End of Summer

Adelina Bora lay on her back in bed, fingers laced together across her midriff, and watched the shadows slowly push the last of the daylight across her ceiling. It was only a slither of light that crept in through the top of her thick velvet curtains. Nothing that would concern her parents. Or rather, nothing that would concern the man and woman who played the role of her parents.

She gave a long-suffering sigh. It was a sigh that anyone with teenage children would recognise, and it spoke volumes. It declared in no uncertain terms the utter boredom with which its maker suffered, their total apathy with existence, and the general unfairness of a world that cared nothing for their happiness.

Then she spotted movement. Her head turned on the pillow, a strangely instantaneous action, as if some kind of camera trickery were involved in the process, frames removed or spliced together somehow.

Her eyes, so dark that the pupils were indistinguishable from the irises, fixed on a creature making its hurried way across the polished floorboards. A spider. A large male house spider driven indoors by the cooling weather, in search of a mate. The first she had seen this year.

She reached out with one languorous hand and the spider immediately stopped. "Come," she said. The command, spoken so softly, reverberated around the room.

The spider twitched, turned in her direction, then scuttled across the floor. When it reached the bed, it stopped. A cluster of tiny black eyes seemed to watch the girl expectantly.

Adelina rolled onto her side. She lowered her hand to the floor and the spider climbed onto her palm. She held the hand up to her face, so that her eight-legged visitor was only inches from her nose. "Hello, little one," she said, as the spider turned to face her. "Too cold outside?" The spider tapped a foot like a pony trained to count. "Well, my tiny friend, you'll find scant warmth in this house. Nonetheless, I wish you luck with your hunting, and I hope you wish me the same. Not that I need it.”

She set the spider on the floor, watched it till it disappeared into a gap beneath the skirting board. Then she lay back, linked her fingers, and returned her gaze to the ever-narrowing band of daylight on the ceiling.

Not long now, she told herself. Summer was over and the nights were getting longer. The seasons of darkness approached, when the leaves lay damp and rotting on the ground and even in the daytime, the sun was often hidden away behind a thick blanket of clouds. When bare trees, beautiful in their stark simplicity, clawed at the muted skies. When cold winds and rain drove the masses indoors and left solitary souls navigating the now lonely pathways of mankind, like naive calves separated from the herd.

Not long now.

She could almost taste it.


Author’s note: This was originally a contest entry with word count limitation. I plan to do a big rewrite in the near future to expand upon the concept and characters!