Home » Open Letters » An open letter to the spider I smashed on my wall 8 years ago

An open letter to the spider I smashed on my wall 8 years ago

11 June 2009 288 views 9 Comments

Dead spider

You’re still there. I barely notice you anymore as you’ve become as natural a part of the environment as the desk and computer. Your tiny legs jutting out from your crushed body seems no more unusual to me then my stapler. You are just one of the things that make up my work space.

I remember the day we met. Do you? Wait, of course you don’t. Your brain is unable to recall memories because I smashed it flat into the wall 8 years ago. Well, I remember it. I had just started this office job and learning the ropes. Still a fresh young face in Hollywood, this job would only be temporary as I would be selling a screenplay at any moment, propelling my career into the tinsel-stained stratosphere. I spied you on the wall, a mere few inches above my head. You were kinda cute. Tiny body, thin little legs. You kept a casual pace, as if perhaps that slab of wall was your beach. I’m not sure why I did it. Perhaps I saw some sick metaphor in the fact that you were ahead of me in Hollywood. Maybe at the time I was looking to crush a bug like I planed to crush this town. Or maybe I was just being an evil bastard that day. I really can’t remember. All I know is that I took the end of my pen and dotted you flat with it. Then I left you there. Like some discarded Christ figure for all other spiders to see. A scarecrow warning. 

Now here we are. 8 years have passed since our dance and I am looking up at you once again.  Things are different though. Now there are greater emotions rushing through my body. You are no longer just a dead spider on the wall. You are a shard of jagged glass floating freely through my blood stream, poking and tearing its way around my body. I look at you now and I feel the weight of time. You are the wasted hours I have sat at this desk, plotting my grand exit, but failing year after year. You are a bended fun house mirror, showing me I am both the bug and the squasher of my own island of paddleless boats. You, dead arachnid, are now punching me square in the face with each new/old day that goes by. You are a calendar, a clock, an hourglass and a watch, constantly reminding me how many fucking years I have been here. Dead spider…this ends today.

I am cleaning you off the wall. Goodbye.

Much Love

Travis

  • Jocelyn

    I trapped a spider in a drawer by my desk when I first started working here. 9 years ago. It’s little mummy body is still curled up in the drawer. I feel bad that I starved it to death.

  • Tamsin-Emillie

    one word…Karma
    =)

  • Regamom3

    Your writing skills are definetly kick ass! Each letter delivers an intriguing and insightful light onto the silly and funny Babyeater! I really wish I could write so well.

    Reggie

  • travis

    LEt’s see if the proper buriel helps lift this karma.

  • travis

    Thanks Reg. Just trying to keep it interesting.

  • http://areasonforcolors.blogspot.com amera

    i have a friend whom would like this posting so i forwarded it to her. for some reason after a hectic and crazy day i saw the naughty things video and for some reason it made me laugh. thanks.

  • ryles

    what’s that? i believe it’s tears my eyes. very well done, sir. i’ve felt the same way about the corpses of ladybugs that got into the house in the spring and died clutching to my curtains, and their little bodies hung there until deep into the winter. it’s fascinating what simple images move us in this world.

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/arianaisradical Ariana Loraine

    This is lovely.
    Not the dead spider part. I was referring to the way in which you stirred something inside me with your turn of phrase.
    Thank you for that.

  • Quentin

    Gasp! What would PETA say about this murder?! haha At least the spiders life has more meaning and history than 99% of the spiders that have ever existed on this planet.