SPIDERFACE

A short story by Dan Jire

This girl had an ugly face. Plain and simple—not her face, the fact. The fact that few would argue otherwise. Sure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there is a general aesthetic for what is accepted as a beautiful face. Personality and presentation can go a long, long way. But this girl, her personality was derived from years of torment, years of her own mother looking away or holding her breath in an effort not to gag. But like most disgusting things, her mother became accustomed both to the existence of her daughter’s ugly face and the habit of looking past her, through her, over her, beside her rather than straight on.

Because she was ugly, and because the other children picked on her, this girl spent most of her days outside, often times wandering down to a small brook that ran off a drainage ditch after every rain storm.

On one particular day of playing by herself at this brook, she’d spent too much time swatting flies, and in a humid sweat, decided to jog back up to her home when she walked right into a spider’s web.

It blinded her, as she panicked and swatted in all directions. She thought she’d been ensnared in a fisherman’s net!

The web was so thick and sticky. She couldn’t seem to get out of it and then right before she could open her eyes, she felt it.

Stung right on her chin.

In the instance it struck her, she knew what happened. Instinct came as her palm rather than a scream. And she smashed her hand against her chin—and then let out the inevitable scream.

She held her chin with both hands now and lifted her knees high, thrusting her heels into the ground with no regard for her knees or the rest of her joints. She had to get inside and she had to be healed by her mother. She was terrified by the thought of flesh-eating venom tearing away at her face.

Good riddance, she admitted to herself, even as she denied the possibility of getting even more unsightly.

As she screamed and cried, she tried to explain what had happened. But her mother inspected her chin the same way she would when she asked if her daughter had brushed and flossed. Out of the corner of her eye and down the bridge of her nose—not really looking at her daughter but at her own flared nostrils, hiding safely behind them.

“Put some ointment on it. The spider wasn’t poisonous,” the mother said.

“How do you know?” whined the daughter, with the ugliest cry-face to top all ugly cry-faces.

“Because you are holding it in your hand. Make no mistake, that’s not a brown recluse nor is it a black widow. Those are the only ones you have to worry about where we live,” mother said knowledgeably—but someone should’ve corrected her for calling a spider poisonous—they are never poisonous. They have venom not poison. Spiders are venomous. But most people, uneducated to the proper degree, tend to use venomous and poisonous interchangeably, like most words, specificity is often wasted upon the masses.

The ugly girl peered at the mashed legs and innards or a spider in her hand and recoiled, wishing nothing more than to wash her hands. She pulled away from her mother and dashed to the bathroom sink. Where after scrubbing violently, she caught her swollen reflection. Swollen at the chin and lips.

For a moment she didn’t recognize or believe the reflection she saw in the mirror.

She looked down at her soapy hands, rinsed, and then looked again.

The girl in the mirror, though flush from the pain, looked—dare one say—prettier.

All physical pain scampered into the back of the girl’s head as the forefront struck awe.

Too much time had passed by, and while her daughter was ugly, her mother still loved her, still cared, and so she called out to her daughter—and when there was no response, she trudged over to the bathroom.

Her daughter stepped promptly from the mirror and gave the mother a smile.

It was the swiftness of her movement that made her mother see her when she normally would’ve glanced past her.

Now, awe had stricken the mother as well.

“Say it, mother.”

“Y-You-You’re beautiful,” her mother said, covering her own mouth—looking away, and then back again, as if her eyes were being deceived.

The girl nodded.

Her chin was hard and itchy but she didn’t care, how could she restrain a smile as she stood there with what had to be what lottery winners felt when they saw their numbers revealed.

Pleased with herself, the daughter spent nearly the rest of the day in front of a mirror, with her mother behind her, brushing her hair and then braiding it so that for once her hair didn’t hide as much of her face as possible.

Everything seemed perfect until the next morning when the swelling had gone away and there she was, worse off than before. With a big hard pink dot where the spider had bit her, and her hair up so elegantly it was like putting a rose in a rusted, crunched soda can.

She horrified herself, and she wept, refusing to go to school, until her mother, shamefully and equally disappointed, agreed to let her stay home.

The girl had spent too many years crying about her looks, that one might think she’d gotten over it sooner. But the whole morning and deep into the afternoon, she sobbed and wailed, until her mother told her she had to run out for this or that. An errand—just to escape the horrifying sounds that were attached to a far more horrifying mental image of her daughter’s ugly face.

But as soon as her mother slammed the front door and locked it. The daughter leapt up in bed and knew what she should do instead.

She scrambled out into the backyard, down to the dried-up brook and she went looking for a spider.

She found a tiny spider with long beige legs, but it refused.

It hopped away.

She searched out more webs, and found some empty aside from an old fly or leaf. Evening came, and she heard her mother calling for her, but she was too hideous to return. She wanted nothing more than her mother to gaze upon her as she did when she braided her hair.

That’s what real love feels like, she told herself.

Then she found a daddy long legs spider and placed it on her face. It tickled a bit but would not bite.

She cursed it and tore its legs apart, then stamped it into the dirt.

Other spiders ran from her at first sight now. So, she smacked and grasped with little luck.

“Make me beautiful!” she cried into the night, and as she finally slunk back to her home, being afraid of the dark like a normal good-looking child would be. Around the outdoor lights she saw spiders going to work on the active nightly insect life.

Hope crept across her hideous face in what some would have to classify as a grin. She grabbed the spider and squeezed it.

“Bite me or I’ll kill you. I’ll kill every last one of you.”

The spider fought and tried to escape. But she crushed it between her fingers and wiped it off on her shirt.

But this was seen across the night. The scent recognized; the murder most foul. One spider’s death wasn’t all that she stunk of, and it became all spiders’ business.

The grass moved darkly. The house emptied like rats fleeing a ship. Thick dark waves of spiders. All the spiders that had kept the bad bugs out of the home. All the spiders that had minded their own business. All the spiders that didn’t bite for the sake of biting.

But now they bit and stung, until the girl could not stand, could not swing, and could not scream.

They left her as she was born. Hideous. More hideous than before.

THE END.