The Crumbling Nightmare
Humor me, let’s say that I have two realities. In one I do what everyone has to do: work for a living, talk to others for everyday things, make thoughts about society, see beauty and ugliness and recall the past and worry about the future. In the other reality, there is a spider.
It is roughly as tall as an apartment building, with long and lean legs. It might be a corruption of the likeness of the only toy I remember my father refusing to buy for me. His denial was memorable also because he clearly hesitated – the toy, after all, expensive as it was, would be worth nothing next to the money he was making as building contractor.
Yes, the spider I am seeing in that other reality is as tall as a building because it would be too expensive for my father to buy – while the stupid toy could have been bought. My spider wasn’t born from the sorrow of a dependent child, to the contrary it is alluding to my own potential – which hasn’t been realized.
The spider is always there, accompanying me in misty avenues or fields or abandoned promenades. It is mine and mine alone. It could be like the Tripods in the War of the Worlds, but then it would have risen from the underground to be my sentinel and – when the time should come – the vessel to carry me back where I belong.
I want it to be that.
But I lied to you.
I don’t have two realities.
I have hundreds of them. It’s like a disc with so many partitions, an overflow of a defense against a virus; indeed the old virus would be laughably benevolent when compared to the defense.
Don’t let it matter, as two of those realities are the ones I mentioned.
One day I want to be onboard that colossal mechanical spider, because I can sense that it will help me bring back order to my mind.
The toy which inspired it was also mechanical, but it had ugly proportions: thick and clumsy legs, decorative mandibles – as if it was one of those sad creatures which only wish to pretend that they can attack, and much like theirs its own mandibles were also red to have that fierce color cover up its weakness.
My spider is black as death and nothing could see past the lowest part of its appendages which, one day, will gently carry me to the top and away from this crumbling nightmare.