#11 The Spider and the Wire Wool Madness

by Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Since you found me, I have often been a spider, scuttling across blackness and rolling up tight in the brighter spots until you have gone. I hid in cracks and dusty corners while you searched. Then I scaled the walls, inching upwards to cross the ceiling and abseil back down. I was aiming for your shoulder as you sat by the stairs like a sphinx, considering your next move.

I knew what mine was: I would hang and drop, hang and drop, until I was level with the warm cavern of your ear - pulsating and pink – into which I might crawl. I would burrow into your head and gnaw at your thoughts. I would split into fragments and these would spin sticky webs behind your eyes, and tangle your mind in balls of wire wool. You would go mad.

But it was too abstract, and anyway you could never be madder than you already are.

I graduated then to parasitic wasp, imagining how I would thrust my ovipositor into the secret space between the vertebrae at the top of your neck. I planned to sit in your hair and measure your fading convulsions through my feet as the poison slowly immobilised you. The idea of my babies eating you from the inside out and flourishing on your nutrients while you sat awake and cognisant was an attractive one.

Oh, but I will not give you babies.

Tomorrow I will become a scorpion.