When cruelty finds a worthy opponent
Johan found pleasure in small cruelties. While other boys played sports, he stalked the corners of the family property – the crumbling shed, the overgrown garden, the dusty basement – looking for spiders. Their intricate webs, although fascinating, were merely targets. A twig was his weapon, tearing apart silk architecture with glee. Captured inhabitants met worse fates; legs plucked one by one with tweezers, bodies drowned in droplets of water magnified by his lens, or crushed without pity beneath a stone. Their silent struggles, their frantic, legless scrambles, were his secret theatre. Power, absolute and terrible, over something smaller and weaker. It filled a hollow place inside him.
One humid afternoon, deep in the neglected shed where rusted machinery and tools lay enwrapped in cobwebs, Johan’s eyes spotted a glimmer of movement – a spider! Unlike any other he had ever seen, this spider was larger, twice the size of a thumbnail, and its exoskeleton shimmered with iridescent blues, greens, and deep violets not unlike spilt petrol on water.
It seemed defiant, perched on a strand thicker than silk ought to be, watching him with eyes that held an unnerving depth. Johan felt an inner tingle, not of fear, but of challenge.
He lunged, faster than usual, pinching tweezers aimed to seize the shimmering body.
But the spider moved with impossible speed, avoiding capture. Instead of trying to escape, it leapt towards his grasping hand.
A sharp, electric pain, like a hot needle driven deep between his thumb and forefinger, made him squeal and jerk back.
The spider clung for a fraction of a second, its fangs embedded, before dropping silently and quickly vanishing into a pile of rotten wood.
Johan cursed at the tiny puncture. It stung fiercely, more than any bite he’d ever previously received. Then came the itch. An intense, escalating tingling spread from the bite site across his palm and up his fingers.
He rubbed them together, trying to soothe it, but the sensation worsened. A strange stickiness coated his skin, like warm tree sap. He tried to pull his fingers apart, but they resisted. Panic fluttered in his chest. He rubbed harder, frantic now, but the stickiness intensified, becoming tacky, then thick, then viscous. It seemed to be seeping from his pores, binding flesh to flesh.
He stumbled from the shed into the fading light, holding his hand up like a grotesque trophy. All his fingers, slick and sticky, were glued fast together. He clawed at them with his free hand, nails scraping, but the substance hardened rapidly, becoming like flexible, translucent amber tinted with unnatural colours. It set fast, like hard, unyielding latex. He pulled with all his might, a sob escaping his throat, but his fingers remained stubborn, permanently bonded in a stiff, awkward claw.
Doctors were baffled. Tests revealed nothing – no known venom, no allergy, no infection. The hardened secretion was impervious to solvents, needles, or scalpels. Specialists shrugged, offering useless exercises and sympathetic murmurs. The colourful shimmer faded over weeks, leaving his hand looking almost normal, save for the horrifying fusion. Johan became a school spectacle. He couldn’t hold a pencil, button his shirt, grip a handlebar, or feel the individual texture of anything. Simple joys – the cool smoothness of a stone, the soft fur of a cat, the grasp of an ice cream cone – were stolen. His world became one of taunts, teases and pitying stares.
Besides the physical torment and limitation, it was the haunting memory. He pictured the shimmering spider whenever he looked at his useless, fused hand. He felt the echo of its bite, the swift, deliberate justice. His power over the small and helpless was gone, replaced by a permanent debilitating deformity. He had trapped and tortured countless tiny lives and paid the price. Now, his hand, the weapon of his cruelty, was his permanent prison – an ugly, incurable reminder of his savagery. He could only stare at his fused fingers, forever bound by the ghostly silk of his hostility and malevolence.
Words by Amir Yussof
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