A Something Passing from My Life

We stood in the kitchen, chatting, H and L and B. It was a warm evening, late in the season. The door, wide open, probably sagged, the weight of primer slapped on and forgotten. The screen door was shut. A smell of charcoal lingered in the air or in our clothes. We stood, though lazily, leaning against a counter, a sink, a washing machine, things older than we. We ate Juanitas and salsa and drank casually, careful to stretch the day out a bit longer.



H told a joke. I remember laughing. It must have been the last bit of conversation before it walked in.


If you were to ask me how it got inside, I'm sure I couldn't tell you. H swears he heard the screen swing open. L claims to have seen it. Me, I'm not so certain. I suppose it doesn't matter. The first thing I remember is the color, an improbable red, the purest distillation of pigment I'd ever seen. Then, of course, I noted its size, bigger than any I'd seen, though not threatening, perhaps the size of a two month kitten. It's skin (or exoskeleton, I'm really not certain as to which, if either, is the proper term) seemed freshly buffed and dry, like some cherished stone in a rock collection. The creature certainly had pincers, of this much I'm sure, and I believe of legs there were six. It's body was segmented but the number seemed to change. Its countenance, though I remember no features, spoke to me, such a damned foolish and clueless thing as it was. My muscles, being of flesh, tightly clenched in its presence.


L, the boldest, extended some food in its direction. The pincers wiggled and signaled cognition. Its legs moved in careful coordination across the tiled floor. The creature approached with little speed. L stepped aside to avoid its patient charge and raised the morsel high above those eager jaws, to watch it tilt. She looked supremely confident.


The game continued a few minutes more. I saw panic in those pincers. It knows, I thought. Still, it adhered to the routine. H produced a book, heavy and full of facts, and laid it flat, or nearly flat, on the creature's back.


The creature fell to its belly. I looked to where a face might have been, to a matte red desert, and read the truth quite plainly. Pincers, frantic or electrified, sliced at air before falling limp. I looked to the volume atop a red casing split in two. White viscera spilled onto the floor, like fallen bits of imitation crab, the discarded byproduct of an act fundamentally dumb.


"I hated that," he said.
"Me too," I offered despondently. 
"We're not talking about the same thing. Are we?"
"I don't think so."


I haven't slept since that night. I've hung the geometry book outside. I walk the empty streets, reading or perhaps looking.