The Spider - Short story
Very much an experiment in metaphor this one. See what you think.
The Spider
She lived in the back room of the stables, alone, with just the picture for company. It hung on the wood, lopsided, ugly as one can imagine, colours bulging out, red, yellow and blue, exploding onto the canvas like a geyser filled with blood. Yet she would stare at it for hours, salivating over the world it represented - dangerous and ugly, explicit and insatiable - a naked man standing erect.
'Come to me. Come and find me.'
The girl didn’t know anything about art. She’d never visited a galley or attended a school. She’d never been to a city - she’d never even left the farm. All she knew about the world was what she could see from the top of the hill, glittering trees and gleaming paths, lights spinning like Catherine Wheels, sparks over dark glass towers.
But she knew that something was happening, something with people shouting and running and touching one another.
'Touch. Touch. Touch me.'
Voices screaming in the wind.
'Ussssss, usssssss, beeeeeussssssss touchusssss.'
Reds and yellows pulsing over and over.
Some nights she would run out in the field and have her own party, dancing with horses and running under the starlight, but then she would grow cold and desire only the barn, her bed and her dreams.
‘'Touch me. Touch me. Make me warm.'
In sleep the picture moved off the wall and floated inside her, steel and iron moving, liquid warming her stomach and sparkling hands touching her skin:
'Come. Come and find me. Let your world come in me.'
She would wake up and see it looking down at her.
'Come back. I want you.'
And then she would go back to sleep and dream again.
‘I want you back inside.’
William Grant had an itchy back. It started an hour ago when he’d left the road and now he'd reached the marshes it had expanded right to the bottom of his arse. Bloody hell it hurt. Bugs, millions of them, all smelling blood.
'What am I doing here?' he thought.
Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
'Fuck, fucking, crap-filled marsh, horrible shitwater, fucking shoes, fucking socks...'
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
'No food, no girls, no shops, no bowling alley.'
There was water all around him, but it was brown and full of strange insects. There were things to eat if he'd wanted them but William was very picky and he didn't like anything that wasn’t in a sealed packet.
'Keep going,' he said to himself. 'Keep going and something will work out.'
So he trudged on through the marsh, looking at the farmland rising in the distance and wondering whether that was where something would be.
'No going back, that's for sure. Not ever.'
William Grant should not have been thinking like this. In his teenage world he should have been thinking about the tournament at the tennis club, or the sale at HMW or Emily Saunders’ breasts poking through her school uniform, not the stench of a sandy quagmire or where he was going to sleep for the night.
'Kids grow up too fast around here. Good kids and bad kids.'
As he trudged through the marsh, swearing and itching his behind, William thought about why he had left the town in the first place, whether he could have stopped kissing Emily Saunders neck when she'd asked, if he could not have ripped open her blouse and pinned her down on the conservatory floor and if he could have not then gone round to Alison Scales' house and done the same thing again. They wanted it really. They wouldn’t tell anyone. Did it matter?
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
'It’s that fucking place,' he said, looking at the cityscape below. 'I didn’t do anything wrong. They wouldn't let be myself, that's all. They wouldn't let me show how I felt.
They all feel it. They all want to do it as well.' He looked up at the farm again, a favela of iron and shacks, and remembered how they told him never to come up here. This was where children went and never came back, ghostly voices screaming in the wind.
Sometimes late at night she'd wake up and stare at it. Her heart would start to beat, thumthumpthumpthumpthumthumthumthump, her armpits would sweat and she would become hot down...down there.
The twists and turns revolved, the metal contorted itself over and over, the red and green burst this way and that, mmmmm, mmmmm whataworld, whataworld whataworld, mmmm!
She'd have to look away – from the lights, the colours and the sparkling hands - and run out of the barn, thighs rising up and down like pistons, carrying her over the fields faster than any of the horses.
'Arrrggh! Arrrgggh! Hurt me, you hurt me, fucker. Hurt.' She'd stop and catch her breath, over and over, a dog panting into the dirt.
Breathe...breathe...breathe...breathe...stop.
It was in the fifth hour that William fell. As the afternoon heat grew the swamp boiled over his chinos. Roots grabbed his feet and rocks crumbled beneath him. The sky darkened and water bubbled like beef soup.
'Cannibals. Cannibals everywhere.'
Through the steaming cauldron he saw something moving.
'Oh, fuck.'
And the ground opened and swallowed him up.
'Help'
She emerged from the woods like a stately alligator – tip-tap, tip-tap.
'Help.'
Touch, stroke, do you like that?
'Help.'
Do you like it there?
Around her the trees purred with delight and the grass rippled with lust.
'Fucking help me.'
And the girl lay beneath the sun.
William Grant tried to scramble out of the bog but each time his trousers fell to his ankles. 'Fuck...oh fuck help. I'm being sucked in, sucked in for God's sake.'
The girl looked at him from the top of a tree. 'Fuck you are ain’t you?' she said. 'Straight to hell you're going. Straight down, if you don’t get out that is.'
William flapped around like a duck in oil-slick. 'I'm dying! God, can't you see? I can't get out, I can't.' He flapped again and again. 'Shit. Shit.'
The girl jumped down to the bog. 'You. You muddy as shit from my arse.'
William stretched out once more and, seeing that there was nothing else for it, let his trousers fall into the hole.
'Get up,' she said, reaching a hand to his sweating pink skin. 'Get out you fucking nag.'
Thump, Thump. Thump. Thump.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
William stared at her bare white breasts. 'Listen, do you have any water? I mean, I'm really thirsty and I forgot to...'
Thump.
The girl hit him with the fence post as hard as she could.
'Get out. Get out of the house and never come back you dirty little shit. You make me sick, all of us – everyone in the town. No-one wants to see you or speak to you ever again. No-one.'
Sick.
Sick.
Sick.
Sick.
Thud.
Thud.
Shrrinng.
Blink.
Light.
She leaned towards him staring like a hungry wolf.
'What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing here eh? Eh?''
William opened his eyes and a surge of pain rushed through his head. 'Owe, God ow that hurts,' he said mashing it into the straw. ‘Ow, God.’
The girl ignored him. 'Look at it,' she said, snarling like a dog to a kitten. 'Stop eating grass and look-at-the-fucking-picture. It’s where you've from.'
He rubbed his head with his anorak, coughing at the stench and then turned to see a cityscape nailed to the wall. It was something from the 1920s, a puzzle of points and squares and prime colours.
'Look,' the dog barked. 'The city. There. Look-at-it.'
'Yes yes, alright,' he said. 'I can see. It’s a painting, yeah, yeah I've seen loads of those at school.' William's eyes panned to her breasts rocking on panting lungs.
'It’s you.'
Pant
That's where you come from. Yes?'
Pant.
'From there?' he said. 'No, I don't come from there.'
Nipples. Erect and firm.
'I...'
Legs. Arse. Something in between.
'I come from...'
She leapt over the straw and crushed his back with her claws. 'I want go there. I want to go there now. Show me how to go.'
The girl sprinted out into the field like a balletic rabbit, diving and somersaulting over mounds of grass and then burrowing her body into the earth.
'What the fuck?' he mouthed, her back shimmered out into the moist air.
'Mine!' she yelled from the hole. 'Me, me, me, me, me.'
A ray of silver ignited his face.
'Touch it,' she said. 'Feel it. You like me, you love me.'
William stepped uneasily through the warm bushy grass. 'Yes...I...I like it, I guess?'
She turned and floated back to him, a naked angel. 'City boy don't come up here,' she said. 'Too much - yeah, you-fucking-bitch.'
'Yes,' said William. 'I...yes.'
He looked at the landscape falling behind her, marshlands steaming like forgotten stew, clumps of trees discarded like dirty underwear and the tapestry of a manicured town.
'There,' she said, grabbing his hand. 'You come from there.'
'Yes,' said William. 'That horrible place. Yes, that is where I’m from...but I'm not sure if I'll ever be going back.'
He stopped as the wolf clawed his flesh. 'They all think I...'
'Pant. Pant. Pant.'
'And I...'
She pulled his hand up and forced it onto her breast. 'Fuck me now. Fuck me with your world.'
They sat in silence on the fence, swinging their legs and staring at the city. The girl’s stomach throbbed in a good way, like a boxer at the end of a fight, and William held her hand, light like pollen in the spring.
'You leave now?' she said. 'You run back there? Run-run home, leave me here like little-fucking-whore?'
William eyes glinted on her moonlight smile. 'I'm not going to run anywhere I don’t think, not after that,' he laughed nervously. 'I...I don't know anyone like you. You make me feel...I don’t know, better than anything down there let me tell you.'
The city burned behind her.
'I guess, I don't know what I want to do. I...it’s horrible down there. No-one lets you do anything – you can't look, you can't move, you can't speak, you can't do anything. And now....now I come here and I can do everything. You make me do...everything.'
The girl jumped off the fence and danced in front of the fire. 'Mine – it’s all mine. Me me me me.'
William rocked and stared at her white body. 'I...I wanted to leave there. I wanted to be free. I wanted something else but I wasn’t sure what, but now...now I know....'
She returned to him, grabbing hold of his crotch and pulling him onto the moist grass.
'I...'
'Fuck me. Fuck me and we go. Yes?'
'Yes,' he said.
A light breeze skipped around the straw. The girl held the boy on top of her, her fingers tracing an outline on his back – up and down, long and straight, yellow and red.
‘Can we go?’ she whispered at the picture.
William lay lifeless.
‘Can we go?’ she said again. ‘I need to go now.’ Her nails dug into his skin, drawing a small trickle of blood. William squirmed and flopped on the ground, a canvas of green, yellow and red.
‘There,’ she pointed. ‘There now.’
The painting hung like Jesus on the cross.
‘There?’ William said. ‘There? We don’t want to go there. They all...they all hate people like us. Here we can do anything. We can be whoever we like.'
She stared at the swathes of light and the faces shouting to the sky. 'That's what I like,' she said. 'Not here. I like there. I like you. I want to go there with you.'
William put his fingers into hers but found only dead, cold bone.
'You have to take me there.'
The warm feeling left the girl. When she looked over at William, at his pimply skin and pale yellow hair, she felt empty and sick.
'Take me away. Take me there. I don’t want to be alone.'
'I can't,' he said, wrapping soft hands around her waist. 'I can't go back. I am bad. What we are doing now is wrong – it isn’t allowed there.
William still liked the girl, but he wasn’t sure he liked it on the farm anymore.
'I want to go,' she said, climbing on top of him.’ Not here, alone. Come...with you.' Her body was heavy, like a stone statue.
'We can't go back there,' he said tearfully. 'I'm not allowed.
She peered down, crushing like a tidal wave. 'That is you. The city. That is you. Yes?'
'No,' William said. 'No. It really isn’t me. I am not like them. I'm not tall buildings and I’m not bright lights.'
She placed her hands on his ribs and began to kneed, hard and slow. 'Not like me. You are not like me. You do not understand. You should try to understand.'
Hands rubbing, legs wrapping.
'Maybe I am like them a bit,' he said, starting to struggle. 'Maybe I do like being there sometimes. It’s just...' He tried to turn away from her. 'It’s just sometimes they don’t seem to understand me.'
She flexed her wrist and moulded his cheeks. 'Not you. Not understand. Not the man you think.’
‘No,’ he said, starting to cry. ‘No. Not, no’
The girl’s hands ripped his skin open. 'Nature. Nature different. Much harder.'
'Yes,' he said, clenching as she wrapped around him. 'It is.'
'You are there. You are that. Fuck me, fuck me.' Manacles locked on.
'Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.'
The girl didn't want to be with him. Her eyes hated him, every inch of his body, just like the others who held her, just like those who promised to go with her and who fucked her and left her to die.
Writhing, squirming, gasping.
She could see it now.
'Fuck me...William. Fuck me, fuck me.
She could see he was them.
Gasp, gasp, clench, shake.
She would never leave.
'Come, come! Hurt me. Hurt me.'
Choke. Choke. Choke. Scream.
'Yes. Yes! Come back. Don’t leave me. Yes!
‘Don't leave me. Don’t leave me here alone!'
Silent. Limp.
Cold.
Dark.
'Take me away. Take me with you.'
The fly, dead in the web.
The girl stared at the picture. It hung lopsided on the wall, uglier than ever before. The explosion of yellow faded into rotting boils, skyscrapers squashed into moulded shit and eyes turned to black.
'Cold. Empty, Empty.'
The body of William lay beside her, soft pink skin cooling, red socks stuck onto feet like Christmas stockings and hands limp on straw carpet. A horse walked over and nuzzled at his forehead, caressing blond hairs with its tongue.
The girl ignored them and stared, kneeling like a child in church, eyes looking up, expectant.
Nothing moved. No lights shined.
The horse lost interest in the white corpse and wandered away for the night. A fly buzzed around the fading glow of the moonlight and the girl stared through the painting into the darkness. Semen dripped down her thigh. Slow, thick tears.
The Spider
She lived in the back room of the stables, alone, with just the picture for company. It hung on the wood, lopsided, ugly as one can imagine, colours bulging out, red, yellow and blue, exploding onto the canvas like a geyser filled with blood. Yet she would stare at it for hours, salivating over the world it represented - dangerous and ugly, explicit and insatiable - a naked man standing erect.
'Come to me. Come and find me.'
The girl didn’t know anything about art. She’d never visited a galley or attended a school. She’d never been to a city - she’d never even left the farm. All she knew about the world was what she could see from the top of the hill, glittering trees and gleaming paths, lights spinning like Catherine Wheels, sparks over dark glass towers.
But she knew that something was happening, something with people shouting and running and touching one another.
'Touch. Touch. Touch me.'
Voices screaming in the wind.
'Ussssss, usssssss, beeeeeussssssss touchusssss.'
Reds and yellows pulsing over and over.
Some nights she would run out in the field and have her own party, dancing with horses and running under the starlight, but then she would grow cold and desire only the barn, her bed and her dreams.
‘'Touch me. Touch me. Make me warm.'
In sleep the picture moved off the wall and floated inside her, steel and iron moving, liquid warming her stomach and sparkling hands touching her skin:
'Come. Come and find me. Let your world come in me.'
She would wake up and see it looking down at her.
'Come back. I want you.'
And then she would go back to sleep and dream again.
‘I want you back inside.’
William Grant had an itchy back. It started an hour ago when he’d left the road and now he'd reached the marshes it had expanded right to the bottom of his arse. Bloody hell it hurt. Bugs, millions of them, all smelling blood.
'What am I doing here?' he thought.
Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
'Fuck, fucking, crap-filled marsh, horrible shitwater, fucking shoes, fucking socks...'
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
'No food, no girls, no shops, no bowling alley.'
There was water all around him, but it was brown and full of strange insects. There were things to eat if he'd wanted them but William was very picky and he didn't like anything that wasn’t in a sealed packet.
'Keep going,' he said to himself. 'Keep going and something will work out.'
So he trudged on through the marsh, looking at the farmland rising in the distance and wondering whether that was where something would be.
'No going back, that's for sure. Not ever.'
William Grant should not have been thinking like this. In his teenage world he should have been thinking about the tournament at the tennis club, or the sale at HMW or Emily Saunders’ breasts poking through her school uniform, not the stench of a sandy quagmire or where he was going to sleep for the night.
'Kids grow up too fast around here. Good kids and bad kids.'
As he trudged through the marsh, swearing and itching his behind, William thought about why he had left the town in the first place, whether he could have stopped kissing Emily Saunders neck when she'd asked, if he could not have ripped open her blouse and pinned her down on the conservatory floor and if he could have not then gone round to Alison Scales' house and done the same thing again. They wanted it really. They wouldn’t tell anyone. Did it matter?
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
'It’s that fucking place,' he said, looking at the cityscape below. 'I didn’t do anything wrong. They wouldn't let be myself, that's all. They wouldn't let me show how I felt.
They all feel it. They all want to do it as well.' He looked up at the farm again, a favela of iron and shacks, and remembered how they told him never to come up here. This was where children went and never came back, ghostly voices screaming in the wind.
Sometimes late at night she'd wake up and stare at it. Her heart would start to beat, thumthumpthumpthumpthumthumthumthump, her armpits would sweat and she would become hot down...down there.
The twists and turns revolved, the metal contorted itself over and over, the red and green burst this way and that, mmmmm, mmmmm whataworld, whataworld whataworld, mmmm!
She'd have to look away – from the lights, the colours and the sparkling hands - and run out of the barn, thighs rising up and down like pistons, carrying her over the fields faster than any of the horses.
'Arrrggh! Arrrgggh! Hurt me, you hurt me, fucker. Hurt.' She'd stop and catch her breath, over and over, a dog panting into the dirt.
Breathe...breathe...breathe...breathe...stop.
It was in the fifth hour that William fell. As the afternoon heat grew the swamp boiled over his chinos. Roots grabbed his feet and rocks crumbled beneath him. The sky darkened and water bubbled like beef soup.
'Cannibals. Cannibals everywhere.'
Through the steaming cauldron he saw something moving.
'Oh, fuck.'
And the ground opened and swallowed him up.
'Help'
She emerged from the woods like a stately alligator – tip-tap, tip-tap.
'Help.'
Touch, stroke, do you like that?
'Help.'
Do you like it there?
Around her the trees purred with delight and the grass rippled with lust.
'Fucking help me.'
And the girl lay beneath the sun.
William Grant tried to scramble out of the bog but each time his trousers fell to his ankles. 'Fuck...oh fuck help. I'm being sucked in, sucked in for God's sake.'
The girl looked at him from the top of a tree. 'Fuck you are ain’t you?' she said. 'Straight to hell you're going. Straight down, if you don’t get out that is.'
William flapped around like a duck in oil-slick. 'I'm dying! God, can't you see? I can't get out, I can't.' He flapped again and again. 'Shit. Shit.'
The girl jumped down to the bog. 'You. You muddy as shit from my arse.'
William stretched out once more and, seeing that there was nothing else for it, let his trousers fall into the hole.
'Get up,' she said, reaching a hand to his sweating pink skin. 'Get out you fucking nag.'
Thump, Thump. Thump. Thump.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
William stared at her bare white breasts. 'Listen, do you have any water? I mean, I'm really thirsty and I forgot to...'
Thump.
The girl hit him with the fence post as hard as she could.
'Get out. Get out of the house and never come back you dirty little shit. You make me sick, all of us – everyone in the town. No-one wants to see you or speak to you ever again. No-one.'
Sick.
Sick.
Sick.
Sick.
Thud.
Thud.
Shrrinng.
Blink.
Light.
She leaned towards him staring like a hungry wolf.
'What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing here eh? Eh?''
William opened his eyes and a surge of pain rushed through his head. 'Owe, God ow that hurts,' he said mashing it into the straw. ‘Ow, God.’
The girl ignored him. 'Look at it,' she said, snarling like a dog to a kitten. 'Stop eating grass and look-at-the-fucking-picture. It’s where you've from.'
He rubbed his head with his anorak, coughing at the stench and then turned to see a cityscape nailed to the wall. It was something from the 1920s, a puzzle of points and squares and prime colours.
'Look,' the dog barked. 'The city. There. Look-at-it.'
'Yes yes, alright,' he said. 'I can see. It’s a painting, yeah, yeah I've seen loads of those at school.' William's eyes panned to her breasts rocking on panting lungs.
'It’s you.'
Pant
That's where you come from. Yes?'
Pant.
'From there?' he said. 'No, I don't come from there.'
Nipples. Erect and firm.
'I...'
Legs. Arse. Something in between.
'I come from...'
She leapt over the straw and crushed his back with her claws. 'I want go there. I want to go there now. Show me how to go.'
The girl sprinted out into the field like a balletic rabbit, diving and somersaulting over mounds of grass and then burrowing her body into the earth.
'What the fuck?' he mouthed, her back shimmered out into the moist air.
'Mine!' she yelled from the hole. 'Me, me, me, me, me.'
A ray of silver ignited his face.
'Touch it,' she said. 'Feel it. You like me, you love me.'
William stepped uneasily through the warm bushy grass. 'Yes...I...I like it, I guess?'
She turned and floated back to him, a naked angel. 'City boy don't come up here,' she said. 'Too much - yeah, you-fucking-bitch.'
'Yes,' said William. 'I...yes.'
He looked at the landscape falling behind her, marshlands steaming like forgotten stew, clumps of trees discarded like dirty underwear and the tapestry of a manicured town.
'There,' she said, grabbing his hand. 'You come from there.'
'Yes,' said William. 'That horrible place. Yes, that is where I’m from...but I'm not sure if I'll ever be going back.'
He stopped as the wolf clawed his flesh. 'They all think I...'
'Pant. Pant. Pant.'
'And I...'
She pulled his hand up and forced it onto her breast. 'Fuck me now. Fuck me with your world.'
They sat in silence on the fence, swinging their legs and staring at the city. The girl’s stomach throbbed in a good way, like a boxer at the end of a fight, and William held her hand, light like pollen in the spring.
'You leave now?' she said. 'You run back there? Run-run home, leave me here like little-fucking-whore?'
William eyes glinted on her moonlight smile. 'I'm not going to run anywhere I don’t think, not after that,' he laughed nervously. 'I...I don't know anyone like you. You make me feel...I don’t know, better than anything down there let me tell you.'
The city burned behind her.
'I guess, I don't know what I want to do. I...it’s horrible down there. No-one lets you do anything – you can't look, you can't move, you can't speak, you can't do anything. And now....now I come here and I can do everything. You make me do...everything.'
The girl jumped off the fence and danced in front of the fire. 'Mine – it’s all mine. Me me me me.'
William rocked and stared at her white body. 'I...I wanted to leave there. I wanted to be free. I wanted something else but I wasn’t sure what, but now...now I know....'
She returned to him, grabbing hold of his crotch and pulling him onto the moist grass.
'I...'
'Fuck me. Fuck me and we go. Yes?'
'Yes,' he said.
A light breeze skipped around the straw. The girl held the boy on top of her, her fingers tracing an outline on his back – up and down, long and straight, yellow and red.
‘Can we go?’ she whispered at the picture.
William lay lifeless.
‘Can we go?’ she said again. ‘I need to go now.’ Her nails dug into his skin, drawing a small trickle of blood. William squirmed and flopped on the ground, a canvas of green, yellow and red.
‘There,’ she pointed. ‘There now.’
The painting hung like Jesus on the cross.
‘There?’ William said. ‘There? We don’t want to go there. They all...they all hate people like us. Here we can do anything. We can be whoever we like.'
She stared at the swathes of light and the faces shouting to the sky. 'That's what I like,' she said. 'Not here. I like there. I like you. I want to go there with you.'
William put his fingers into hers but found only dead, cold bone.
'You have to take me there.'
The warm feeling left the girl. When she looked over at William, at his pimply skin and pale yellow hair, she felt empty and sick.
'Take me away. Take me there. I don’t want to be alone.'
'I can't,' he said, wrapping soft hands around her waist. 'I can't go back. I am bad. What we are doing now is wrong – it isn’t allowed there.
William still liked the girl, but he wasn’t sure he liked it on the farm anymore.
'I want to go,' she said, climbing on top of him.’ Not here, alone. Come...with you.' Her body was heavy, like a stone statue.
'We can't go back there,' he said tearfully. 'I'm not allowed.
She peered down, crushing like a tidal wave. 'That is you. The city. That is you. Yes?'
'No,' William said. 'No. It really isn’t me. I am not like them. I'm not tall buildings and I’m not bright lights.'
She placed her hands on his ribs and began to kneed, hard and slow. 'Not like me. You are not like me. You do not understand. You should try to understand.'
Hands rubbing, legs wrapping.
'Maybe I am like them a bit,' he said, starting to struggle. 'Maybe I do like being there sometimes. It’s just...' He tried to turn away from her. 'It’s just sometimes they don’t seem to understand me.'
She flexed her wrist and moulded his cheeks. 'Not you. Not understand. Not the man you think.’
‘No,’ he said, starting to cry. ‘No. Not, no’
The girl’s hands ripped his skin open. 'Nature. Nature different. Much harder.'
'Yes,' he said, clenching as she wrapped around him. 'It is.'
'You are there. You are that. Fuck me, fuck me.' Manacles locked on.
'Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.'
The girl didn't want to be with him. Her eyes hated him, every inch of his body, just like the others who held her, just like those who promised to go with her and who fucked her and left her to die.
Writhing, squirming, gasping.
She could see it now.
'Fuck me...William. Fuck me, fuck me.
She could see he was them.
Gasp, gasp, clench, shake.
She would never leave.
'Come, come! Hurt me. Hurt me.'
Choke. Choke. Choke. Scream.
'Yes. Yes! Come back. Don’t leave me. Yes!
‘Don't leave me. Don’t leave me here alone!'
Silent. Limp.
Cold.
Dark.
'Take me away. Take me with you.'
The fly, dead in the web.
The girl stared at the picture. It hung lopsided on the wall, uglier than ever before. The explosion of yellow faded into rotting boils, skyscrapers squashed into moulded shit and eyes turned to black.
'Cold. Empty, Empty.'
The body of William lay beside her, soft pink skin cooling, red socks stuck onto feet like Christmas stockings and hands limp on straw carpet. A horse walked over and nuzzled at his forehead, caressing blond hairs with its tongue.
The girl ignored them and stared, kneeling like a child in church, eyes looking up, expectant.
Nothing moved. No lights shined.
The horse lost interest in the white corpse and wandered away for the night. A fly buzzed around the fading glow of the moonlight and the girl stared through the painting into the darkness. Semen dripped down her thigh. Slow, thick tears.
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