Image Inspired Mini Story #9

The dawn soaked through the thick canopy at the cost of losing its nature. It was not a warm illuminator here. It emerged through mossy branches as a heavy yellow thing, tainted with a deeper hue. The fog accosted it, eliminating any joy or comfort it may have contained. The trees tolerated it, but only barely.

It was an eerie thing, this morning that Chalice walked through. She’d awoken in the darkness with a pain in her belly. Rising, she left Paul sleeping in a tangle of silk and went to the bathroom. Cool fluorescents revealed two tiny holes in her nightgown and two more in the skin below her belly button. Emerging from the small wound ran two spider gossamers. She frowned and ran her fingers along them. They did not break and felt much more like string than a normal web strand. They trailed down her body, across the tile floor, and back into the bedroom.

She followed them.

By the time they reached the front door, she realized that someone was reeling them in on the other end. The excess did not loop out behind her and she occasionally felt a slight tug in her belly. Chalice didn’t bother with shoes. She walked across the cold dew of the yard and into the forest.

Paul had been so insistent on living on the edge of the woods, but they’d always scared Chalice. She never told him though. That would be silly. Besides, she loved him and Paul loved these woods. He was a gentle soul, prone to long walks in the twisting paths and sitting on the back porch with his coffee, just staring at the swaying boughs.

“Some things Chalice, are just too mysterious to understand, and that’s what makes them beautiful.” he’d said.

“They’re just trees. It’s just a forest. It’s pretty, but hardly difficult to figure out.”

He’d tilted his head and smiled. “I think there’s more there.”

She barely felt the soft mosses beneath her feet. She moved like a ghost through the branches, feeling like a mere shadow of her self. The muffled stillness was like a dream. This couldn’t be life because it was too serene, too strange. Ahead, strung between the trees, was a web; a glistening pattern of white lines and curves, swaying gently. It seemed more solid than she did. Her ethereal hands coiled into the weave, her chest pressed against its gentle recurrence, her eye rested on the spider.

It was small, so very small. Its legs were long and barely thicker than a strand. Its fangs were tiny reflections, its body; an emerald. She could have crushed it with a finger, but she had none. Her soul was trapped by this tiny little mystery. She felt sad for Paul. The thought of him waking up next to her lifeless body sent chills through her. Her bodiless screams were wind.

The spider’s eyes glimmered. “It takes something wondrously fragile to catch something so delicate, so well hidden.”

She pulled, she struggled, and as the spider began to feed, her spirit faded away.

Dawn continued.