There are Spiders in my Eye

There are Spiders in my Eye

A short play

A swirl of colors and energy bore into the eyes of an innocuous little puppet. As the darkness regained its composure and swallowed the room again, the puppet breathed in its first breath. It lacked lungs so the gesture of breathing was purely a symbolic one. The night was blue and methodical; a creature at the window tapped on the glass to rouse the puppet.

The puppets sole purpose in the world was to experience life and to report what it found to its creator. Its thoughts and actions were mechanical though and in no way did it need to eat, breathe, or rest like a living creature; though it did so anyway because these actions felt natural to it. For a moment there was a pause as the puppet gauged its surroundings and learned what it could. The room was dusty and the air was full of mold. Whoever had kept this room had long since abandoned it.

Standing on its own two legs for the first time, the puppet went to open the door to explore the world only to find the door was sealed shut with brick and mortar. Well, that was okay, it could just open the window and egress through there. On further inspection the window looked out into a miniscule square courtyard which was composed of a small, brown, grassy plot. On all sides of the courtyard were sheer concrete walls.

Well this was a pretty miserable situation, the puppet thought to itself. As it sat down and pondered what to do a spider slid down from the ceiling without him noticing and crawled onto and behind his eye. At first the puppet was excited that it had a new companion to share the joy of existence with – and then the puppet realized that the spider was spinning a web and attaching an egg sack to the puppet’s eye socket.

“Oh god there are spiders in my eye!” The puppet began to scream.

That was it, really. The puppet spent the next however many months trapped in a room thinking that it was starving to death. Eventually the spiders burst out of their sack but some stayed around to make his eye into their permanent home. This was an awful existence.