, her stories have appeared in numerous print and electronic publications including magazines such as Midnight Street, Aoife’s Kiss, and Night To Dawn. Reviewers have described her writing as literary, strong on characterisation, an emotional rollercoaster, succeeding on multiple levels, original, unforgettable, fascinating, exciting, even disconcerting. She’s called her website Aonia, for in Greek Myth that is where the muses lived and she’s grateful for every new idea that comes to her. http://www.sharonbidwell.co.uk