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Web of Secrets (7) : Spiders have settled in all across town, and while this isn’t normally any great cause for concern, inky black spiders are oddly common. The spiders themselves are not very threatening–small, nonpoisonous, and cowardly. The interesting thing about them is their black webbing–and the strange designs they make. Webs appear overnight, often seeming to come out of nowhere. They are curiously designed, almost as if made to deliberately spell out something. People all over town have mentioned finding webs that spell out a single word, or part of a sentence.
Maybe it’s just imagination, but as the days go on, the words seem to be clearer–and the messages are often uncomfortable or distressing. There’s no evidence that the spiders can spell or are trying to send messages, but really–is it that hard to believe? Once a spider has left a message, it disappears. They are masterful escape artists and cannot be caught. There’s no telling what the spiders want you to know, but maybe if you’re lucky one will leave you a message you understand.
Maybe it’s just imagination, but as the days go on, the words seem to be clearer–and the messages are often uncomfortable or distressing. There’s no evidence that the spiders can spell or are trying to send messages, but really–is it that hard to believe? Once a spider has left a message, it disappears. They are masterful escape artists and cannot be caught. There’s no telling what the spiders want you to know, but maybe if you’re lucky one will leave you a message you understand.
All month long, Ilmari had been running into the spiderwebs that he couldn’t hear the end of back on campus. He’d stopped counting how many of them he’d run into only a few days into the month, when he’d spotted one in a DCU campus men’s room mirror while fixing his lipgloss.
Turning around, Baz had found himself staring up at a menacing-looking web, woven with the words “SHE KNOWS,” which was: A. disconcerting (mostly because no one had cleaned it up); B. tedious (mostly because there were so many possible stories that could’ve been wrapped up in that and none of them were remotely original); and C. annoying (mostly because there was very likely some unoriginal but still salacious gossip involved and Baz didn’t know what it was).
No signs of the spiders themselves anywhere, at least not that Ilmari had found, which was just as well. Better this way, even. For one thing, he didn’t trust Destiny City Halloween Spiders not to be extremely messed up and probably dangerous. Unless any given arachnid was actually some kind of spider-youma or scorpion-youma, Ilmari didn’t particularly want to deal with them (and he didn’t really want to deal with the youma either, unless he had a Captain, General, or General-Sovereign present to keep them from deciding that he looked like a snack in a bad way).
(Well, snacks in general were bad in every way, that was just simple facts and anyone who thought differently sounded like they didn’t have very high standards for how to conduct themselves or how to treat their bodies. But the salient point was, Ilmari didn’t want any youma to fail at self-control and eat his starseed.)
So, finding more spider-webs out and about in North End Park tonight felt more like background noise than anything. Here, Ilmari found one that read “LIAR.” There, he tilted his head up at another that read “CHEATING SLUT.” Somewhere else, he spotted someone having a meltdown, falling to their knees and crying themself sick over a fairly intricate spiderweb that glared down at them with the words “CALL HER BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.”
Really, this wouldn’t have bothered Ilmari so much if he could have gotten some cliff’s notes on all the drama.
As it was, though, the person crying didn’t notice that they were being observed from a slight distance (and incidentally, Ilmari……noticed the Order aura nearby but decided to ignore it). Practically handed this gift-wrapped opportunity, Ilmari started pulling energy from the hopeless person. Maybe getting too exhausted to think would help them feel better.
Noir Songbird
