Writing in the middle of a pandemic is hard. Everything is hard. But I assure you that I am working, or at least trying to work. This is by no means a complete piece, or even good, but it is work. And it is me.
Violet stares out of the window, a blank expression on her face as she is held in place by an invisbile force. There are footsteps outside her bedroom door. Someone knocks. She cannot blink. Heaviness on her eyelids, she is weariness manifest.
“Vi, you in there?”
She makes a sound at the base of her throat that resembles a grunt but does not quite make it out that way, certainly not loud enough for anyone to hear. She has not spoken in some time, perhaps not a long time. It is hard to say about time these days, especially when the window pane came to be made of spiderwebs. Violet’s morning is captured there in fine spinets: a cup of tea, scone crumbs, a pen, a whole herd of good intentions.
The spiders that are busy at their work look suspiciously like her sister Matilda, but she died too long ago for Violet to possibly remember her face. That’s the real tragedy of death, of course.
Spiders are no surprise to see, she thinks, given their work ethic. They work despite existential crises, even their own. What better tormentor for a girl frozen by her own body? Who else but these titans of industry? She, the she her being Violet, wants to tell them, them being the spiders, that her situation is a little more complicated that the comings and goings of arachnids. But what good would that do? Her defense and protestations would go on deaf ears and she would remain completely ignored. Could a wound sting deeper? What a complete denial of self to be denied by a spider.
Though she does not move, a shiver runs through her.
bam