the Mother of Spiders

(a tragic love story)

I once fell in love with the Mother of Spiders, although I didn’t realize who it was when I met her, or I would have thought twice about meeting her for coffee. I’ve had a fear and loathing for spiders for as long as I can remember. I think this comes from my father. I can clearly remember being in awe of how towering he was when I was little. At the time he looked like the tallest man alive, but anything that could make him run away was not something I wanted to face myself. My father routinely screams for my mother to deal with any spider he finds. My mother kills a spider as if it was a dare. On those more raw occasions, my mother uses only her hands. In my mind, she would do it slowly while grinning at my sister and I who stood across the room, frozen in horror while she licked the remains of the spider body from her hand. She never did that, but that’s how I remember it sometimes just to amuse myself.

I heard a story on NPR about a guy who almost died because he was bit by a black widow while crawling under his house. The poor bastard had to be hospitalized. He recovered in body, but one might wonder if he ever recovered in mind. In retaliation, every night at 10pm this guy goes outside with a hammer and a flashlight to smash any spider that dares exist near his home. He spends an hour every night hunting them. It’s become part of his night time routine. As of his radio interview, he’d maintained this habit for the last decade. He was so possessed by fear and hatred of spiders that he declared total war on them all. Only one spider bit him, but restitution would be required on all spiders collectively. “I couldn’t tell you why I still do it. But they’re all the same anyway.” NPR Spider Hunter guy says, “And I sleep better at night doing this.”

I’ve never hunted spiders before. I’d deal with them when they came around, of course, but never hunted. I imagined I shared a mutually respectful distrust with the spider kingdom. Avoid crossing the line. Recognize what they are. Don’t allow them to get close to you or they will bite you if they’re able. I dread a spider bite; nothing causes more apprehension and panic, nothing creeps me out more. In college a friend was bitten in the leg by a brown recluse, then came horrifyingly close to needing it amputated. He was lucky. But in the weeks after, I couldn’t help thinking about what life would look like if I lost a leg because of a goddamn spider bite. A fucking spider bite! Something so small and stupid and ugly. NPR Spider Hunter guy might be extreme, but trauma does change a person. Yet that cannot be a way to live. How can anyone allow themselves to get paralyzed by the fear that maybe a spider might come into my home and bite me tonight? How can anyone get so comfortable with fear that it becomes an unremarkable part of their bedtime routines? I can understand feeling that way, but to allow fear to unfold itself into the fabric and weave of ordinary daily activity, willingly and voluntarily letting the infection seep intravenous through one’s being, even into the most mundane aspects of existence. A fear felt so regularly that NPR Spider Hunter guy forgot it was there. I’d be willing to bet that he never thinks about it much anymore. It’s all deeply set below the surface. Maybe it makes its way out from time to time, but he does his best to compose himself, then looks forward to the nightly hunt. He may wonder why he can’t stop himself from shaking on certain days, but he knows the hunt will cure that. He doesn’t know why, but he knows it helps him sleep better. As for me, I maintained my distance. I leave spiders alone when they’re minding their spider-business, and I trust they will leave me alone when I’m minding mine. That was before I started dating the Mother of Spiders.

We met at community college. She was taking a philosophy course and caught my eye as I was leaving the class before hers. As mentioned, I didn’t realize she was the Mother of Spiders. In fact, she didn’t reveal herself as Mother of Spiders until later into our relationship. Looking back I can see the signs, but hindsight is always 20/20. Anyway, she especially loved the Stoics, which of course is almost cliche, since besides Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, all spiders are heavily influenced by the Stoics. The Mother of Spiders didn’t have eight-legs or anything. She isn’t hideous or spider-shaped at all. (At least not then.) The fact that she’s gorgeous is what caught my attention. Long, raven dark hair, round brown eyes that almost sparkle hazel in the light, and a soft pale complexion that contrasts her darker features. When she suggested we meet for coffee sometime, it was impossible to turn her down.

I arrived early out of nervousness. But from the beginning, the Mother of Spiders and I clicked. She’s easy to talk to, and has a warm personality to those she allows to get close to her. She was into me. Looking back now I can tell, but I imagined she was just being nice at the time. We talked until the place closed down, and laughed about how quickly it had all gone by. One moment it was the afternoon, the next it was 9pm. I found myself wanting to be around her more and more. I invented occasions for us to get together. Soon after, we started dating. It was that “new dating period” feeling. That “nothing can go wrong ever” period. That “holy shit what if something goes wrong to ruin this perfect happiness?” period. I fell in love with the Mother of Spiders. Yet at the same time, I tried to hold back. I couldn’t tell you what was wrong, or why I was feeling what I was feeling. Nor did I want to end things with the Mother of Spiders just because of some “I don’t know what?” sort of sensation in the pit of my stomach. But the apprehension was enough to keep me from giving my complete affection to her. I hoarded so many pretty endearments inside instead of offering them to her.

We enjoy each other’s company. We share the same sense of humor, the same love for horror movies, and she’s been nothing but fantastic. She loves to cook and loves my cooking. The Mother of Spiders is generous: she regularly buys me treats, or surprise gifts, or coffee, or lunch. For my birthday, she hand cross-stitched a line from The VVitch, “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?” Above and below the quote, her canny needlework conjures Black Phillip alongside his mirrored image, as well as various ritual magick symbols. The outer edge is a web of crosses, sutured carefully and forming a narrow border. The Mother of Spiders spent late nights furiously working to finish on time for my birthday. I had it framed at Michaels.

After roughly eight months, I saw the Mother of Spiders transfigured. She told me she loved me, and wanted to keep sharing herself with me. But I never anticipated what she insinuated by this. We were alone at her apartment. She kissed me, a long voluptuous kiss. (I love kissing her. Her lips are full. The Mother of Spiders gives the best kisses and they quickly became my favorite. I knew the moment I kissed her for the first time that I only wanted to kiss her for the rest of my life. But I never told her that. I was afraid she’d think it was stupid or too much too soon.) When I open my eyes, I back away and I’m stunned at what I see. The Mother of Spiders was suddenly wearing a Morticia Addams style black dress that flares eight directions at the bottom. Her dark hair cascades over her shoulders. Her eyes are dazzling. A long black cloak materializes at her back. I’m astonished. She is sumptuous, godlike. A divine in divine glory. Her darkness radiates. She is gorgeous and terrible at once. I can’t stop looking at her.

I move towards her beckoning arms. She wants me close. I want to be close to her. Her eyes are dazzling. Her milky skin is shining. I stop. Her dress and cloak are moving. She’s bearing them like a spider carries her young on her back. She is their mother, and they obey her command. They take whatever form her transcendent will desires, and interlink their legs to materialize the dresses' organic and crawling fabric. She is covered in what looks like millions of black widow spiders. I’m utterly terrified, and mesmerized at the same time. I can’t move forward. I can’t run away. Her hand touches my chin and she indicates to look into her eyes. (It’s easy to be distracted by her appearance, so that when I look fast, or not too closely, I don’t see the spiders - it’s just her dressed in black.) She is beatific, an astounding god of remarkable exaltation. I’m overwhelmed and can say nothing.

I notice the webs. She’s got webstrings fastened to her hands and knees. How did I never notice them? She’s got a string attached to her head. Did they just materialize too? The human part of the Mother of Spiders is a living marionette, operated in part by webs while still directly controlled along her other form. A single being, existing in two bodies; one human, and the other an arachnid titan lurking behind. The Mother of Spiders is a primordial, taking the appearance of a colossal spider. She has eight monstrous spider legs. When she lifts onto her abdomen, her underside reveals another eight human arms reaching out. They beckon me to join her. Two of these underside arms manipulate the webstrings that engage her human body’s movements like a puppet. Her titan eyes are dazzling, all eight of them. Her human form is gorgeously divine and it horrifies me. I look around to find spiders are suddenly all around us. The room is filled with them; the walls, ceiling, and floor are covered. (Yet at the same time, we are somehow beyond the apartment. There, but not there. A space without space.) Behind her human shape, the titan is flanked by her girtablullû, the half-scorpion, half-human beasts that form her divine council and royal guard. “Their terror is awesome; their glance is death.” They chant hymns proclaiming her dark hellscape glory. They worship her. They obey her every command. They surround us, and they’re drawing in closer.

“Don’t be afraid. (...be afraid.)” the Mother of Spiders says to me. When she speaks, she has an eerie echo. It isn’t only her human voice I hear, the guttural reverberations of that rasping creature reiterates all her words in partial unison. “Don’t be afraid. (...be afraid.)” she says again. “None of my babies will hurt you. (...will hurt you.)” The circle around us is beginning to press forward. I see spiders of various types and sizes creeping closer; in addition to scorpions and mites crawling over each other among the rest. There are millions of them. They fill every spot in the room; the walls are alive. They fall from the ceiling in clumps, then dissolve into that slowly moving mass that was the floor. The circle is closing. The Mother of Spiders reaches out to me. I cannot move. One of the girtablullû scorpion-women takes my hand and brings me before her. The Mother of Spiders holds me close. We become the center of the galaxy and they are the billions of stars revolving in our orbit. She envelops me, closes me in her arms. We are connected. I feel the spiders crawling up my legs, and she kisses me again. The spiders are spreading over us, and it’s a long kiss like before. I feel spiders on my arms, they flood onto my chest, they’re crawling all over, they cover my head. When I open my eyes, it’s just her. There’s nothing else in the room but her. She looks at me and smiles. For a second I wonder if it was all imagined. She sees my bewilderment and puts her hand on my face, “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I only want to make your life better.”

It’s a lot to take. The Mother of Spiders tells me she loves me. She tells me she’s not like others before her. But I can’t hear it. All I know is she’s a spider. I look past her affections and willingness to confide in me. I can only see that part of her that scares me to death. She’s a spider - a monstrous spider. I see only a human now, but in a moment she could easily scoop and devour me. She tells me she loves me. She tells me she’s not trying to hurt me. But she’s a god! All the gods are reckless and vicious cunts. In the mythologies, whenever a god falls in love with a mortal, RUN! The end result is typically either death (if you’re lucky), an unwanted metamorphosis into some animal or hideous monster, or worse! The stories attest to their nature. Gods condescend to look upon us all. Their will is capricious, their consideration is momentary. Their favor is like catching the wind. Didn’t Ishtar swear oaths of love to Gilgamesh, only to send the Bull of Heaven to murder him after he spurned her affections? Didn’t Aphrodite change Nerites into a shellfish after he refused to abandon the sea and follow her to Olympus? Didn’t Inanna condemn her lover, Dumuzi, to the underworld after she found him dressed in his shining garments, instead of remaining in mourning for her death? Why is the Mother of Spiders different?

I tell her I’m okay. I want to be okay. I tell her I’m not leaving, but I want to leave. I dread a spider bite; nothing causes more apprehension and panic, nothing creeps me out more. I tell her I love her. I do love her. I fight to accept her completely and be happy. But that blight of apprehension spreads its tendrils throughout. I keep it all deeply set below the surface. (Recognize what they are.) Maybe it makes its way out from time to time, (don’t allow them to get close to you or they will bite you if they’re able), but I do my best to compose myself.

What I did not know was that the Mother of Spiders was more afraid of me than I was of her. Like anyone, she wanted to be validated, seen, and loved. She took a chance showing me her true self, stretching out to meet my reciprocation and assurance. She did, but with limited success. The Mother of Spiders only transfigured for me once, thank god, but I did my best to forget about it. In the months after, she started feeling my misgivings. How do you forget you’re in love with a spider? (Don’t allow them to get close.) She worked furiously to show me I was safe with her. (Spiders will bite you if they’re able.) I fail to realize the extent of how much she feels my insecurities, and accepts them as part of me. I try not to be anxious. I focused on her: having fun with her, getting to know her, (she’s a spider god). Still, the more time progresses, the more anxiety seems to crush me all around. Even when I didn’t mean to, she could see I was holding her at arm’s length. Everything was screaming at me to be done. Everything was shouting at me, this cannot work. Every fiber of my being cried out how inevitable it is that this will end at some point, and that most likely, it will not end in my favor. I try to ignore it. I tell her I love her, and that there is no one that is closer to me. I tell her that there is nobody that knows me like she does. I tell her I do not confide in anyone else like I do with her. These are all true things. It is also true that I held too much back.

The Mother of Spiders eventually confesses she wants to live with me. She wants to marry me. She wants to make a life with me. This makes me happy, but it makes me panic even more. I evade the subject. It eventually becomes a severe point of contention, the elephant in the room waiting to be acknowledged. During our final days, the Mother of Spiders and I are arguing about this again. I am overwhelmed. The risk is all I can think about, and it feels like death. I keep telling her if this fails I will not be able to claw myself out. I could barely do it before, how could I do it again? (I fail to see her love. I fail to see how equally we match each other. I fail to see how much she makes me happy.) I tell her I can’t, then immediately feel a sharp backside slap of a girtablullû scorpion-man across my face. He knocks me to the ground, reprimanding me for my defiance of the goddess. When I stand up and open my eyes, I see the entire court of her guard surrounding her. She is there at the center, but this time her divinized human form is riding her titan spider body. She is carrying a spear, and shouting, “I LOVE YOU! (...love you.) YOU WILL LIVE WITH ME! (...live with me.) YOU WILL MARRY ME! (...marry me.)” The girtablullû begin to howl in ululation, instinctually feeling the deep sorrow of their mistress. Two of them grab hold of me and force my prostration before her. “BUT YOU WILL MARRY ME! (...marry me.) YOU WILL BE HAPPY AND STAY WITH ME! (...stay with me.)”

Maybe it’s the desperation of the moment, or the sheer instinct of survival, but I manage to struggle out of the girtablullû grasp. This takes them by surprise and I’m easily able to push them away. I reach to grab the spear from the Mother of Spiders’ grasp. At that moment, the earth quaked and shattered. Spiders scurry out of the ground like torrent streams from below. The sky became ablaze in crimson fire. I can feel a warm east wind that is blowing storm clouds towards us, dense and thick black clouds made up of spiders ballooning on parachutes of webbing. She intends to rain and cover the earth with them, unless I relent. “YOU WILL BE HAPPY AND STAY WITH ME! (...stay with me!)” she pleads. Her eyes are angry. Her spear is in my hand. I remember reaching for it, but I do not remember taking it. It’s just suddenly there.

The Mother of Spiders once called me a “creature of chaos”. She said I thrive off chaos as a means of security, chaos as a means of withdrawal and holding people away. Her eyes are angry, but she’s still trying to soothe that chaotic wretch whispering poison into my ear. She tells me she loves me. She wants to be happy with me. I feel like a savage animal, and not a man. The spear is in my hand, and I don’t know how to stop being chaos. Fear’s strings move me, offer me a vision of safety, and a warm lonely place to hide. I feel feral, and I can’t control my chaos. The spear is in my hand, and wound her. I bite her. I close my eyes and I sting her, before she has a chance to strike me down. It’s not a mortal wound, but one that will scar and become a permanent reminder of me. (I fail to realize how much I wound myself in hurting her. I won’t realize how much damage I’ve caused for almost a year.) When I open my eyes to look, there’s no burning sky or broken ground. I don’t see any lamenting and protective court of girtablullû, or the squall of spiders approaching on the scorching winds. None of that was ever there. Nor had she screamed demands of marriage at me. She begged me not to give up on us. I look, and she’s not a god, she’s just a woman. Her hair is up in a bun, like usual. She has gray streaks running through her dark long hair. Her eyes are angry, but also welling with deep sadness. Her tiny fists are balled by her sides. She’s both exasperated by me and shattered by my rejection.

“Why isn’t love enough? I fucking love you. Why doesn’t it matter?” she cries. “Why can’t I convince you how much I love you? Why don’t you believe me?” she pleads. She poured five years of herself into me, hoping to build a life together. I did love her very much. I did try. But I did not know how to handle it. That’s not an excuse, it just is. She was devastated when I gave up. I broke her sacred arachni-heart.

That was the way the world ended, that world where she and I lived at the center of the galaxy and all the rest was background noise. We did see each other one last time before it happened. The Mother of Spiders is generous: although scarred by me, she chooses not to hold my chaos against me. She still loves me, even though I’m a demon of chaos, even though she still bears the wound I gave her. On the final day of that old dying world, she kissed me one last time. By that point, I was just beginning to learn a lot more about myself and the better coping mechanisms for handling things in a healthier fashion.

But I was too late. She was done.

She is happy though. She’s found someone that seems to make her smile from what I can tell at this distance. (He’s this praying mantis looking dude with floppy hair.) But she does look happy, and I am happy for her.

In place of that old world, the new existence lacks color. I admit, I miss the Mother of Spiders terribly. I wish I could still walk through this life with her. I wish I was different back then. But that lovely army of mine, those faithful guards that promised me blessed and lonely safety, I’ve finally abandoned - or at least began the process of abandoning. I’m dedicated to the destruction of their illusionary façade. I’ve come far, but I have far to go. The panic and fear still promise their toxic assurances. I hear their clamor of voices. I remind myself it’s only the beginning of the world’s re-creation. Everything is still new. It will take time to rebuild. The world is scary. The world is chaos. The world is what we make it. The world is what we bring to it. And, there are beautiful and bright spots here, I’ve discovered, that make me very happy.