THE SPIDERMAN COMES
Eileen can’t wait to die. She thinks about it at herretail job, picking up shirts customers
have left on the floor and putting them back on blackplastic hangers. She thinks about it at home
sitting on her couch with hours of essays and assignmentsto turn in. She thinks about it lying on
her bed, beside a mountain of laundry that she’s putoff folding for a week now.
She’s thinking about it right now. She’s just wokenup to find she has to go into work an
hour earlier than she thought, which will give herlittle to no time to turn in the assignments that
are due tomorrow. She hasn’t spoken to her motherin days, to her father in months. Her hair is
greasy, chin acne-ridden, and fingernails bitten tothe quick.
Her roommate is baking cinnamon rolls, the ones thatyou pop out of a can/canister
type-thing. It smells good and as if her roommatecan somehow detect her suicidal ideation, she
says they should start the new season of that showthey’ve been watching.
Eileen goes to work hours later, set on a loop of“Hi, how are you?” - “Cash or card?” -
“Have a good night” for eight hours. She gets home,her feet hurt, too tired to do anything but
strip and fall in bed.
She wakes in the middle of the night to buzzing. Itisn’t coming from any particular
direction, but seems to be inside her skull. Thereis black figure in the ceiling corner, crouched.
Almost like spider-man, if he were more anatomicallylike a spider and made entirely of shadow.
As if it was waiting for her to wake, it begins crawlingacross the ceiling towards her, limbs
spindly, bent at the opposite angles that they shouldbe. She wants to move or scream but it’s like
she’s being held down and her vocal cords have beenreplaced with cotton.
It settles above her, looking down. She wants to closeher eyes, to block everything out
like she’s so good at doing, but before she can itstretches. It’s neck elongates downwards