Cruelty Wears the Guise of Fear

The funerals were over, and the last of the mourners had trailed away. They would go home, where food and drinks and lighter conversation awaited them. Catharsis. They all craved it, and laughter seemed the inevitable aftermath of a funeral.

They'd wanted her to come with them, had wanted to hang around with her, anxious, sensitive to the fact that her pain were greater than anything they could feel. She'd wanted to stay, she'd wanted to be alone. Catharsis seemed too unrealistic a goal right now. She closed her eyes, plugged her headphones in and sat cross legged, leaning against the cemetery wall. Far enough away from the graves that distance would be felt, but still close - too close.

It was hard to say how much time had passed - certainly the song had played itself in its loop quite a few times - when she felt something scuttle across her fingers.

She hated insects. Wasn't used to them, hadn't grown up with them, was creeped out by most of them. She waited a few minutes, hoping the creature would fuck the hell off. It didn't, so she peeked at it with just one eye open.

It was worse than she'd thought. This was no insect, but an arachnid. The spider was hairy, and almost as big as her hand. It seemed to be staring up at her through four of its eight eyes - but then again, that was always what these creepy creatures seemed to do.

It was strange that she felt no urge to scream or flick it off. There was no urgency about the situation - no desire to get up and run away and bathe in a couple of layers of bleach and never come back. She stared at the spider and felt nothing at all - the spider seemed to stare back and not even realize she existed.

Almost absentmindedly, she began moving it from hand to hand, turning her hands around to allow for it to walk all over them. It was strange to know she hated spiders, and yet feel nothing whatsoever in that moment.

A movement in her peripheral vision - someone was approaching. A man, she thought, automatically tensing. Perhaps some passing guy had finally decided to take it upon themselves to investigate the case of the girl chilling in the cemetery. They did seem to consider themselves very 'helpful' creatures, especially where they were least wanted.

She kept her gaze fixed on the spider as the guy came and settled himself on the ground. Some far, distant part of her was aware of the beginning of rage - anger coursed through her temples at the entitlement, the sheer rudeness...

"I'm sorry for your loss."

The words seemed to filter over the sound of the song blaring in her ears. The sudden death of the rage was about as natural as the cessation of a fast approaching gale. Something cold seemed to grip the bottom of her heart, climbing upwards.

No one - no one would dare...

The half formed thought was strangled before it completed itself. In the face of impossibility, the universe simply reordered itself. Sometimes that process took time. Right now, it felt instantaneous.

"You didn't have to."

She looked up for an instant, long enough to catch fleeting guilt in his eyes. Then she looked away. The spider was a less ugly sight, for some reason.

"I didn't-"

"You didn't have to," she repeated harshly. Loudly. Spiders were fucking disgusting creatures. "You could have found another way. There was always another way. But you went ahead anyway."

There was silence. He bowed his head, lost, as usual, for words, and fiddled with the grass.

"Do you know what that feels like?"

She felt rather than saw him look up, but her gaze was still fixed on the creature on her hand.

"Do you know what it means, to do something horrible when you don't have to? That's what they call cruelty. Like if I were to do this-"

She reached out, grabbed one of the spider's legs, and pulled as hard as she could. It didn't come off as easily as she'd expected - the limb seemed to want to hang on to the rest of its body with all the power of connective tissue.

But come off it did, and both spider and leg twitched on the ground in front of her. If it had a voice, it would be screaming - but it is so much easier to be cruel to someone when you can't hear them scream.

Instead, shocked silence seemed to hang in the air between all three of them. Picking up a leaf to defend herself from any arachnoid reprisals, she held the trembling spider on it and pulled at another leg. Using more force seemed easier this time - the leg seemed to come away like fur off a cat.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him flinch and wondered why. Didn't he do things like this all the time? Were spiders somehow off limits? But they looked and felt horrible, so that didn't make sense.

Three more times her hand flicked in and out, pulling legs off one after the next. The twitching spider fell off the leaf in its attempts to avoid her just as she made a fourth grab, resulting in a tug of war between them. She won, of course, and the spider fell over onto its back, its remaining limbs curling weakly.

She finally turned to face him, holding the latest limb up. Her face felt stony, frozen in indifference, working to keep the anger at bay. And yet, if she were to do the same thing to him, that would have been more forgivable than what she'd done to the spider.

Picking up the spider on its leaf, she finally felt pain twist in her chest.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to it, before looking up again.

"Don't you see? Sorry means nothing to it. I can't give it its limbs back. I can't make it any less in pain. The sorry is for me - to convince myself that I'm still a good person. It does nothing for the spider."

Dropping the spider, she got to her feet, barely noticing the tears flowing full tilt down her cheeks. Food and some catharsis sounded good right about now.

Then she raised her leg high and brought it down full force onto the struggling creature on the ground. There was an audible crunch.

"That wasn't to put it out of its misery. That was so I don't have to remember what I did to it. It no longer exists, and thus I'm free to forget, free to go find something else to torment. None of this was about the spider. Just me. It was all about me."

She walked out of the cemetery, pushing her earphones in firmly, leaving him unable to tear his gaze away from the corpse of an unfortunate spider.