The Spider and The Vine
This is a short work of fiction
I woke up from a dream in which I shattered into a million little pieces. It was painful to be whole again and fully awake. When I sat down to write with a cup of coffee, my brain felt like cobwebs without a spider to architect it; so I decided to go for a walk along Shoal Creek.
For a while, it felt like each stride alongside the creek was making me more aware of everything outside me and less aware of everything inside my head. Then at 2 miles, I noticed that the beads of perspiration that usually signal satisfaction felt like bullets of anxiety today. The new short story was due tomorrow, and I was supposed to read my book at Hotel Vegas today. My awareness collapsed inward again.
I should be grateful. This is what I always wanted. Wake up alone in the morning and go for a long walk, then sit down to write for several hours. Go to a party in the evening and enamor women with words, then go back home alone.
It's strange to be anxious when it’s mid-60s and a gentle breeze is caressing your face. Nature was teasing me to enjoy it or mocking my state of being. Eventually, I reached a field of green punctuated by indifferent oak trees that offered little shade this time of the year. I sat under one and as I leaned my head back, realized that I had forgotten my sunglasses. I closed my eyes and hoped the aching in my limbs and my galloping heart would distract me from the piercing Texas sun.
I twisted and turned, twitched my eyelids; half awake, half asleep, and unaware of my surroundings. I felt the slant of light from the sun slowly dim as if a vine was rapidly growing over the tree and sheltering me. I considered opening my eyes to witness this miracle but was overcome by fear. I am not a brave man, so the fear got the better of my curiosity, and I kept my eyes shut.
***
Hotel Vegas looked like an establishment that started as a neighborhood bar serving $4 whiskey on the rocks and a single selection of beer, but the neighborhood had changed. These days it was overrun by tech workers in Bonobos shorts and floral shirts and film kids in thrifted, discolored chore jackets.
When I walked in, people were huddled in their cliques in different corners of the dimly lit space. As I made my way between the little circles of dark and beige jackets, I remembered a time when I felt a need to be part of one of them, looking outward from the inside. As the years went by this desire was displaced by disdain.
I was greeted by the blonde who had invited me. She replaced the momentary uncomfortable silence that followed pleasantries with "I'd like to introduce you to someone," gesturing at a silhouette I was unaware of until then.
"I'm Raveena," the silhouette next to the blonde said as she extended her hand. She looked familiar though I couldn't quite place where from. Her hair was dark and curly, and the outline of her eyes was sharp. She had several tattoos on both her arms. She looked Indian but also like she was from nowhere. It was the same effect that I had been consciously cultivating for several years. Perhaps this is why she looked familiar.
"I love her work. She has been writing these stories about growing up in South India but with surreal western elements," the blonde added, every word that followed the other giving me a sinking feeling that I had got good at hiding.
"That sounds interesting. I'd love to read it". A line that I had repeated many times but perhaps I said it with an eagerness that betrayed actual interest this time.
"yes, they are very .." the blonde paused as if she had just realized something and then continued, "similar to yours," she finished with a knowing smile on her face.
The heat of the sun woke me up. When I opened my eyes, the vine had fallen apart and a single spider was scrambling down the thinnest branch. I went back home and never finished the short story or went to Hotel Vegas.