The Web

The aggressive roar of the cyclone outside causes our barn refuge to tremble. It’s bones creak and rattle, fiercely protecting those sheltered within.

Charlie sleeps undisturbed. He could sleep through anything, even a goddamn natural disaster. A small, grey spider creeps lazily across his cheek. I don’t flick it off; instead I watch as it crawls gently between his parched lips and into his mouth. Charlie welcomes the spider in with a small yawn.

I would’ve ended things between us if the cyclone hadn’t hit.

I had been garnering up the courage to tell Charlie that it was over whilst we took a walk in a nearby field.

I had dropped my jaw, lips spilling open, final words so near to exiting my throat, when a dark, turbulent wind began reverberating through the natural world. I swiftly lost sight of what I was meant to be saying.

The sheep begin bleating in their pen. Charlie rolls over in his dormancy. I trod over to them, and ladle some food out of a nearby sack; scattering it inside their fenced off home. The storm outside savagely rushes against the wooden walls of the barn. My mind feels cold.

Charlie knew I never wanted to move here. I did it for him, just like every other waking action I have taken since I met him. I try to remember how long ago I misplaced myself, but the recollection evades me.

Perhaps it was when my imagination became gridlocked. Or was it because I was ordered to notify him of my every move? Maybe it was when the money we had saved together went towards his dreams. I can’t be certain.

The wind persists in it's howling, taunting me. Raindrops splatter sourly onto my head through gaps in the worn-down roof. A spider dances down from the ceiling, escaping a watery death.

The constant ferocity of the storm sounds as though a colossal group of bodies are throwing themselves against the barn's rickety walls. Perhaps my ears are playing tricks on me. If I stop and listen hard enough, I can almost hear their voices. Three days without sleep is a severe disposition; a euphoric kind of torture. I encounter a feeling of floating, but gravity seems to be tugging my head towards the ground. I am stretched between realities. And I resent Charlie for sleeping.

Why aren’t I sleeping?

The bodies throwing themselves against the barn walls are humming now, chortling along to a wind-washed melody. My breaths are short and slippery. I ache to eavesdrop on their song.

The outside world abruptly feels very still. The silence vibrates through my bones and my blood.

The eye of the storm.

I glance over at Charlie, who stirs momentarily, and then continues dreaming. I still don’t sleep, no matter how burdensome my eyelids feel whilst hovering open.

The howling begins again. The storm people are stronger after their rest. They shriek and wail and bellow, ripping their vocal cords apart. Their murmurs drag my frosty ear towards the wall, pressing down hard against the fractured wood. I listen.

It’s not real, they whisper, it’s not real.

The voices begin to sing.

A million boiling jet black suns, our howling raucous protects their tongues. They tell you lies, the sounds you speak, do you really know the man who sleeps?

I try to shake the whispers out of my head, to no avail.

I glance over at Charlie.

He is seated upright, rigid beyond belief. His eyes gape wide open, staring at me. Charlie's pupils have swallowed his eyeballs whole, and two expansive black spheres remain in their sockets. My mouth hangs loose around my teeth, but no sound departs it.

A spider drops down onto my face hurriedly. I don’t want to look away from Charlie but I do for a second, up to where the spider has leaped from.

My eyes dart desperately across it’s web. It must be an illusion, a distortion of my drooping mind. I look away, and then back again. It is still there.

A message, written amongst a glistening labyrinth of arachnid artistry:

RUN.