The Creature

A creature slowly opened its eyes. It was waking up from a dream. A soft and warm dream, like the warmth you feel on a good sunny day. Upon waking up, it felt the cold ground. Was it cement? Tiles? It was too dark to see anything. It could only feel the surrounding. There was something on its neck. Heavy and cold. Choking its neck a little bit. There was something heavy on its wrist too. It tried getting up and something made a sound. Metal clanking. It moved around and felt walls. Two to be exact. One on right and other on left. A dim light shined and it saw its reflection on the black wall. It has two red eyes. Two spikes on each shoulder. Two spikes on each side of the stomach. And two pointy, hard tentacle. It had a face of a human and legs of a human. The creature heard a rustling. It turned around. Something was coming close.

Two red dots coming closer and closer. It was now ten feet away. There was a something spiky. Like a pointed leg of an insect? It slowly came into the light. It had eight spiky legs, a fuzzy body and head, and two red eyes.It was a spider. A huge spider.

“Bah! Did ya surprise you? You slept for a long time. But it’s all good you’ve been growing very well. Have you seen your eyes and tentacles. Its beautiful”

The creature just looked around, confused.

“How could you forget me? It’s me. I cared for you and fed you and now you are about to transform”

The creature stayed silent. Who is this? It thought. Where is this?

It walked around. Metal clanking. It looked back. It was chained. The neck and wrist.

“Oh, since you are about to transform, I chained you up. Just for safety. Once you transform, I will release you. So don’t worry about it” said the spider

The creature opened its mouth, to speak, but nothing came out. Only bits and pieces of screechys noises.

“So I figured I should tell you this but you cannot speak. You’re a little dumb, but it’s okay, I can understand you. ”

I can speak, thought the creature. I just said, who are you.

“I’m the spider and we live here together”

The creature tried to take off the shackles. “You cannot take it off right. You have to wait until you transform”

Transform? thought the creature, to what?

Light entered and it got brighter. It was the sun. Sudden rage engulfed the creature. It couldn’t breath well. It move around restlessly, in anguish, trying to break the neck shackle. Though it left a mark the neck shackle broke off. But no matter now hard it tried the wrist shackles would not come off.

“I made those especially strong so you cannot break it off”

The creature stared at the spider with rage, screaming at it with screeching noises.

“Just sit in the corner” said the spider.

The creature followed. “Here some toys.” The spider gave creature a box filled with toys. Dolls, toy cars, buses, stuffed animal, etc. The creature went through it. Filled with rage of being in shackles, it broke everything. Ripped the dolls apart. Broke the toy cars. There was a little black notebook in there and it tried to rip the pages. As it did, it felt something. It heard laughter, a distant laughter. Kids playing in a park. It felt warm. The creature went silent.

“What you like that stupid little notebook?” Said the spider, not thinking much of it.

The creature nodded. “Just don’t break everything. You broke everything in here”

There was bustling noise coming from somewhere. The creature turned around. The wall wasn’t there anymore. There were car and buses, like the toys but bigger. Things walking. Trees and plants.

“That’s the outside world. You can go there once you transform”

The creature ran towards the outside world. But it was stopped by the wall. The glass wall. It started screeching, at people. It was trying to communicate.

Those are people, humans. I know humans, thought the creature.

“Stop screeching, nobody is going to look at you. Have you looked at yourself” laughed the spider.

The creature sat down and stared at the outside world. The trees and plants were beautiful. Kids playing. The music from the restaurants. People talking.

The spider told the creatures stories about the outside world, how dangerous and disgusting it was. But money, it said, was worth going to the outside world for.

“Oh, let me tell you about money. It is tasty. You can do so much. I love money. It gets me everything I want. Everything.”

The creature just listened. The creature in fact understood and perceived everything. It just didn’t have a voice. It understood that the spider was obsessed with money, and that the notebook was special. It touched the notebook again. It felt something again. A warmth of a human arms. It was warm, felt like you could melt into those arms. It filliped to another page. It felt something wet, dripping, coming from above. It was rain. The creature realized, the black notebook was a memory book of the creature from long time ago. Every page filled the creature with something. But there were too many pages. 250 to be exact.

When the spider saw that the creature would not let go of the black notebook, it did everything to take it away.

“You don’t need it. Give it to me. It’s trash.” “Play with another toy” “Here a chocolate”

The creature would not let go. I need this, thought the creature. It has answers as to why I am here.

But it needed time to go through all the pages, to bring back all the memories. So it came up with a plan. One day while spider was busy making its net, the creature said, “mo..hay”

“What?”

“mo..gey”

“You mean money?”

The creature nodded. “oh you want money!” Said the spider. “Oh I see, you’re finally getting the desire for money. That’s the best medicine to transform. Don’t worry I’ll get you some.”

The creature screeched again. It was trying to write something.

“nine…six…six…one?”

The creature nodded.

“You want $9661? That’s a lot. I can’t bring that much. I can bring you $96.61”

The creature nodded.

So everyday, the spider went out of the Glass box. And everyday the creature spent going through the pages of the little black notebook, reviving its memories. It slowly remembered, that once it lived with humans. Had learned how to speak, write, read. Play with friends. The more it remember the more the creature changed, physically. The creature started to have fingers, the spikes got smaller. But when the spider came back it would come back.

Day after day the creature requested the same thing. “$96.61”

And the money hungry spider went out to get it. Truth is the creature needed to buy time, because one day when the spider was out and the human fingers came out, the creature touched the money, and instantly it turned into smoke.

It was an illusion. Everything in there, the clothes, the toys, turned into smoke with human touch. It was all an illusion. Except for the little black notebook.

And the glass box was a trap.

This epiphany raged the creature, and in that rage the creature banged its human hands against the glass wall. There was a sound. A crack. On the corner of the glass wall.

The creature cracked open a little hole in the corner, and saw the outside. There was the moon. It was night time outside. Yet the glass screen showed bustling day time city.

This is was a screen, an illusion of the outside world.

All of this, everything was created by the spider to keep the creature in here. And in the rage of all this realization, the creature for the first time saw its true reflection. It resembled the spider. Two red eyes, spikes on the body. Pointy tentacle like arms/hand. The spider was waiting for the creature to turn into a spider too.

But the creature now had a wish. It wanted to live as a human.

I’m trapped by the spider, and to break this glass cage, I need to destroy the spider. But how, thought the creature. What is the spider scared of?

Of me? No. Then what?

The creature couldn’t understand why the spider continued to listen to the creature’s plea. Even when the creature said it didn’t need the money, the spider insisted.

“I’ll get you whatever you want. Just tell me” said spider, almost in fear.

After days and days of thinking, the puzzle pieces came together. The spider needed the creature to live. It lives off the creature.

It had been 206th day since the creature had open the notebook. Day by day the spider was getting tired of getting the money. On 207th day, the spider said “I’m tried of this stupidity. I’m not getting anymore money. I have gotten you way more than you need. After I add $98.34 to the stack of money today, you’ll have $20,000. That is enough for you to go to the outside world”

Oh, there it goes again with another lie, laughingly thought the creature.

“Yes, thank you very much. I’ll treasure the $20,000 you got for me” said the creature.

“You…have a voice? You can speak?”

And in that moment the spider realized the mistake it had made, because the creature had gained the power to turn into a human and with the human hands it broke the glass wall, squished the spider with its feet and walked into the real world, holding the little black notebook. And it looked up to the moon.

“Thank you, moon.”