Short Little Stories

A dusty, silent room, filled with dusty, silent things. Shelves lined the walls – once sleek metal, utilitarian with sharp lines and sturdy platforms for books and bowls, jars and journals, clocks and cutlery. Now, the silver sheen was marked by the grime of years, the clocks were still, the carefully arranged stacks covered in cobwebs and dirt and dust.

The door, just as disheveled, almost seemingly embarrassed at how long it had remained closed and dormant. And yet… and yet a light could be seen peeking out from through the keyhole. Faint movement of shadows shimmered from where the light drifted out beneath the bottom edge of the door, not quite flush with its frame.

Rose stared up at the door in fascination. The door seemed to be calling for someone to open it, and oh, she very much wanted to. It would be a simple task, for most of us.

But then, Rose was a spider. A rather unique and special spider, mind you, but even so, the heavy wooden door before her was as sturdy and imposing as a mighty fortress wall, an iron-clad gate, an impenetrable hedge thicket.

Now, if Rose was your common household spider, a tiny little cobweb spinner or your classic T. domestica, then simply skittering under that door-frame would provide her passage. But Rose was a red-furred tarantula (with a few unusual hybrid traits), and could barely fit one of her slightly chubby legs under that crack.

Instead, she scurried back and forth with unusual intelligence studying the door, and the round knob with its keyhole and the light that peeked on through. Her vision was not the best, but that spear of light shined brightly to her many eyes.

With a few tentative steps she reached the door, shying away from the drifting light and shadowplay shining from beneath it – and instead, began to climb. A dollop of silk on her feet provided the grip she needed to ascend the grimy and grainy surface. Up she went, ascending, her pedipalps waving triumphantly until she reached the opening!

… and quickly discovered that despite the brighter light pouring through, this hole was equally inefficient for a spider of her size to pass through. She poked and prodded at it half-heartedly, then clambered atop the knob itself, taking a moment to rest amidst her defeat.

As she laid her frame against the tarnished knob, her center of balance ever so slightly to one side… she found the world suddenly shifting. She was drifting sideways – the knob, in fact, was spinning and wobbling beneath her. She clambered back atop it, finding a more stable perch. The shifting stopped.

Tentatively, Rose began to tether herself to one side and cling to the knob as it once more began to turn – and then paused. Despite being rather more robust than most arachnids, her weight might be enough to jiggle the handle, but apparently was insufficient to fully turn it open on its own.

And yet, clearly, the shifting of the knob meant something. Rose’s curiosity – always her weakness – grew and grew as she clambered back and forth, testing how it spun and wobbled, and feeling the pull of it as she tried to turn it further.

Rose began to produce more silk, layering it along the side and clumping it up. She wasn’t quite the artist and web-spinner of her smaller cousins, but she had a capacity a bit above the norm for her kind, and soon had a short but thick tangled cord of her own creation.

She looked down with alarm, the ground distant and intimidating far below. A fall was quite the risk for a spider of her size, but the urge to explore was strong within her, and she set her plan into motion. Slowly she clambered down that sturdy cord, tethered tightly around the clumped silk now enshrouding the knob.

As her weight once more started it to wobbling… Rose began to swing. Back, and forth, her left legs initially scrabbling against the door itself to give her some momentum, and then letting the weight of her body do the rest.

Up she flew, floating for a moment high and free – and then down she swung, and the silk wrapped tightly, and the knob turned with her. And with a single, soft echo, the door clicked open.

It didn’t swing wide, of course. Barely a crack along one side. But more light was shining through now, through that open end of the door A crack that could be exploited, slowly wedged further open, until a path out was found.

But the opening had, nonetheless, been set in motion. Rose slowly finished her swinging back and forth, clinging tightly to her silk lifeline, then carefully latching back on to the door itself for her descent. She had more work to do, to see to her escape.

Yet the light spilling through gave her hope and inspired her onward. What wonders might she find on the other side?

After many years away, a glimmer of light from a slowly opening door. Now introducing: Distant Tales, a short suspense anthology produced in collaboration with the brilliant Zak Lettercast, produced by Story Den Publications!