On Monday, Carolina loved spiders. She woke up a bit before five, snoozed twice, and dragged herself to a sitting position on the edge of her bed.
“I gotta stop doing that,” she mumbled to herself, gathering her hair back in a messy ponytail and half-stumbling to the bathroom. She turned on her speaker with a small chirp and considered her options. Mississippi John Hurt and his layered fingerstyle trickled out of the speaker, and water poured over her curls and down her shoulders.
Blues all on the ocean, blues all in the air…
She pumped soap into her hands, worked it to a lather, and washed herself. Getting out of the shower, she appraised herself in the mirror for a moment, eyes drifting past the bruises covering her torso and fixing on their reflection.
“Stunning,” she whispered, then turned and broke eye contact.
When my earthly trials are over, cast my body out in the sea…
Descending the stairs, she grabbed her bag, packed the night before, and walked out the door. 20 minutes to drive to work. 20 minutes to weave through the cars on the highway and stare into the middle space between them.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.
Arriving at the library, Carolina began her daily duties. She unlocked the building, grabbed her pushcart with its broom, bottles and mop, and started her cleaning work for the morning. It would be a few hours before anyone would talk to her.
“Good morning, Carolina. Beautiful day today, isn’t it?” said a voice, cutting through the rhythm of her broom. Her head jerked up. Lewis had been wishing her a good morning for a month now, and she still almost missed it every time.
“Yeah, good morning,” she hardly managed.
Lewis had already walked away, on to another staff member. As the library’s director, he was technically her boss, connected to everyone in the library and everyone in the larger community. He knew what was happening with each member of the town, their marital troubles, their financial situation, and even their favorite book. His network was wide-reaching, and he felt each small disturbance. Carolina wasn’t sure what he got out of all his this. It seemed a bit overwhelming. She liked her music and her simple, methodical job. People are complicated, but Lewis was sweet.
The spider was in a random back corner of the stacks, somewhere near the end of the alphabet in the adult fiction section. Carolina liked fiction, but she never got books from the library. They had given her the job partially because her love of reading was one of the only things she’d been able to properly express in her interview. She hadn’t read in months, though, and was sort of worried she’d become defined by a past version of herself that she wasn’t living up to.
The spider sat in the middle of its large and impressive web. Carolina spotted three new trapped bugs: two bluebottle flies and one tiny housefly. The corpses were bound in silk, bounced in the web by the air currents of Carolina walking past. Carolina knew the spider well. She looked for it whenever she cleaned there. She wished it good morning when she walked in and good night before she locked up. She never spoke to it through — what would be the point?
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On Friday, Carolina loved cockroaches. She was at a DIY show with a friend under some bridge in the South End. She hadn’t been to this particular spot before, but she knew all the bands playing except one. They didn’t know her, though, or at least she didn’t think they did. Her friend, Nora, had invited her, was trying to get her out of the house, but Carolina was going to go anyway. Nora probably didn’t know that she went to nearly every hardcore show in town, that getting battered in the pit felt good. Being fairly new to the scene, Nora stood a bit away from the edge of the crowd, passing a half-smoked cigarette to Carolina.
“How was work this week?” Nora probed. She was in grad school, and they had met at the library, instantly recognizing something in each other. They hung out probably once a week, and each liked the other a lot, but they hadn’t quite broken through.
“It was alright. About how it usually is. I haven’t seen you there in a while,” said Carolina, her voice rising.
Nora laughed it off. “Yeah, they locked me in the campus library. Can’t get out. Five thousand years of reading about boat construction. No clue how I always end up on something like that.”
“Yeah, that’s a weird one.”
They would’ve said more, but the first band kicked up, a sheet of overdrive cutting off any further potential conversation. Bass thumping, Carolina wanted to join the mass beginning to scrabble, but Nora wasn’t ready for that. They stood on the side the rest of the night, Carolina fiddling with a bottle at her feet and watching the cockroaches scuttle around the side of the bridge.
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On Sunday, Carolina loved maggots. Every weekend, she went for a hike. Sometimes someone joined her, Nora or April or Mads, but today she was alone. She had been for the past few weeks, actually. She went to the same spot she always did when she was alone, a small mountain off some dirt road. There wasn’t a lot or a trailhead, it might’ve not even been a trail, but she always left her car on the side of the road and walked into the woods, following the twisting path.
Carolina would never describe herself as a hiker. She wasn’t serious enough about it; she didn’t have the appropriate equipment. She just wore her old sneakers. No boots, no poles, not even a particularly appropriate outfit.
On the trail, she passed a series of large maples connected by a stone wall. The trees were some of the oldest in the forest. Their sprouts first broke soil long before the land was cleared for grazing. They had been left, alone among their fallen siblings’ stumps, to serve as property boundaries. She stepped up onto the stone wall, dancing her way down the line, testing each rock before stepping, hugging the trees and whirling around them. Eventually, the wall petered out and the forest opened to a large meadow. Walking to the middle, she found the corpse and the rock she knew well.
The corpse smelled today, resting in the sun. Maggots had made their home in about half the face, but from the other half one could tell it used to be a man, probably around 30. He was splayed out, clothed in jeans and a hoodie, muddy, and not particularly nice to look at. Carolina didn’t look at him, but sat against the rock next to him, pulled out her notebook, and sketched. Quick pencil lines and smooth strokes filled the page, with Carolina only briefly pausing to get a sense of scale of the landscape.
She sat for a while, pencil working in her hand. At some point, she took an apple from her bag and ate it, core and all. Then she returned to her sketch. When the sun was starting to touch the horizon and the cicadas got loud, she headed back.
At the end of the trail, she put on Amyl and the Sniffers and started the car. It was dark now.
Guided by angels, but they're not heavenly…
The engine came to life. Shifting into gear, she pulled out into the road. Winding turns lit up by headlights sped past, and all the roadside trees slipped into the forest.
They're on my body and they guide me heavenly, the angels guide me heavenly, heavenly…
Bats flitted across the road, chasing their prey. Her mind turned to the week ahead.
And they pray for forgiveness, never give it, I never want it…
She was seeing Meg on Thursday. Work as usual.
I always carry on heavenly, energy — fuck!
She merged onto the highway, no cars in sight.
author's note: the songs in this piece are real, and i encourage you to listen to them. the first is "let the mermaids flirt with me" and the second is "guided by angels." the albums these songs are on also respectively have songs entitled "spider, spider" and "maggot." thank you for reading!
