What if Death was a spider?

It was not suddenly, but gradually, that I began to theorise that I was dead. That I had died not horrifically, not loudly, not strangely, not remarkably at all. That I had died how I had lived, quietly. It took a while for me to become sure, but I did.

Only it felt as if I was the only person who knew. Like my flesh had not learned of its demise. Like I lived and died so quietly that no god or higher form noticed. That none laid claim to what was left of me.

I was met with a stranger every time I looked in a mirror, caught a glance of myself in a shop window, in the reflection of a passing car. I was certain I’d see a rotting woman, bones poking out from the fat of her flesh. Maggots burrowing into her muscles. But every time she was young, pink pinched cheeks, alive.

But I could not ignore this deep aching feeling telling me what I knew to be true. That I was, in fact, irrevocably, dead. That I was rotting, inside out.

The more time I spent with death, the more I settled into it. It felt like running my finger against the groove of a record that spun around and around until I had memorised the indentations. It felt like the presence of someone I once knew that became estranged from me a long time ago had now returned. The more time I spent with death; the more I realised that I had been dying for a long time. Death had dressed me up, soaked into my skin, fattened me up for the slaughter before it took me so uneventfully.

It hadn’t always been like this. The first time I noticed its presence was the first time I noticed the absence of life in me. When I stared harshly at the peeling wallpaper on the ceiling of my barely teenage bedroom and I noted how dumb it was to wallpaper a ceiling. How if I had my way, I’d tear it off. I’d start again. I’d paint the room green.

But the room was a deep plum and I did not have my way in it. I had the foreign wetness of His mouth between my legs and the overwhelming weight of numbness. Was this not meant to be something? I had wondered. Was this love? It felt like being loved in the way a butcher grabs at a slab of meat. The way a trophy sits on a mantle as it’s being polished. I don’t think I am meant to be loved. I think I had started to die then. Now, death had known me so long I could hardly distinguish it from myself.

In contrast, I found I was becoming considerably less assimilated with the living.  In fact, I think I started to hate them. The whiteness in their eyes was too bright, their voices too animated and worst of all, they saw me as one of them. The decay I felt growing and warming inside of me, twisting and sporing, turning my organs to green collapsing mush, had not yet made its way out to show the world the work it had made of my tissue and muscle and meat, the work death had made of me. As if he had gently taken my hand to parade me around the other deities that wished to see his prettiest project.

It was in a coffee shop that I finally let it be known. Regular meals had become a thing of the past for me, but I did still enjoy the warmth of an espresso. I was sat at one of the oak tables by a window, watching a fly struggle in the thin silk of a spider’s web. Its wings stuck, entangled, legs frantically flailing to no avail, but still, it kept trying, desperate to beat the inevitable. It was only when the spider announced itself by climbing onto the far corner of its threaded trap that the fly halted. She submitted to the spider, his undeniable power. He crawled forward, legs long and menacing, skillfully advancing across the web. The fly was devoured in seconds, consumed whole with no trace. I thought of how I’d never thrashed like the fly had, never showed the will to become untangled from the webs I fell into in life, how I too succumbed effortlessly when death crawled to me. I thought of how, in my next life, I might wish to be a spider.

A man came, abrupt and unsubtle, sitting with purpose that he lacked at my table. Yet still, he spoke.

“Is this seat taken?” His voice was honeyed, low.

I didn’t respond, my eyes tracked him as he got comfortable regardless, pulling his corduroy coat off his arms and letting it rest on the back of the chair.

“Sorry, it’s packed in here.” He filled my silence. “I think the uni students must have coursework due, they all flood in here when it gets down to the wire.”

I felt my lip twitch with inaction. There were words behind my teeth that I wanted to spit at him, but I swallowed them.

I decided on a clipped “It’s OK.”

I looked back to the window. The spider rested in the middle of his web. I, of course, could never be sure but It felt like his eight small eyes were watching me, waiting.

“I tend to avoid coffee shops nowadays.” The man continued, and I wondered if it even bothered him that I had shown no interest in listening. “So many options now, skimmed, iced, matcha, oat… makes me feel like I need to have studied before-hand just to order.”

He must’ve been attempting a joke. I did not feel like laughing, though I considered it for the slim chance of one of my decomposing teeth falling into his drink. Maybe then he’d get a hint.

“It’s not too complicated, really.” I sipped on my coffee, not stopping as it burnt what was left of my tongue.

“What did you get? Some kind of concoction of coffee and complex sugars?” He laughed at his own joke this time before I got the chance to give him another cold reception.

I shook my head. “Americano. Black.”

His eyebrows curved, raised, flattened. He pulled a face of feigned admiration. “Classic, how coffee is meant to be drank.” He lifted his mug, forcing solidarity over our common beverage. “Usually women like you like all the bells and whistles with it, but I guess you’re something else. You take care of yourself, I can tell, by your figure.”

His smile was sleazy as he said it. I imagined crafting my own web to trap him in and long spindly legs sprouting from my sides to help me crawl. Disdain rooted around in me as he insisted some recognition of me, as he tried to alienate me. Something else. Something special. Coveted and worthy. Ranked above the women with their sugary drinks just trying to enjoy their day. Removed from them like a cancerous lump so I could be examined by miserable men who longed to make me just as miserable.

“And what if I had?” My voice was in a deeper register than I’d ever heard it in before.

“What?” He frowned.

“Ordered a sugary concoction?” I stared straight at him now. “Would you have berated me? Jumped up from your seat and found a woman much more sensible?”

He tried to laugh, assumed I was like him, making bad jokes to fill the air.

“What if I rot in front of your eyes?” I leaned forward, watched the way his face dropped. “Turn into something horrible, the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen?”

He faltered, unsure, uncomfortable. Yet, still unmoving.

“What if I pull my brain out in chunks and give it to you? Force it into your hands?”

Others around the shop started to notice, shooting glances my way.

“What if you don’t want to fuck me anymore?” I raised my voice, I wanted them to hear. “What if I become so grotesque and monstrous that you don’t think I’m pretty anymore? Will you let me be then? Can I finally stop?”

I looked to the spider as I stood and addressed it, done with the shivering man now.

“Is that when you will let me die? Really fucking die?”

I could smell the blood before I see it. Metallic and bitter. I looked down to my stomach and saw it pooling, staining my white t-shirt. A deep red, not bright like fresh blood, almost a black merlot, aged like a bruise. I let out a cry, deep and guttural and raw enough to shred my throat as I released it. The blood coated my tastebuds.

The eyes in the coffee shop left with me as I burst out onto the street. I could hear them mumbling and fearfully wondering what was wrong with me, how awful I looked, how insane I must be. Thoughts they should have had weeks ago only coming to fruition now.

I did not stumble, I walked with purpose, advancing like the spider on the web until I found grass under my feet, not concrete, I saw trees and not buildings. There was a certainty in the air and I knew it was here. I kept going, until I saw the patch of white dandelions in the wet grass waiting for me. I laid with them, smearing my blood and staining them red as I spread my limbs amongst them. I waited without tears in my eyes. I knew they would find me here, only they would not recognise me. The dandelions would have overtaken me by then. They would corrode my skin and flesh and fashion stems and petals. Weave through my orifices to bloom. I would become them as they would become me, until we were each other and nothing else was left. Quietly, mundanely, uneventfully. I would never have to be human again.