Every Wednesday Madison Woods posts a picture prompt to challenge writers to create a 100-word story or poem or anything that works for you. then post your work on your blog. additionally, on friday, you go back to her site and post a link to your blog entry in the comments on her Friday Fictioneers post.
I’m going to try to keep up with this, as should you. give it a shot. i prefer to stick to 100 words, but she doesn’t mind either way. not everyone has the time to sit and write, revise, edit, revise, edit, etc. until getting it down to 100 and telling everything you want to tell.
Here’s this week’s picture and my 100 words. Well, my words are really a poem I wrote about 25 years ago when I was in college. After the poem, I’ll explain what inspired it.
breaking webs
Just the sight of those
Endless legs and I panic,
Lured to chase satanic shadows
Into corners, dusty and dark.
You rise from the woodwork
Feel your way through the dark
Hide behind my mirror.
As always, I want you
but despise you
Coming nearer
Many others I’ve slain, and you
Soon comes your time.
I wish the demon inside
Knew the Hell you drag me through.
I wish you knew the coming terror!
That at any time
I could move that mirror
Then, your life would be mine.
And I wish you would run
Because I don’t want it.
__________________
– 100 words, probably.
__________________________________
I wrote this poem one night when I was attempting to go to sleep. I lived in the basement because the people in our house outgrew the actual house. As I was clicking off the lamp, I saw this – something – with soooo many legs, running across the wall from behind a poster to behind a mirror. There was no way I could possibly get to sleep unless I found it and killed it. I don’t recall for certain what happened, but I seem to have a memory of getting something like a shoe, quickly pulling the mirror from the nail on which it hung, and staring at this – thing. I think I smashed it, but before I did, I stared in amazement at its size. Afterward, as I wrote the poem, I thought about how what was taking shape made me seem like a murderous stalker. And I realized that the – thing – seemed to also apply to a woman, maybe a prostitute walking the streets, and that made me a sort of “Jack the Ripper.”
And I was okay with that.
brainsnorts inc. 
I like the dark voice here. The story about what inspired it is very interesting . . . I enjoyed reading about the thought process behind it.
thank you very kindly.
This could be an anthem…for my neighborhood right now. Tons of poisonous spiders. 🙂
Oh no!
I hope you mean that you are okay with the narrator being a Jack the Ripper and not you? Hope you have moved safely into your new home.
oh i’m very okay with “jack the ripper” behind the poem. i’m safely in, yes, thank you, and now i have some modifications to make.
So glad to see you back and that you’ve landed okay.
I got the vixen/ seductress vibe from it… Very nice
thanks. i wasn’t sure if that was going to come through, so that’s why i added the story at the end.
You’re right about the comparison between the spider-killer and the Ripper. It’s one of the things that made me have to get over my fear of them – I couldn’t kill them. Intriguing piece of poetry – thanks for sharing
nothing to thank me for. thank YOU for reading.
Fiction you say! Hahaha! Or should I say Muahahaha! I love spiders as long as they don’t crawl on me or spin webs in the house! That’s really not to much to ask.
Great poem!
thanks miss. nice to see your smile again.
Fantastic — thoroughly enjoyed this! 🙂
thanks. and i thoroughly enjoyed that you enjoyed it. 😉
😉 And may not have followed all the rules – but participated for first time in this Friday Fictioneers project with this one — a little bit of a psychological spider web piece ~ http://throughthehealinglens.com/2012/07/31/mandala-of-her-mind/ Hope you thoroughly enjoy too! 🙂
Impossible that I won’t enjoy.
Lovely to know consider this! — hope not to disappoint 🙂
The only way to disappoint us is to not write anything.
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Seriously I liked your after thoughts more than the poem itself. The poem was great almost sexual definitely a bit of horror and it was good. But the your last lines made that whole thing come together so much more.
Thanks very much for reading.
Love their webs, but I’m not a big spider fan. Great job on your poem. Thanks for revisiting it for us.
Enjoyed the poem, Rich. Especially the line, “Lured to chase satanic shadows”
BTW, congrats on your 400th post and all the other 4 numbers. My post this week was number 60. So if you’re a race car I’m a slug. I’ll never catch you, but I leave a great slime behind.
thanks, but i probably had at least a 5 year head start.
I got both possible interpretations out of it even before you explained so it worked on both levels. I completely get smashing that monster. Sounds like a millipede to me and I hate them. I literally get goosebumps when I see one but I’ve gotten adept at killing them, despite how fast they can run.
Enjoyed this! I look at my home as my web and anything creepy crawley that invades I will get!
I’m fine with spiders so long as there are lights on and other people in the house. But on your own in the basement, I can see the killer coming out. Thanks for stopping by my story earlier.
Hi Rich,
This seems like a love-hate relationship. Like most interactions maybe a little fear and distance is not such a bad thing. Coexistence is tough for us humans, but possible. Don’t break the web. Ron
Thanks sir. Working my way through the list to yours.
With that going on in your head, I’m not surprised at your apparent sleep trouble. For some reason, I am particularly drawn to the interplay of the endline words terror, time, mirror, and mine (lines 15-18). They are stimulating verbally, and when isolated from the rest of the poem and grouped together, they give an even deeper dark, psychological aspect that is fascinating.
you are a very educated and careful reader. not many like you. thanks.
Your last line resonated most with me, I can’t bear to kill a spider now, though I did when I was younger, and was always ashamed with what fear had made me do, as I looked down at the little crushed body. I try to be a better person now, to be brave in front if my children too, and I’ll go to extraordinary lengths to capture creepy-crawlies under a glass and set them free outside. But you’re fighting primitive instincts when you come up against a spider, and I think your poem does a good job of exposing that.
And you did an excellent job reading it. Thanks!
“Lured to chase satanic shadows
Into corners, dusty and dark.
You rise from the woodwork,
Feel your way through the dark….”
Definitely describes the torments of a midnight spider hunt. Nice.
Thanks. That’s how good poems are written. Something happens that affects us, and we write it down.
Oh My God! this is exactly how I feel, every single time I have to go chase these wicked, scary looking things out of my home, I almost always pray for their escape, as I hate having to kill any one of them. I really enjoyed the thought behind the poem, Thank you for sharing. Will be back for more for sure.
Regards,
BC
Such wonderful things for you to say. Thanks.
Dear Rich, (or is it Jack?)
I’ve not seen you venture into verse before. This poem held me, rapt, thinking about what spiders think about as they make their webs in quiet dark spaces and we come with light and fear and suddenly kill them all in a rush.
Aloha,
Doug
poems strike me far less often than prose. it was written a long time ago, close to 30 years, and the picture reminded me about it, and i got away easy.
thanks.
Wow!!!! 🙂 I love it. Bravo.
Poems strike you not often, BUT GOOD!!! 😆