Original: With Spider
Type: Original
Title: With Spider
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Belongs to me, me, and ME. Everything in this, I do own, so no touchies. *waves big stick*
Comments: Unfinished and probably rather pretentious. Or something. I'll have a fic up here sometime soon.
The older man tugs the coat straight upon her body. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes.” Her face is pale, but she stares at the door with determined eyes, as if it’s opening is the answer to all her questions.
“Then as you wish.”
***
The world and Spider have never seen fit to agree. The world moves in a certain direction with Fate as its guide and Spider refuses it unknowingly, making choices that are not choices and stepping into the dark, always managing to find a path when he should really be falling off a cliff. He doesn’t mean to do it, it just happens. As a child, he had been too still and too distant, eventually sent to a special school that would help him and then he had become bored with it and burst into activity and noise. Outstanding, his teachers had said, sending him back and that was what he was. For the moment.
Nothing was ever the same for Spider. A random factor in the world, he carved his own way, changing his mind one moment from the next. In high school, he had promised a girl -- the most popular girl -- to be her date to the prom, where it was certain she would be named queen. He drove and drove and then he had turned around and drove to the lake, where the girl laughed and didn’t miss her prom that much as they lay upon a blanket and had sex underneath the stars. A fire broke out that night at the prom, right near where the prom queen and her escort would have stood. The prom king and his girlfriend were severely burned.
Spider and his girl should have probably died that night.
After high school, college was the likely step in Spider’s life, but Spider was anything but likely. He had an academic scholarship to an Ivy League college and everyone was certain he would go far. Two weeks before his freshman year was supposed to start, he moved out of his house and to the West Coast, far away from his promised education filled with books and learning. Instead, he joined a band and wasted his nights chasing a dream.
His name had been Charles before then, but in the band he became Spider, a random nickname for a random person. The name stuck and even his given name became left behind.
He wasn’t a good boy. He drank, he partied, he smoked, he did drugs. And then he stopped, even while his band members fell further into the whirling and spinning of such a life.
The band splits and one night he packs up his things and he moves. Someone else might have bought a ticket back home, he merely bought the next ticket to somewhere else. He doesn’t stay in one place for too long and his jobs change with his moving. He bounces from Virginia to Oklahoma to Florida to New Mexico. He switches from grocer to mover to salesman to waiter.
His family long ago stopped wondering at him and he became the fading ghost in their lives.
At twenty-three, he finds himself on the coast of Oregon with a job as a construction worker. It’s hard work and good pay and he’s rather content with everything he’s done.
On clear days when the sun sets over the ocean, he likes to walk along the beach and between tidal pools. The fading light washes everything into vibrant red and orange life and for him, it is beautiful. He took a walk on the beach when it was raining once, but the ocean was wild and a wave had surged forward and he had almost gone with it. He should have gone with it, but he dug into the ever-shifting sand and had stayed.
Nothing for him went the way it would for others.
The sun still has two hours before it sets and he goes to the sandy part of the beach, where he can see the white lighthouse sitting high upon its cliff, with it in mind to comb for shells or the dark amber of agates. Other people are always on the beach and today he recognizes some of them and he gives them a smile and a wave. Many he doesn’t recognize, but he still smiles and they grin back.
A girl sits on the sandy shore and she really shouldn’t draw his attention, but she does. She wears a red sundress with a straw hat and her legs are sprawled out in front of her as she rests upon her elbows, staring out to where the ocean meets the sky. A distant ship is passing, but Spider’s not sure she sees it.
He’s passed other strangers on the beach. But this time for the first time, he stops and sits down next to her.
Her head turns slowly and she studies him a long moment with dark brown eyes. There’s nothing especially special about her, Spider thinks. At least, not at first glance. Her skin is pale - the type that comes from being inside for far too long - her shoulder-length brown hair looks rough, her top lip is too thin and her nose is a bit crooked. Barely pretty. However, something about her is unusual.
He decides it is in her eyes, the way she looks and the way she moves, though he’s only studied her for a short period. Too old to be so young with the faint creases about her eyes and her movement, so achingly slow that it reminds him of an old woman, frightened that her next breath might break something.
“Yes?”
Title: With Spider
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Belongs to me, me, and ME. Everything in this, I do own, so no touchies. *waves big stick*
Comments: Unfinished and probably rather pretentious. Or something. I'll have a fic up here sometime soon.
The older man tugs the coat straight upon her body. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes.” Her face is pale, but she stares at the door with determined eyes, as if it’s opening is the answer to all her questions.
“Then as you wish.”
***
The world and Spider have never seen fit to agree. The world moves in a certain direction with Fate as its guide and Spider refuses it unknowingly, making choices that are not choices and stepping into the dark, always managing to find a path when he should really be falling off a cliff. He doesn’t mean to do it, it just happens. As a child, he had been too still and too distant, eventually sent to a special school that would help him and then he had become bored with it and burst into activity and noise. Outstanding, his teachers had said, sending him back and that was what he was. For the moment.
Nothing was ever the same for Spider. A random factor in the world, he carved his own way, changing his mind one moment from the next. In high school, he had promised a girl -- the most popular girl -- to be her date to the prom, where it was certain she would be named queen. He drove and drove and then he had turned around and drove to the lake, where the girl laughed and didn’t miss her prom that much as they lay upon a blanket and had sex underneath the stars. A fire broke out that night at the prom, right near where the prom queen and her escort would have stood. The prom king and his girlfriend were severely burned.
Spider and his girl should have probably died that night.
After high school, college was the likely step in Spider’s life, but Spider was anything but likely. He had an academic scholarship to an Ivy League college and everyone was certain he would go far. Two weeks before his freshman year was supposed to start, he moved out of his house and to the West Coast, far away from his promised education filled with books and learning. Instead, he joined a band and wasted his nights chasing a dream.
His name had been Charles before then, but in the band he became Spider, a random nickname for a random person. The name stuck and even his given name became left behind.
He wasn’t a good boy. He drank, he partied, he smoked, he did drugs. And then he stopped, even while his band members fell further into the whirling and spinning of such a life.
The band splits and one night he packs up his things and he moves. Someone else might have bought a ticket back home, he merely bought the next ticket to somewhere else. He doesn’t stay in one place for too long and his jobs change with his moving. He bounces from Virginia to Oklahoma to Florida to New Mexico. He switches from grocer to mover to salesman to waiter.
His family long ago stopped wondering at him and he became the fading ghost in their lives.
At twenty-three, he finds himself on the coast of Oregon with a job as a construction worker. It’s hard work and good pay and he’s rather content with everything he’s done.
On clear days when the sun sets over the ocean, he likes to walk along the beach and between tidal pools. The fading light washes everything into vibrant red and orange life and for him, it is beautiful. He took a walk on the beach when it was raining once, but the ocean was wild and a wave had surged forward and he had almost gone with it. He should have gone with it, but he dug into the ever-shifting sand and had stayed.
Nothing for him went the way it would for others.
The sun still has two hours before it sets and he goes to the sandy part of the beach, where he can see the white lighthouse sitting high upon its cliff, with it in mind to comb for shells or the dark amber of agates. Other people are always on the beach and today he recognizes some of them and he gives them a smile and a wave. Many he doesn’t recognize, but he still smiles and they grin back.
A girl sits on the sandy shore and she really shouldn’t draw his attention, but she does. She wears a red sundress with a straw hat and her legs are sprawled out in front of her as she rests upon her elbows, staring out to where the ocean meets the sky. A distant ship is passing, but Spider’s not sure she sees it.
He’s passed other strangers on the beach. But this time for the first time, he stops and sits down next to her.
Her head turns slowly and she studies him a long moment with dark brown eyes. There’s nothing especially special about her, Spider thinks. At least, not at first glance. Her skin is pale - the type that comes from being inside for far too long - her shoulder-length brown hair looks rough, her top lip is too thin and her nose is a bit crooked. Barely pretty. However, something about her is unusual.
He decides it is in her eyes, the way she looks and the way she moves, though he’s only studied her for a short period. Too old to be so young with the faint creases about her eyes and her movement, so achingly slow that it reminds him of an old woman, frightened that her next breath might break something.
“Yes?”