Sunday 10 February 2019

The General and The Spider-A short Story about a Long Campaign


 



The story I am about to tell you isn’t a story at all but instead the accumulation of cold hard facts sewn together to produce a linear narrative. How did these facts come to be, you may ask? One could say that they happened over the course of the most terrifying days of my life, perhaps even for mankind as a species. As I am sure any war veteran will tell you, it pains a man to remember traumatizing occurrences in one’s life and it is with this awareness that I wish you to read the following pages.
Carry with you the understanding that many a time did I stop writing this memoir, not for sense of hopelessness or futility but because the sobbing and convulsing that periodically shook me was so severe that I could barely put pen to paper. But alas I struggled on, as the final enemy is never found on the battlefield but rather within oneself. What you will read upon the following pages was written by my younger self just after the horrific events that are about to unfold:
Last week, the week of May the 5th 1857 I encountered a spider, there was a momentary pause in both our steps as I regarded him with fearful interest, and I am sure, he regarded me with at least one of his eight eyes. Such is the way of warfare, my dear reader, enemies regard each other with a mutual respect, overestimation being the matter of course. We stood there locked in the prospects of potential violence as I considered my options and no doubt he considered his. I scanned the area for a potential weapon, for such foes could not be met unarmed. I began testing the waters by taking a nervous step forward towards a newspaper. In a most horrific move he took about several steps in my direction and then stopped just outside striking distance.
The floor seemed to electrify at my feet as I knew that at any moment he would be on top of me and then I was lost. I inched my arm towards the newspaper in a breathless gesture that seemed to span hours. 

He suddenly changed tack, slowly backed away into the shadows, one autonomous leg at a time. As I watched those galloping legs strapped to a disembodied hand, I knew that I had him. I leapt for the newspaper and furiously brandished it at him letting out a valorous war cry.
I gazed in frozen horror, knowing that my primal display had cost me a critical moment. The precise time for action had now passed as the final leg disappeared into the shadows, winking out of site menacingly.... ominously. It was then that I knew I had a long vigil ahead of me. I was certain it was only a tactical retreat which would culminate in a strike from the shadows of unpredictability. 

I wrung the newspaper in my hands, realizing begrudgingly that any creature with eight of everything will most likely be difficult to outsmart. Perhaps the hardest thought of it all was the sudden realization that my quiet evening of pleasant diversion had been whisked away so indolently.
I decided to feign ignorance for the rest of the evening. I whiled away the hours in the pretence of occupied attention, issuing a benign tune from my lips as a distraction technique. But alas there was no leaping from the curtain, no prancing from cupboard, no aerial descent of disaster. 

Indeed this foe was more devious than I could ever have imagined, he was unlike any foe I had ever encountered, and in my day I had encountered many an exotic enemy. But this one... HE had both the intelligence advantage(by this I mean accurate reconnaissance of the enemy positions) and the apparent psychological upper hand. How sinister he was, how dangerously absent….

I took the only course of action any sane tactician would take, I concealed weapons in all rooms, I covered all blind spots with surveillance and checked and rechecked my escape routes. For four days I remained conscious, for four nights I counted the hours the minutes the seconds, each moment the pinnacle of devastating doom that could strike from any direction with eight different potential weapons dealing death in one instantaneous maneuver. I counted my blessings that at least it would be a quick death, at least I wouldn’t see it coming. I treated each moment as if it were my last and continuously thought of how shameful a death from such an enemy would appear to my contemporaries.

 Especially after escaping such harrowing encounters in the past, that I dare not even mention for the disclosure law prohibits me from doing so. After all my towering successes, after surviving countless battles, only to be cut down by a simple home invasion.
 I spent hours writing my obituary and eulogy in my mind, reciting my good deeds and repenting the bad deeds, righting wrongs and taking vengeance where necessary. Doing the things I regretted not doing and not doing the doings I regretted. 

 There were moments when I prayed for him to end it, to be done with this agonizing horror in one foul abseil from above and release me from my agonies. It was then… it was then in that fateful moment when I had given up on life and only wished for release from my pain that I turned and gazed upon something so vile, so indescribably terrorizing that my hand shakes as I write these words.
(Let it be known to the reader that at this point I stopped writing and didn’t return for several days, the trauma and terror that gripped me reached itself through the trappings of memory and menaced me in the present, it was only after days of continuous breathing exercises and rigorous cathartic meditations was I able to amass the courage to continue my work, my doctor has prohibited me from re-reading this journal so I dare say I must apologize for any omitted corrections)



A rat! Dear gods be done with my poor soul, the memory of that Rat was enough to make my bowls empty themselves during a moment of silence in a church ceremony.
I began reciting the lords prayer while trying not to breath in the smell emanating from my trousers. It slowly dawned on me that my hastened preparations for the spider had left me open for attack from another kind of foe. I had also realized in that moment that the rat was now between me and a change of trousers. Too often in war, the realization of mistakes was the privilege of the tactician and not the soldier.
I would pay dearly for this mistake. No doubt the appearance of this Rat was no coincidence but rather one of HIS machinations, why hadn’t I thought of mobilizing a more naturally equipped foe to meet him in battle. It was a common tactic in warfare to harness the native power of the land. He must have assessed my defenses and sent an appropriate assailant, one that knew the ins and outs of the terrain. Now I must adapt and respond in kind.

But alas, all I could do now was meet my fate like the courageous veteran that I was. Not in surrender or defeat, but in honorable death upon the battlefield.
I slowly turned to face my foe, paying careful attention that the squelching noise arising from my trousers didn’t arouse any suspicion. There was no worse fate than soiling oneself in the face of death. Many soldiers in the throes of battle have done so without shame, but of course, they have always survived, some of them because they were driven by the fear of a shameful death, others, for the reason that at the moment their bowels had released, they had also feinted and missed the battle all together. 

 I took off my abseil repulsing hat and clasped it to my heart and said these words.
“Be done with me Rat.. I know when I am bested”
I looked to the ceiling at my favorite crack and waited for the deadly bite to pierce my precious skin. To let flow the precious liquid that delivered food to my hungry cells. For 2 minutes I waited, each second like a knife stabbing me in the back. The anxiety was so great that I began to shake and shudder.. I was too scared to look down and too scared to remain looking away. I had to look, I had to know when he would do it, but at the same time I wanted it to be quick and clean, like when the friendly nurse talks to you about your family and your teddy bear at the clinic, right before she jabs a needle into your arm.

I couldn’t take it anymore, I looked down towards the Rat and gazed upon him once more. Paralyzed in the grips of terror I witnessed for the second time in one evening, the most horrific scene one could ever hope to imagine. In fact I am afraid for the reader’s sake that describing such a scene would cause insanity, schizophrenia, or at the very least incontinence.

End of Chapter 1. .....


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