under the stifling weight of a cigarette smoke veil . They ’ d just watched the insipid misadventures of a family dealing with trivial conflicts and learning that love and togetherness were all you needed . As the credits rolled , it occurred to him that he ’ d been waiting for as long as he could remember for his life to fit the standard set by these idiotic programs . He wondered , as he often did , why he was so different from other people . This tiny insight led immediately to further consideration of what separated him from others , his family from theirs . The news came on , and he pried himself off the couch , ready to disappear back into the comforting illusion of protection offered by his lair . He paused at the door though , his interest pulled by the one of the top stories : the ongoing investigation into a local children ’ s home had revealed more accounts of sexual abuse . They were outlining impact of the abuse on the victims .
He turned away and walked away from the room . His face was tingling , and there was a buzzing feeling in his gut . He felt invisible spiders crawl over his skin , tracing the scratches recently scrawled by his grandfather ’ s stubble . Through the fog of cigarettes , he was stalked by the insidious musk , the rank stench and taste . He crept into his lair , sat on his bed waiting for a numbness that would not return . He had known for a long time that he was not normal . He had also known , at least in an abstract way , that his grandfather had been molesting him . This had been the first time he ’ d put them together though . It was the first time he ’ d understood that his grandfather ’ s strange hunger had damaged him so profoundly .
This was the jagged edge of the awakening . He had come to accept the void between himself and others . He understood that he would never have the comfort or ease of existence that seemed natural to others . Now he knew that the horror he felt for the world outside came from events inside his own lair . But worse than the damage that had been done to him was the realization that he was being raised to be a predator . He thought of himself in the mirror , spider-like .
He stared at the soft , red shapes on his desk . The bird , the bugs , the teeth and bones . The walls were soft like glistening flesh . He tried to think back to a time before things fell apart and realized that he was praying away his entire past . There had never been any good times , no safe times , only varying degrees of blindness . There was never a moment without danger and hurt , only times when he ’ d been oblivious to the harm being done . It was the same with his lair : he knew these imagined protections would give him no safety . If he ever wanted to know safety , he would have to protect himself .
So he waited , and he collected new talismans . The drawings turned darker , then darker again , stretching black strands through his red web . On his desk there were now coils of strong string and wire , and under the murky dead leaves of his thoughts , a box cutter . There were vice grips and wire snips . He read about knots and traps , veins and arteries . As days passed , the spider waited inside the boy , watching from the red lair for an opportunity . The boy knew what he needed to do to finally be safe . His talismans up til now had been the superficial pretending that he ’ d come to despise in other people . He needed something real , something that honestly reflected his mother ’ s pain , his grandfather ’ s lust and his own rage .
Finally , at the end of a particularly loud night when he judged his grandfather and mother to be drunk enough , he decided it was time . He knew his grandfather ’ s routine . When sleep came to his mother , the boy gently wedged the blade of the box cutter under her chin and twitched his wrist into and across her throat . Her eyes and mouth opened wide , she gurgled like a drain , then vibrated and died . The boy scuttled back to his room and into bed , waiting for his grandfather to creep in . It didn ’ t take long .