Archive for March, 2011
Spiders
Monday, March 7th, 2011
Her husband said, “Don’t kill it. They don’t mean any harm.” She was pressed back in the corner, her hand over her heart, which was thumping so hard it should have burned right through her blouse, and he was bent over the thing on her desk, extending his hand.
“There we go,” he said, and he turned and extended his palm toward her. “See?” She saw. She couldn’t breathe. It crept from the end of his fingers down to his wrist. It lifted its legs like a woman folding a sheet, snapping it out in the sun. Her head jerked back and hit the wall.
He said, “Phobias are merely mental blocks. You need to work your way through them.” He lifted his hand up under her nose. Tears started to run down her cheeks. She could feel them running cold down the line of her jaw and dripping off her chin. He didn’t even notice, for a moment. And then he said “Oh, Julie.” He shook his head and left the room with the thing twitching in the palm of his hand.
She dreamed that night about spiders. They ran down the walls in streams, flowed around the bottom of their bed as if it were a rock in a river. A fountain, a waterfall of spiders sounds like nothing, magnified a thousand times; a whispery, bristly-legged nothing at all, made of legs and tiny eyes. They poured out their bedroom door and cascaded down the stairs, where the living room lights were still on.
In the dream, she didn’t move. The curtains fluttered in their wake, and the bed rocked, just a little bit, and the bedroom door shuddered. Her sheets glowed white beneath her hands.
Would it be worse if she woke up and found her husband’s body wrapped in silk, hanging from the corner of the living room? Or if she woke up to find him snoring on the couch with his mouth open? She laid in bed after she woke up, trying to decide which she hoped for most. In the corner, a spider lifted its legs exactly like an angry woman casting a curse at midnight, and spun a web.
In Service
Friday, March 4th, 2011
We humans have found ways to cope with the Ratters’ “friendly invasion.” Cowards stain carpets with hara-kiri. The blithe pretend that the aliens have not arrived, driving to work while ignoring saucers whirring overhead. The timid hide in sewers and damp basements–the first places the Ratters look. And sycophants believe they are the future of humanity, ratting out fellow humans. The only true survivor is you who hold this reading slate, you who cannot be a Ratter because the slate would self-destruct if your reflective eyes gazed upon it, you who cannot read this aloud because it would detect spoken language and explode with enough force to bring a Ratter ship crashing to the earth. You desire to undermine their place on this planet until they can be properly exterminated. Presently, three methods of success include lip service, pay, and pompous yet low roles in the government.
Foremost, give lip service. Admire their strength and their tails’ roughened metallic texture. What separates you from the sycophants? Palm moisture: Sycophants sweat in awe of rats and in fear of being cornered by humans. We will lure the Ratters into the arena. Stage boxing matches between humans and aliens. Let the aliens win. “Ooh” and “aah” their prowess. But reserve one human champion. Pay whatever it costs to buy the fight because humans need hope. Remember: We are among the weakest of Earth’s predators, yet we reign supreme. Viva Darwin!
Yet we best not underestimate their evolutionary climb. Seek to undermine their will in other ways: paying them less, or paying more while taking away other privileges. Don’t pay in cheese, or if you do, severely limit their diet. Low-calorie diets keep them prepubescently under six foot. High-calorie diets allow them to tower to twelve foot, intimidating to any human. Find ways to restrict hiring any creature over six and a half feet–low ceiling heights, small offices and closets, etc. This hurts a few humans as well, but we can compensate these humans in other ways.
Neither of these methods alone would stop the Ratters from getting suspicious. Therefore, we need to elevate their statuses artificially. Promote them into prominent yet piddling roles in business and government. Presidents are fine so long as their human cabinets and CEOs make the critical decisions. If trouble arises, accidents can happen.
We humans presently appear to have the short end of the stick, but our evolutionary genius has helped us beat stronger predators before. It will again.