Spider

Anansi, black busybody of the folktales,

You scuttle out on impulse

Blunt in self-interest

As a sledge hammer, as a man's bunched fist,

Yet of devils the cleverest

To get your carousals told:

You spun the cosmic web: you squint from center field.

Last summer I came upon your Spanish cousin,

Notable rubber baron,

Behind a goatherd's hut:

Near his small stonehenge above the ants' route,

One-third ant-size, a leggy spot,

He tripped an ant with a rope

Scarcely visible. About and about the slope

Of his redoubt he ran his nimble filament,

Each time round winding that ant

Tighter to the cocoon

Already veiling the gray spool of stone

From which coils, caught ants waved legs in

Torpid warning, or lay still

And suffered their livelier fellows to struggle.

Then briskly scaled his altar tiered with tethered ants,

Nodding in somnolence

Appalling to witness,

To the barbarous outlook, from there chose

His next martyr to the gross cause

Of concupiscence. Once more

With black alacrity bound round his prisoner.

The ants-a file of comers, a file of goers-

Persevered on a set course

No scruple could disrupt,

Obeying orders of instinct till swept

Off-stage and infamously wrapped

Up by a spry black deus

Ex machina. Nor did they seem deterred by this.

-Sylvia Plath

It's been so long since this creation of the world. Days passed. Soon, the world sprouted more life from their tears and the beatings of their heart. I could see life imbued at their fingertips. I could catch the hint of Satan crawling around in his amorphous gray puddle, waiting for the humans to spread sin with their gullible brains and their greedy mouths waiting to devour both other humans and luscious food, like the figs. Sonic had guarded the fig tree that contained the wretched secrets of the old world inside it, and while he knew he could've simply destroyed it, he kept it, to remind himself of me.

I'm not sure why Shadow had remained on the planet after he was manipulated to kill Sonic, from both me and Satan. But he couldn't think about living on the other side of the world without Sonic. The only one who could possibly understand him. He knew if Satan had come with his ribs, had told the woman of how she could gain so much power in this new world she could create, then Death would come back, and he would torture him through this hellish life, again.

Would I be repeated? I wondered. No, it wasn't possible. Our mother and father would give birth to different hedgehogs. Ones not so extraordinary as us. They would suffer from my mother's blatant alcoholism, my father's schizophrenia, yes, our brothers and sisters we could create to suffer in the world. I couldn't stand to watch it anymore. My mother lived again, my father lived again, I should be happy, but I learned of how ignorant and selfish they were. I learned they only wanted children because their other relatives and friends had children. Father had a lot of money back then, and mother quit her old job to live with him, to suck up all his wealth while she grew bloated with Sonic, and then eventually me.

Sonic was truly my friend during those times. He first taught me how to write on the typewriter, when my father was too busy watching CNN, when mom was off drinking in some bar somewhere, using up my father's SSI checks. Listening to him read those stories to me, even though they were much more advanced than his age…I gained my love of literature from him. My love of writing as we both typed our own story for us to tell the world. And when I wrote this story, I imagined Sonic there, encouraging me, when he was actually too busy planting his life in the Earth like a farmer, as Shadow inspected if things would be going okay. I felt alone again. Sad, bleak, depressed, I really couldn't get any goddamn lower than this. I wanted to be with my brother in this new world, but I'm stuck in an infinitesimal loop near this planet, never being able to communicate with him.

Sonic was the only one I felt I could talk to. I only talked to Mephiles, Satan, whatever the hell his name is, because I wanted what was best for my brother. I knew how depressed he was. He no longer went to his high school classes. He had no desire to go to college. He saw me as an inspiration with my writing when I was so sick and small, when I knew my brother would be bigger than life someday, and I would make him bigger than life, even if it took me all my strength I had in my shrunken little body, with the machines hosed into me and giving me oxygen.

I couldn't get a new lung. I didn't have Medicaid despite technically being disabled. My father, however, had SSI and got money for doing absolutely nothing.

During my final moments, I relied on Sonic to take care of me, but I couldn't hate him despite that he couldn't watch me die. I only had three months to live, and he was admitted in Sound Mental Health for almost attempting suicide. I couldn't see him go that way. Not my brother…maybe he was crazy. I can give you that. But if my father ever killed himself, I wouldn't give a rat's ass. But if Sonic died, I would've died immediately. My system would immediately shut down. I wouldn't allow myself to live anymore.

I don't have him anymore.

He's off in his own little world, and I'm off with only a typewriter to keep me company.

The same one my father used, back in his reporting days.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Writing had kept me sane all these years, I can tell you that, but I got my wish, and it seems like all I lived for was my brother really, instead of writing down novels that no one would read. Although I addressed to you as my readers, the truth is, no one would be able to read this. It would just float in space, indefinitely, for probably billions of years or some shit. The novel about the raven? It would also be forgotten in the annals of space. At least Shadow is the biggest testament to my work, for I have created him and changed the time the Timekeeper had kept in his storage when I wanted to make the biggest reference to my work, but Shadow is unaware of the novel. He can't tell anyone I made him to be basically my life's work when I was dying. I had constructed him out of words, I constructed him out of verbs and nouns and adjectives, but he doesn't recognize me as his father. Possibly cause his real father was a better father than me, but I made him that way.

So…

That's all my work would ever amount to. Novels that no one would read. Would never get published. Would never get acclaimed for. But it isn't about me. I did this for my brother, all in the end. And that's all I can ask for.

But the lesson here is, any reader who ever comes across this story, is that you shouldn't think you can ever become a god. And if you do, it's more misery than it's worth. I learned that the hard way. I made too many deals with the devil to finish my work, and he gave me all the time in the world to put forth so many ideas in my stories. But if you can't go anywhere, if no one can appreciate you, if no one could tell you what you did right or wrong with the stories, then there wasn't much of a point in the whole writing thing. Some writers only write cause it's the only thing they think they can do. And that was the same for me. And I have no urgency to write. I'm no longer fighting for my life with my cystic fibrosis. I'm no longer poor and hungry and wanting my brother to feed me like a baby.

Before I go, I want to tell you one last memory I remember of my brother.

I was in my crib, in an aubergine purple room (before it was painted sea blue), and my brother, with a wide smile like the milky moon I saw in my crib surrounded by so many celestial knives on his young face, picked me up, cradled me, and while he held me, holding the milk bottle deftly in his hand, I could hear his heart beat, and it was slow, rhythmic, like the waves my parents showed me. The sun inside his chest. Even when I was so young, so fragile, I could tell one day, he would become a god.

He fed me. I drank his milk, warm and sweet-tasting. When I was listening to his heart that was underneath all that guarded chest made of steel (Sonic soon no longer showed his heart except to me, as our parents broke us with their neurosis), he reiterated my favorite parts of Plath's poetry, even if I was too young to handle the content matter of her depressed and black manic poetry.

He remembered all the lines of her poem, "Spider", and yes! Yes indeed! A line I will post of Suicide off Egg Rock:

He smoldered, as if stone deaf, blindfold,

His body beached with the sea's garbage,

A machine to breathe and beat forever.

Flies fling in through a dead skate's eyehole

Buzzed and assailed the vaulted brainchamber.

The words in his book wormed off the pages.

Everything glittered like blank paper.

Everything shrank in the sun's corrosive

Ray but Egg Rock on the blue wastage.

He heard when he walked into the water

The forgetful surf creaming on those ledges.

I'm facing the Seattle sea, my readers. And I feel the Seattle sea is facing me. The sea that died a long time ago, millions of years ago, but I still remember it. I still remember it oh so clearly. The same sea that Sonic had tried to kill himself with, twice. The sea that I would sacrifice myself into, into the garbage of the universe, floating away as it's consumed by black holes. The hate of the stars bleeding and making my body sore with cuts as soon as I pull this trigger.

Sonic died, and then lived again. Twice. Maybe three times. I died once. With my cystic fibrosis. I might've died almost the second time when my leg was chewed through by that sea dragon. Maybe this is my third time dying. Who knows. And no one can save me this time.

I'm not dead yet, but I will be soon.

(I'm pressing this gun, this same gun that Shadow once held, ready to burst another universe in my brain and give it the same color as my blood).

This is the result. This is the conglomeration of both my experiences as god and my act of fratricide. My brother Sonic, the god that is creating so much beautiful life there without me, I had killed him twice in my story, maybe three times, and he was brought back to life in three days. In the course of three months. Although I spent many days (or millions of years) writing this story, I feel this is all I can write. As Sylvia Plath felt that Edge would be her last work she will ever write, this story that I've decided to title Fragile Angels (for we all are despite our godlike strength), is my second work completed, and maybe my first major work. Who knows what else I could've wrote. But it doesn't matter.

Sonic, if you find this manuscript in the harsh voids of space, all I wanted to say was that I loved you. And I hope you will become a successful God. Because I wasn't a very good one. The last God was passionate, a narcissistic genius, but I could never amount to his work.

I hope you're proud of me anyways. I've written you in an accurate light I think. And Yehl and Istu or Shadow or whatever I guess too. And the rest of everyone else.

After you read this entire work however, give it to Satan. And he'll burn it in the coalfires of Hell. There's no further use for this work other than for you to read it.

This is where the story ends, my brother.

If there's one thing that I've learned from life: it's that gods truly aren't immortal. They are just as flawed as humans. With their pride, gluttony, envy, wrath, lust, sloth, and greed.

I've been tired for a very long time.

I remembered when you tucked me into bed, making the sheets so tight against my skin, kissing me like my mother used to do years ago, and you told me I should get some good rest, I haven't slept in what looked like many years.

And I promised you that I will.

(The sun sinks, everything turns black, my sorrow overtakes me, I am drowned in the sea of bitter jealousy and hate and self-loathing, and my body drifts to the ends of the space. Bless me bless me. Done so much for you. And I hoped that my life truly had meaning, that I was truly a martyr for the cause of sin and genius.)