Spider's web
Hideous, ugly, crawling things. Hide in the dark, take refuge in the shadows. They are considered monsters as small as they are, simply because they are ugly. Their appearance makes people scream. It seems that everyone has a deep rooted fear of them, which comes from nowhere except the fact that they are unpleasant to look upon.
We have a lot in common, the spiders and I. We both hide away where no one can see us because if eyes were ever to alight on our twisted visage there would be screaming. The main difference is that spiders have others like them, they have a mate. I have no one, I never have. I am unique in my monstrosity.
Christine doesn't like the spiders. She screams. She cries. She asks me to kill them. I cannot refuse her but it is with great bitterness that I commit the two murders, first the one and then the mate.
I feel closer to the spiders than I do to humans, almost a sense of camaraderie, as if they were distant kin. I felt like I was betraying them by killing them. I hated myself for doing it and was angry at Christine for asking it of me.
She sobbed that they were just so ugly, like the child she was, and I stared at her from behind the safety of my mask, nearly reaching up to check it was still there. I could almost imagine her pointing at me, sobbing and wailing, "It's just so ugly. Kill it! KILL IT!"
It was an unpleasant thought and I shook it away as I dropped my hapless cousins into the fire with a silent apology.
There is something else that spider's do that others never seem to remember while they clamour for the death sentence, which is what a spider can create. In darkness and silence a masterpiece can be born, of intricate detail and beauty.
When I was younger and went for walks in the dark I recall seeing works of great splendour revealed in the early morning light as I headed back home through the trees. Spider webs glistened as they were stretched between two branches, tiny drops of dew beading on the fragile, silver threads. Works of marvellous architecture created by nature, both simple and elegant. Practicality shrouded in beauty.
Each strand is not much by itself but bound together they are a snare for any unsuspecting victim. Every one of the pieces of thread are important in building up the greater work, just as each chord in the opera is imperative to how it will eventually play in the ear.
I am very much like those spiders that are stared at and judged as gruesome and unfit to live, because just as they do their work in the dark, I hide in the shadows and slowly spin my ultimate spider web. Don Juan Triumphant. It's a pretty snare for an extraordinarily beautiful butterfly.