Spider

by Mark Jabaut

          A small gray spider haltingly walked through Ben’s field of vision, and then was gone. He felt a small trill of panic as he wondered if it had crawled into his hair or down the back of his shirt, but there was something bigger, something more important that he was missing. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

          In front of him was a vista of bricks— rust-red rectangles intersected by rough, brown strips of mortar—that came all the way up to his face. Ben tried to blink but found that he couldn’t—his eyelids seemed to have stopped listening to his brain. Against one side of his face, he could feel the cold, hard bricks imprinting their texture into his skin; his right ear felt squashed between his head and the ground.

          He was lying on the ground, on a terrace of bricks. The realization meant little to him. 

          His thoughts were fuzzy, as if he had just awoken from a heavy sleep. He felt—nothing. He was numb from the shoulders down.  

          Ben attempted to make sense of his situation. He was lying, at least partially paralyzed, on a brick terrace. It was dusk, or dawn—a streetlight shown down upon him with orange sodium intent. He vaguely remembered some loud bangs, sounding like gunshots. He usually carried a gun—had he shot someone?

          Something else entered his field of sight. A black tendril of liquid made its slow way down a row of mortar until it reached a brick intersection, and then it branched out at right angles. It moved like heavy crude oil, deliberate and artless.

          Ben realized it was blood moments before the scent hit his nostrils, black in the orange light. Perhaps he had shot someone. Or perhaps it was Ben’s blood. He might need that, he thought. But there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. 

          Blood will flow, he thought, not sure where it came from.

          Ben felt his head and his body become amazingly light, as if he were made out of dandelion fluff. He felt as if he might blow away. And sleepy—he felt very sleepy.

          Was this dying, he wondered? Had he been shot and turned into dandelion fluff, and now he was dying? If so, it wasn’t so bad.

          He wondered again about the spider, about whether he would see it walk past his eyes again. He stopped feeling the bricks against his face.

          More blood now. And sleepy.

          Feeling warm.

          spider

Mark Jabaut was a playwright and author who lived in Webster NY with his wife Nancy. Mark’s play IN THE TERRITORIES, originally developed via Geva Theatre’s Regional Writers Workshop and Festival of New Theatre, premiered in May 2014 at The Sea Change Theatre in Beverly, MA. His 2015 Rochester Key Bank Fringe Festival entry, THE BRIDGE CLUB OF DEATH, went on to be featured at an End of Life Symposium at SUNY Broome County and is listed with the National Issues Forum for those who wish to host similar events.

Mark also had entries in the 2016, 2017 and 2019 Fringe Festivals, THE HATCHET MAN, DAMAGED BEASTS and COLMA!. Mark authored several short plays performed by The Geriactors, a local troupe of older performers. Mark’s fiction has been published in a local Rochester magazine, POST, as well as The Ozone Park Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, Spank the Carp and Defenestration. 

Mark Jabaut passed away on November 3, 2021.