ARACHNOPHONIA

Way off, the sound of a telephone. The cobweb at the back of the mind trembles with its fine sticky silver lines quivering as though a trapped mite is struggling to escape from the frightful fangs of the eight legged marauder. Each frantic movement is sending a message to the grim hidden captor; every dreadful bug scream is a useless plea for help, a total waste of effort. The persistent alarm wails in monotonous urgency and gets louder. Ring ring. Ring ring. The chords screech down the wobbling, enticing, confused lines. In an instant of doubt and a trick played on the half witted, easily led semi consciousness, maybe the church bells from across the wooded parkland are being hammered by some trespassing somnambulist or perhaps it’s a front door summons by a hooded midnight rambler’s hard crooked finger pressed firm to the bell push or is it time for assembly somewhere, the signal that it’s time to move from here to there? Or from there to here of course with a neatly wrapped bundle. Sleep becomes drowsiness which then becomes urgency and the noise, the ring, is really a phone.

At early doors, say two or three in the morning, when the phone rings everyone knows, suspects at least, that the news is not good. Good news can wait. Bad news can’t. Such is the way we’ve given emphasis to it.

At last. "Hello."
"What dew mean?"
"Let me get dressed."
"I’ll be there in say forty minutes."

There is a scramble to put on the clothes that have barely had time to crease and a quick rinse with a glug from the fat Listerine bottle. Spit and go. Slotted in the fridge door next to the half drunk tart white, the semi-skimmed straight from the soft plastic milk bottle suddenly tastes of mint so just a token swig is forced to try and coat the film of alcohol from a few hours ago. Swig and go.

Driving in the early hours won’t take anything like forty minutes. Wombling badgers are the other traffic, two of them in a huff and the wily fox who pauses perilously in the headlights just to check them out. The vixen's tongue licks her lips in envy at all the insect life collected on the windscreen. Easy prey, but what a messy waist. The racing car slices through the million silky cords stretched out across the night time lanes, from hedge to hedge, nearly more violent, more destructive than anything on earth. All those spiders work in vain. Forty minutes. It could be done in thirty at the most.

Rushing towards distress. Her bed time cheeks are streaked with salty tears and useless make up. She sobs, cries real drops and wants her lover to be there with her.

"Please come Pudding," she implores.
"What dew mean?"
"I need you to be here now. It's not safe."
"Let me get dressed."
"I'll be there in say forty minutes."

Thirty more like as long as the warning red fuel light is only joking.

"Bollocks." Now of all times. On a cross country mission and low on diesel.

Old Proctor's farm would have some up in the yard in the green tank stuck up on bricks. If that was locked, one of his tractors could be syphoned. There is no chance of just driving in and helping oneself. Old Proctor's farm house stands like a sentry box overlooking the scruffy yard.
Stop in the gateway. Leg it. Find a can or plastic container and just take a gallon or two. Come back and pay Proctor in the morning. Or not.

The green fuel tank stinks of heavy fuel and the nozzle isn't locked in place. Typical of old Proctor. He is a slack sod thank God. Rinsing out the spray can with the red fuel, fumbling in the semi darkness brushing off the cobwebs that cling to everything and appear like very fine dusty net curtains to the low harvest moon. Spiders were here before the dinosaurs and their webs will hang around long after all of us have gone.

There is no warning as such. Just the sudden blast from a twelve bore that cuts Pudding in half. Old Proctor didn't miss at close quarters.

So he never did arrive, never did discover the reason for her upset. It might have been so different.

"What dew mean?"
"I need you to be here now. It's not safe."
"Let me get dressed."
"I'll be there in say forty minutes."
"What's up honey?" He might have asked to be told hysterically that a large spider had just woken her in nightmare, terrifying her with the softest touch of one of its eight hair covered legs. What she didn't know was that it had dropped onto her pillow, crawled through her flowing hair and across her right cheek to find her lips on purpose, something Pudding would never ever do again.