synthetic silk

I hope you know about the other sort of spider. The ones who smell like home, and look like family, and leave corpses and ghosts in their wake. I hope you know about cosmo-nots, fauxtons, and men who strangle.

Love has a funny way of finding its way. After all, even Aragog enjoyed years of companionship with Mosag.

But this isn’t love. And I know - I do know. About the first night. The golden light. The gasps and giggles and great big dreams. The rush, the current, sweeping you off of your feet and downstream, downwind. Downward.

Always downward.

You’ll never see golden light like that again. It’ll glimmer here and there. Just enough to make you think you’re as crazy as he says you are.

You know, when he’s got his forehead pressed so hard into yours it’ll be sore for days. Crushed into a corner, bent backward over a counter, or pinned to the floor or the bed. His vise grip on your wrists, his teeth gritted, taunting you with that menacing snarl.

And then it’s over, and he’s gone. And he’s back. And he’s sorry.

And then he’s not.

And fear hangs thick in the air, robbing you of your peace, your safety, your sanity.

You are sane, but this treacherous dance isn’t.

You are a safe person, but you know in your heart of hearts this won’t end well.

You cherish your peace, but you slowly realize that it was the first fly in the web. The first meal. The first of many corpses.

He stole it right after the damn broke.

They call it “love bombing”, but they don’t tell you that it doesn’t make a sound. Or that you’ll be set ablaze but he’ll blame you for every wisp of smoke that he inhales. Or that the shrapnel will burrow into you - into your skin, into your mind, into your soul - in imperceptibly slow motion, and extricating all of it will be impossible. You’ll forever be riddled with shards and scars and shadows of what never existed - not even on that first night.

You’re beautiful.

Vibrant.

Brave.

Full of life.

And he’s wonderful, isn’t he?

Aren’t you just so proud to be his? Excited to have found “it”? Lucky to share such an incredible bond?

And those twinges in your gut, the disbelief when he’s calling you a selfish asshole for disagreeing with him because he’s too fragile and special to endure it? You keep it to yourself. You sacrifice more and more to the orchid. You fix your face. You keep your big emotions in check. You wake in the night to find him on the couch instead of wrapped around you in bed. You give him his space, his time, his respect.

He gives you nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

He’s that sort of spider.

The sort that will tear down your home, and eat your family, and when there is nothing left but the breath in your lungs and the blood in your veins - he’ll take that too.

I was his light, his always, his queen.

And now I am just another ghost in his wake; an almost corpse.

My saving grace was his inability to follow through. Strong start; weak finish. He gripped my throat and squeezed with every ounce of strength he had, but the con artist just couldn’t compete with the canvas. He wasn’t blotting me out of existence. He was setting me free.

The river that swept you away is the blood of the corpses before you, and the ink of a lifetimes worth of false narratives, and the sweat that dripped from his brow into my eyes as my brain began to die, and the crocodile tears he’s likely already shed as he pleads with you to surrender all.

All to thee, my future killer, I surrender all.

I am the luckiest ghost on the planet, a joyful almost corpse. But he tore down my home and he ate my children.

The golden light is a trap, used by the sort of spider who cannot bear to let you see what lies beneath his web of lies.

A predator. A monster. A murderer.

I hope you see it before he makes his last promise - the only one he ever intends to keep.

“I will put you in the ground!”

You deserve the truth - not a grave.

And the truth is he is already making plans for your wake, because this sort of spider will destroy anyone who finds out why he so desperately protects his “good name”.