Beautiful
At least not like you used to be, your scruffy hair, deep blue eyes. I see you looking in the mirror, the black and brown fur beginning to push through, cracking your skin like wisdom teeth through the gums.
“Anna, I’m ugly, aren’t I?” you ask, touching the spots, anticipating the appearance of the black fur underneath. “You can tell me, it’s okay.”
You’re fishing, wanting me to deny the way you look. I want to acknowledge it, be honest that I’m repulsed by the transformation. In my mind this would bring the whole thing down to earth, make it seem real.
“No, my love. Handsome as the day we met,” I say, and you smile, happy to hold onto the fantasy for a little longer.
Completely trusted
Three weeks. That’s how long before you told me.
“You’re still mad about that?” you say. “I was trying not to worry you until I was certain it was going to be a full transformation.”
“I feel like you didn’t trust me to be able to handle it,” I say.
“I trusted you,” you say, hugging me. “I was just scared.”
I nod. “I know, and you didn’t trust me to make you feel better.”
At home in this house
On TV we watch a whole pack of giant spiders crossing a major highway in Seattle, traffic at a standstill.
I see you watching with your human eyes, already getting pushed out by red orbs.
“They want their…” you say, your words now guttural, pressured as your vocal cords get swallowed and shaped into something I won’t be able to understand.
“Want their what?” I ask.
“Home,” you say, a smile from your still-there human lips.
You shaped
You always had a runner’s body, almost gaunt. I remember when we first started dating you told me you were drinking two cups a day of some disgusting tasting protein powder with milk to put on weight, but it wasn’t working.
Now, your body bulges out a little at a time, lumps where there were once human ribs. Sometimes I wake in bed, my head on something soft, feel the warmth of your new body, move closer as if it’s the old you, the man I married.
Which of course, you still are. I remind myself of this as I turn my back to you, a gap in the bed between us.
A father
“Maybe we can adopt,” you say rolling off of me, after we’ve concluded that it isn’t happening, that you’re not going to be able to finish in me tonight.
“Adopt?” I say.
“Why not? It’s a noble act.”
You never seemed interested in a child before, but now that you’ve started changing into a giant spider creature, you suddenly care.
“Yeah, no. I don’t think they let spider-people adopt children,” I say, because I’m an asshole, because I want to hurt you, because I can’t stop looking at the spots on your sides where the extra arms are starting to form. Nubs, currently, but growing longer every day.
“Fuck you, Anna,” you say, storming out. I wait, thinking you’ll come back, but you never do and I eventually lay down on top of the sheets and fall asleep.
I find you sleeping on the couch the next day. There’s no obvious progress in your transformation since last night, but I know there’s been something subtle, that something, somewhere has changed.
Honest with me
“Do you ever want to join them, the other spiders, the ones we saw on TV,” I ask. “Does… does that ever feel like home to you?”
You wrap me in your arms, cradle my head against what used to be your shoulder.
“No,” you say, the quietest whisper, like you don’t want me to hear.
A really good guitar player
“Maybe with the extra appendages I can finally play like Django Reinhardt,” you say, your now six functional arms flailing across your favorite Martin acoustic; the sound, inexact.
“Fuck,” I hear you mutter, later as you struggle to play a song with fingers no longer able to make chord shapes, to use a body no longer meant for music.
Mine, ever again
It all happens so slowly, but still finds a way to creep up on me.
I wake up one morning with you at the end of the bed, the transformation complete, a spider creature where my husband once was.
“Do you still understand me?” I ask. There’s a clicking, which I take as a sign that you do.
I throw off the sheets, approach you slowly. When you’re within reach, I place a hand on your head. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s soft, like a cat. I’m realizing that I haven’t touched you in weeks, not since you started fully showing.
Your arms skitter across the hardwood, your face pointing toward the door, then back to me. You’re telling me it’s time, want me to tell you it’s okay.
“You don’t need my permission,” I say, but you don’t move, wait to hear the words. I nod, tears damning in my eyes, but refusing to budge, to drip down my cheek.
You move in toward me. I kneel down so our faces are at the same height. You place the top of your head to my forehead. I smile, feel the tears finally escaping my eyelids.
Your spider head gestures toward the door, asking me to come with you.
“I love you, but I can’t keep you,” I say, scratching the sides of your head, where your ears used to be. “Now go, you little shit. You don’t belong here anymore.”
I think I see your head dip, a slight nod, a goodbye, before you scurry away to be alone, to be with the other giant spiders, to be some place that makes you happy, to be far away from me, to be home.
