A Money Spider Takes Shelter from the Rain

Rain streaks the window in wet, ugly drops.

There's something oddly intriguing about watching a car drive along a road. There are tens of thousands of them, all in pursuit of different destinations. Some surge down motorways, packed with people and their belongings. Others carry a single driver, and trudge lazily through thick, black forests while moonlight glints through the canopies.

You've all been sat in their passenger seat. You could even be right now. You feel safe in your driver's hands, and you know exactly where you're going. But what about everybody else on this road? Where are they going? Who will they meet when they arrive? Will they ever come back?

The rain has brought with it an uplifting change in mood. Farmers crops and livestock are no longer thirsty, and toddlers ice lollies are no longer splattering their clean clothes in bubblegum coloured goo.

It's still hot on the coach. The bottled water is undrinkable. The air conditioning is pleasantly Arctic, but the air flow matches the speed of the bus, so we're doomed to melt every time we hit heavy traffic. Leather seats and short shorts isn't the smartest combination for this humidity, either. I'm sitting on my jumper to stop my thighs from sticking, which, so far, isn't working out as well as I'd hoped. Ten minutes ago I stood up to go to the loo, and the sleeves clung to my backside like toilet paper to the bottom of a shoe.

I press my cheek against the window to keep cool and watch the vapor from my breath bloom and melt away.

Raindrops are as rare as snowflakes. No two are the same shape, or hold the same consistency of water. Snow is just frozen rain, after all. Rain is far more exciting, though, I think. You can't quite pack it into a six foot mound and stick a carrot into it, but you can sit by an open window, wrapped up in your favourite blanket, and watch it race down mountains, and you can listen to the rush of leaves in the wind as distant thunder breaks the sky.

We're due a big storm tonight. If dad's been nice enough to stock up on hot chocolate, it should turn out to be a perfect evening. And tomorrow morning, when the air is empty and damp, I'll take a lonely stroll down to the beach, where dogs roll around in muddy sand, and the sea smells like old John's chip shop. I'll take Adam; pry him off of his PlayStation for a few hours. He won't say no if I offer him ice cream.

A money spider scuttles up past my nose. I count seven legs. I stare at it for a while as it attempts to climb the vertical wall quaking at 60 miles an hour. Its friend is waiting further up. She must be getting bored. She's much bigger with legs twice the length of his, so he'll never catch up. Ditzy little creatures, they are. They're rumoured to bring good luck, but knowing mine I've probably got hundreds of them living in my hair.

Sadly, these fortune bearing arachnids have tricked me.

I don't see the crash happen, but the sound of metal crushing metal at ten miles above the limit is unmistakable. The coach grinds to a complete stop, startling the sleeping passengers awake. We don't move for twenty minutes.

From his vantage point, the coach driver has a clear view of the accident. We're just a few hundred yards away, but not close enough to make out the damage. He tells us we're damn lucky; if we hadn't been delayed at Victoria due to a passenger's lost luggage, we would have been caught right in the middle of the collision.

Ambulances whizz past the bus, drowned in blue lights and wailing sirens. The situation is swiftly being dealt with, but I've seen the Final Destination movies enough times to know that the wreckage isn't going to be pretty. Naturally, everybody wants to see what happened; the hard shoulder is crammed with spectators, and men in police uniforms are trying to coax them back into their vehicles so that the rest of the emergency services can get through.

All these people want to see is pain. They want to revel in the knowledge that today, they escaped death by an inch. I will never understand the human fascination for witnessing innocent people suffer. I won't tolerate it.

Not long later, the traffic begins to move, albeit at a slow crawl. Fortunately, it doesn't take the coach long to pass by the wreckage. I try not to let my curiosity get the better of me as we weave between the two outer lanes, but I can't tear my eyes away from the rain flecked window.

A baby's chipped car seat lies bottom side up in the middle of the road. It looks brand new, though there is no baby nearby.

It's all I can stomach. I don't want to see the rest. I don't want to know.

The money spiders are gone. They fooled me well and truly. Fuck their fortune. It's just another word for greed.

Every night, we become oblivious to death. We sleep, and we forget how easy it is for our bodies to give up. We take chances, but we don't care for them. We take nothing for granted. We laugh off brushes with danger, thank God it wasn't me sitting in that totalled car.

"Thank God it wasn't me sitting in that totalled car."

"Thank God it wasn't my baby…

"My dad…

"My brother…

"My mother…

I manage to sleep, and somehow I start dreaming. I dream of an open front door and a porch with a filthy welcome mat. I am the young girl sitting on the bottom step, waiting for her parent's car to pull up in the driveway. A red car with a baby seat in the back, and a distraught father at the wheel who can't bring himself to look at the empty passenger seat beside him.