Lucid Waking

        “So what do you like doing on the weekend?” Marissa asked her passenger. “Meet Me in St. Louis,” was playing on the radio, but Marissa reached over to shut it off in order to hear her passenger’s response.
         “Umm, swimming, I guess,” he said. “Sometimes.”
         “You guess?”
         “Aunt M, why are you taking me home? Why can’t I stay with you?”
         “Because you’re parents will be worried sick, Patrick. And if that isn’t enough, think about Ian and John. Where will they be without their older brother to take care of them?”
         “They have mom and dad, they don’t need me.”
         “I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have your dad when I was little.”
         “What do you mean?”
         “Your dad taught me a lot when we were growing up. Why do you think I’m such a cool aunt?”
         Patrick laughed. “You were cool anyway.”
         Marissa laughed in turn. “True, but I’m even more awesome because of my brother.”
         “But I don’t want to go home.”
         “Well considering you got all the way to Boston from Manhattan, I can see that you don’t want to go home.”
         Marissa pulled her car off the interstate and onto the side streets of uptown New York. Patrick was starting to doze off beside her, but determination kept him awake.
         “Seen any good movies lately?” she asked her little passenger.
         “Not really,” he said, sleepily. “But I’ve been reading a lot of good books! I’m almost done with Robin Hood.”
         “Was it good?”
         “Yeah! Ian wants to read it next, but I don’t think he’s old enough.”
         “Is Ian reading a lot?”
         “Not as much as me.”
         “That’s good.”
         The large white house pulled into view and Marissa neatly pulled into the driveway.
         “I don’t want to get out of the car,” Patrick whined.
         “I know, come on,” Marissa pulled the key out of the ignition and walked around the outside of the car to the passenger side where Patrick was curled into a ball. She lifted him up into her arms and made her way to the front porch. The door opened as she arrived.
         “Marissa?” a rather short, slim woman opened the door and after spotting the boy in her arms burst into tears.
         “He came a long way,” Marissa said.
         The woman moved out of her way and let Marissa into the house. Marissa put Patrick on the floor and patted his back in the direction of his bedroom.
         “Sam blocked the windows, so they won’t open again,” the woman said. She sighed. “Thank you so much for bringing him home. It must have been such a long trip.”
         “Not as long as you think,” Marissa said. “But you don’t mind if I stay the night?”
         “Of course not,” the woman said. “Would you like some coffee?”
         “Some tea would be nice.”
         “Of course.”

Filed under: Realistic Fiction by Bri
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            “This is ridiculous,” Dee said as she put the last of the children’s books she checked out of the library in her bag. “You can’t honestly think this will work.”
            Todd shrugged. “We’ll see. At least we can keep her company.”
            “She’s a giant spider, Todd. I hate spiders.”
            “What’s the worst she’ll do to us?”
            “The book didn’t say what they eat.”
            Todd rolled his eyes on continued down the path up towards the house. Dee sighed and ran after him trying to muster up her courage for the task at hand. The house pulled up into view, dilapidated and overgrown except for a new bright yellow sign in front. The letters were unmistakable in a large red word: Sold.
            “Better go home now,” Dee said. “We’ll be trespassing otherwise.”
            “Come on, let’s see if Arachne is home.”
            “And we’ll help her escape before the contractors come. Great idea.”
            Todd turned to look at her. “No, really. That’s a great idea!”
            Dee looked horrified. “What?” But she found herself following her cousin into the dusty house and into the dining room.
            “Arachne!” Todd called into the house. It echoed her name throughout the empty stairs. They waited in the silence and finally the door to the dining room from the kitchen opened and in slunk a dark-skinned girl with two black eyes. She was missing her shoes, but had gained a pair of sunglasses. There were two dark spots appearing on her temples, which she had tried to cover with a hat. She stepped forward and looked at them curiously.
            “This house is sold,” Todd said. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
            Arachne shook her head and pointed upstairs.
            “We know you need a closet,” Dee said, her voice shaking. “But you can’t stay here.”
            “We’ll find you another house,” Todd said smiling. “But you’ll be safer with us.”
            Arachne moved forward and then brushed past them towards the front door of the house. Dee followed quicker than Todd until they were outside. Arachne had already started for the woods at the back of the house.
            “Wait,” Dee called. Arachne stopped and turned over her shoulder.
            “You can read these,” Dee said handing the spider-girl the books.
            Arachne looked at them and smiling, pushed them away. She shook her head and patted Dee on the shoulder before running off into the forest.
            “I hope she’ll be ok,” Dee said.
            Todd laughed. “I’m sure she’ll survive.”
           
            Several years later, Dee received a package on her doorstep when she was visiting her mother. The package had no name on it, but was haphazardly wrapped and shoved into the door. She opened it up and saw a very sticky ball the size of a basketball in the corner of the wet cardboard box. She frowned slightly and then realizing what it was, taped the box shut and placed it in the corner of her old closet. She found the old photo album and Encyclopedia and put them on top of the box. She sighed and closed the door, leaving the sack and books for the next family of curious children to find them.

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        She didn’t stop running until they had reached her house a mile away from the old mansion. The street was hard to run on and Todd’s knees were starting to protest, but he followed Dee until he caught up to her. The color had returned to Dee’s cheeks and her pace had slowed down so that Todd was leading the way by the time her house had come into view. He stopped on her porch and waited while she jogged up the driveway and let him in.
         “Would you like some water?” she panted once she had kicked her shoes off. Todd nodded and Dee bustled off to the kitchen to fill two glasses.
         Todd sat down on the floor and put the two books the creature had given him on the coffee table in front of the couch. He opened the photo album slowly. The binding cracked gently in protest as he flipped through the dusty pages of black and white photographs. Wedding pictures, baby pictures, graduation…all of the expected family photographs in neat little rows with handsome smiling people dressed in their best.
         “What’s that?” Dee asked bringing in the water and setting it gently down on the table.
         “The photo album it gave me.”
         “Oh,” she said. “Anything interesting?”
         “Not really, no.” He flipped another page open.
         “Wait a minute…who’s that?” Dee pointed her finger to a page of girl in a white graduation gown surrounded by her family.
         “Probably their daughter.”
         “But she has black hair and the rest of the family is blond.”
         “Black hair could be a recessive trait; it’s not impossible.”
         “Well, it’s highly improbable.”
         “Well who do you think she is?”
         “I don’t know, Todd, you were the one who decided to talk to it.”
         Todd stared at the picture a little longer. She certainly fit in, but her hair was much to dark and her facial structure a bit too pronounced to be part of the family. He flipped the page to more wedding pictures.
         “Have you seen her in any other pictures?” Dee asked.
         “I don’t think so.” He flipped the page again.
         “Maybe we should pull it out and check the back.”
         Todd gave her a horrified look. “Are you nuts? This book looks like it’s a 100 years old! There’s no way I’m destroying it.”
         “Fine,” Dee said. “But I think it would help.”
         Todd moved back two pages and stared at the photo again. “What if there’s nothing on the back?”
         “There is,” Dee moved down to sit next to him. “Look at the ridges in the corner. Someone wrote something.”
         She slid her finger gracefully under the photo and gently pulled upward against the old glue. She flipped over the picture and dusted off the yellow particles of dust from the back.
         “Arachne Serina Belleville at her high school graduation with (from right to left), John B., Sarah B., Margo B., George B., and Jane B.”
         “Seems like the perfect family.”
         “With Arachne as the black sheep. And that’s interesting because Arachne was the Greek woman who bested Athena in a weaving contest and was then turned into a spider.”
         Dee flipped through the photo album excitedly. “And that’s the first and last picture of her in this whole book. I wonder why.”
         Todd pulled the encyclopedia towards him and flipped it open. He flipped through pages of pictures before setting his finger on an entry. “See ‘Spider Monarch,’” he said under his breath as he flipped the pages towards the letter “S.”
        "What are you doing?" Dee asked looking over his shoulder at the encyclopedia.
        "Looking up Arachne," he answered.
        "Why would you do that?" she laughed.
        Todd shrugged. "Well it’s in here."
         “The Spider Monarch,” he read aloud once he had gotten to the page, while Dee was busy flipping through the photo album a second time. “While the origins of this creature are unknown, first records of something like the Spider Monarch were dated from 800 BCE in Alexandria. A legend had formed around a creature similar to a centaur, with the body of a spider and torso of a woman. This creature became Hades’ queen after Persephone decided to save Sisyphus from his unending fate in the underworld. The record was destroyed in the fire that burned the Great Library, but the story had been passed down the generations until it was recorded again and kept in the National Library of Greece. The closest that any creature has come to this anomaly would be the Spider Monarch, first discovered in Norway in 1763.”
         “Norway? That seems like a long way to travel.”
         “But this might not be it.”
         “Well, please continue.”
         “The Spider Monarch comes from an egg sack, like any spider, and is usually found in the corner of a closet. Explorers from Norway brought the first egg sack over to England as a present to the queen. Not knowing what it was, the queen saw no reason to publicize the gift. It is highly believed that she kept it with the church and an egg sack was taken to the English Colonies shortly before the American Revolution. The last egg sack location recorded was in New York, 1890.”
         “That’s still a long way to travel.”
         “A young spider monarch has a similar life cycle of a human being and grows up to be one until age 100 of its life. For its continuing lifetime, the Spider Monarch changes into a normal spider. By the time it is 500 years old, it has lost all of its previous memories as a human and between ages 550 and 600, it finds an arachnid mate. It dies, like a normal spider, around 600 years at which point it has deposited its egg sack into a nearby closet. Nothing is known how the spider knows where to lay its eggs, but once the spider has died, the egg sack swells become the size of a modern basketball. The protective silk hatches once it has been bathed in sunlight for three days.
         “Not much else is known about the Spider Monarch. Scientists are still speculating about how it chooses its migratory path, but evidence is strongest that they follow their migration in their human years prior to becoming a spider. Most Spider Monarchs do not stay in the same spot, nor do they like light as they are changing form.
         “The most curious thing is its identification. As the Spider Monarch grows, it chooses either Arachne, if it is female, or Icarus, if male. Male Spider Monarchs always become female spiders, though the opposite sex as humans. It is unclear how they know their names, or how the adoptive families know their names, but every Spider Monarch ever studied has had either name, according to gender of their human bodies.
         “There is a small body of scientists working underground in Greece on the history of the creature and its nature.”
         “So we think this is a Spider Monarch,” Dee said putting down the photo album.
         “I think that’s a valid guess.”
         “So what do we do about it?”
         “Do you want me to read the section on Care and Management?”
         “Don’t be silly, Todd,” Dee said getting up from the couch and taking her water glass into the kitchen. “What are we supposed to do about it?”
         “Maybe it’s a curse…maybe we should help her be human again.”
         “And how are we supposed to do that?”
         Todd shrugged. “Teach her to read?"

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        “Hello! Anybody home?” he yelled into the darkness of the old mansion. It echoed throughout the halls and staircases, the cobwebs fluttering in the breeze from the open door.
         “Don’t be stupid, Todd,” his cousin said from behind him. “No one’s going to be home.”
         Todd laughed and walked inside. The floorboards grunted under his feet and made little prints of his boots in the dust and dirt. Something scuttled across the floor in front of his flashlight and the house smelled like mice.
         “It’s like we’ve stepped into a book,” his cousin said once she had walked in. She stayed close to Todd and the light as if afraid of what lurked in the shadows.
         “So, go exploring, Dee. That’s why we’re here.”
        “I’ll find a light switch,” she said nervously.
         She stepped away from his back and he heard her steps as she groped for a switch. All at once the hallway was flooded in a dusty yellow light. The light grew brighter as the spider that had inhabited the spot within the broken glass surrounding the light fell to the floor. Dee squeaked and jumped backwards. Todd caught her and laughed softly.
         “Here, have the flashlight I don’t need it.”
         Dee swore softly, but took the light into her trembling hands. Todd walked forward down the hall and into the kitchen. Dee had moved nervously towards the parlor, shining the light in all directions thoroughly before walking in. Todd watched her that she was all right before stepping into the dark kitchen.
         It was dusty like everything else, but the light worked when he flicked it on. Whatever food had been left was rotted and eaten and there were more bugs flying around here than anywhere else in the house. Something had started growing from the dirt in the corner of the room, probably some sort of plant from a seed deposited by the mice. Todd put his hand around his mouth and nose and stepped into the room.
         It was hard to tell how old the house was according to the dishes. When he dared open up a cabinet it was filled with dead spiders and mice droppings. The plates looked like they had gold filigree around the edges but he didn’t keep the door open long enough to examine them. He heard someone rattling at the door that he thought went to the dining room, but there were so many bugs flying about he thought it best to not let Dee into the room.
         “Wait, I’m coming around,” he said to the door and started back down the hall.
         His cousin was still looking pale when he reached the parlor, but she had brushed off a bit of dust from the piano bench and had sat down. She faced the window, her back towards the piano keys staring into space.
         “What’s wrong?” Todd asked, a little disconcerted.
         “Nothing,” she said. “I’m just afraid to explore. There are a lot of spiders and bugs here.”
         “How far did you get?”
         “Just as far as here. I couldn’t go any farther.”
         “Did you try the door in the dining room?”
         “No,” she said getting so pale she looked blue, “I didn’t touch anything but this bench and the light switch.”
         Todd looked towards the open doorway into the dining room. The door was hanging on its hinges and just the bottom corner was knocked into view. The room was like a black curtain and undecipherable.
         “Maybe I’d better go look,” he said, swallowing a huge lump in his throat. His stomach hurt and he had the sudden urge to cry.
         “No don’t,” Dee said grabbing his arm. Her grip pinched his wrist. She was holding the flashlight just as hard and her feet were now curling off the floor as if something would crawl up her leg from her shoe.
         Todd peered into the darkness. “Give me your flashlight.”
         “Todd, don’t.”
         “I’m not going anywhere, Dee. I’m just going to see what I can from here.”
         She reluctantly gave him the flashlight and he shot it into the darkness. He could only see half the room, which was covered in cobwebs. The table was covered in dust and a few fake flowers were still in a vase on the table. There was nothing between the legs of the chairs or underneath the table. The squeeze in Todd’s chest subsided a bit.
         “There’s nothing there, Todd. Let’s go,” Dee whined. Something crashed in the dining room making both of them jump.
         Dee cringed and curled up into a ball on the piano bench. Todd picked up the flashlight he had dropped and walked towards the dining room slowly. The rest of the room did not look any different in the beam of the flashlight. Todd didn’t dare turn the beam or his gaze away from the center of the room to look for a light switch. He didn’t want to blindly scrape the wall hoping to find it either. He stood in the doorway waiting for his heart beat to subside, sweeping the room with the strong beam of light.
         It was his second time sweeping the room when he found it. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman but he or she was standing in the corner of the room hiding next to the armoire with the dusty dishes. His or her clothes were none descript: pants, shirt, and gym shoes representing at least three different decades of fashion. The person didn’t move, but stared at Todd with shiny black, iris-less eyes. Its eyes were fascinating to Todd. They looked like onyx or black glass and had no white around the non-existing color it should have had. Everything else about its anatomy looked human, but it stared at Todd calculating him like prey.
         “Can you speak?” Todd asked, somehow finding his voice.
         The thing stared at him.
         “All right then.” Todd took a step into the room. The thing cowered back into the shadows. Something scuttled past Todd’s feet but he didn’t look around.
         Todd pointed to himself. “Todd.” He moved the flashlight out of the thing’s face.
         The thing pointed to itself and let loose a long string of hisses and gurgles.
         Todd smiled. He heard Dee coming up behind him by the creaks of the floorboards.
         “Todd?” her voice shook. “Todd, who is that?”
         “I don’t know,” he called back. “But I don’t think it’s going to hurt us.”
         Suddenly the room was flooded with light and the creature cringed.
         “I’m sorry,” Dee said behind him. She had a heavy brass candlestick in her hand as she had flipped the light switch near the door. She was trembling and close to tears.
         The thing kept its head in its hands and was crouched on the floor. Todd walked over to it.
         “I don’t think it likes the light, Dee.”
         “I don’t want to face it in the dark,” she said. “Todd, get back here.”
         “Just turn off the light and if it hurts me you can turn it on,” he said.
         She sobbed behind him, but engulfed the room in darkness again. The thing stood up and glanced at Todd, who was much closer than before. It hissed, revealing small sharp pointed teeth. Todd took a step back. It took a step forward and started towards the back of the room and opened the door, beckoning Todd to follow.
         The next room was a ballroom, which led to hall going to the library. The light didn’t work in the library; Dee had tried in vain. The thing slunk to the shadows and returned to the beam of the flashlight with two books. It handed them to Todd and smiled. He glanced at the covers: Photo Album and Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures.
         “Thank you,” Todd said giving a shallow bow. The creature nodded its head.
         “Come on, Todd,” Dee said behind him. “Let’s go.”
         Todd followed her back to the hall and through the ballroom, dining room, and parlor back the way they had come. Todd carefully closed the door behind them and then ran to join up with Dee who was already a long ways down the street.

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If the world were a perfect sphere
It’d be a beautiful place.
There would be no destruction
Or sorrow and disgrace.
There would be no color
To complexify one’s life;
Everything would be in monochrome
Without a speck of spice

But the world is covered in misshapen holes
With mountains in between
And everything is intensified:
The good the bad and the ugly.
We relish when the sun shines down
And even in the rain…
Nothing’s ever perfect,
But we’re happy all the same.

(Listen to it)

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