arachne

Art by Julia Wong

By Annika Ancheta

Enter ARACHNE and ATHENA.

She’s a goddamn catastrophe, she is. A writhing mass upon the floorboards, twisting and mangling under the eyes of a multitude. The roof grows farther in distance as she clambers for respite, flesh warping and decaying until her skin’s suffocating bone, and bones are breaking, and cracks and crunches bellow as her body turns inside out. Skeleton seeking open air, new joints stapled to limbs never meant to hold them. And two become three and three become six and soon forty long fingers are clinging to tunics and sandals as she shrinks down, down, down...

And gods the shame is unbearable. Don’t look at me! she wants to scream. You can’t see me like this! But her lips are engorged on spittling fluids and her tongue recedes deep into her throat, her teeth scrape at her maw like pincushions, mandibles fluttering with the wail that manages to breach out from her lungs. And she’s so pathetic, so fragile and tiny. A little dot on the corner of the floor.

The goddess stands above her and she wishes she could die. Gods, she wishes she could die, but that steel-gray stare keeps her rooted, a silver arrow pinning her to a permanent post. She hears her lips move but it is a warbling jargon, a booming cacophony that pierces her ears, and so with nothing else to live for she makes up the conversation in her head.

ATHENA

That’s better

ARACHNE

What is this? Why am I like this? What did you do?

She can hear their laughter. Oh, Arachne, you got what’s coming for you. Oh Arachne, you know better than to challenge a goddess. Because you don’t challenge the gods, because it doesn’t matter how right you are, how good the argument is, whether or not you win your case. It doesn’t matter if you’re worse and it doesn’t matter if you’re better. You challenge the gods’ pride and you’ve already lost. Oh Arachne, you stupid fucking brat. Did you seriously think it would turn out differently this time?

And now her body’s a freakness of limbs, long slender black with crooks and bends, with an abdomen weighing her down like a ball and chain and a skeleton bristling in stuffy air, and she’s so small, so barely noticeable that one must squint just to know she exists. Her eyes have multiplied, her mouth is pronged, she’s a dark little thing with morphing bones and spindly limbs and don’t look at me, please stop looking at me—

ARACHNE (cont.)

I didn’t do anything wrong.

ATHENA

You did too many a wrong.

ARACHNE

What am I?

ATHENA

I’m not sure. But I figure I will be soon.

ARACHNE

I didn’t deserve this.

ATHENA

You humiliated us. You challenged our pride. You scarred our image. Did you really think you could get away with an insult like that?

She descends between the floorboards. Finds a small gap of which to enter, scrambling in her attempts to use her newfound bristles and her abdomen and the fullness of her womb, or what she assumes is the womb because it's heavy and aching, as if she carried broods and burdens of the gods above. She goes farther and farther down, until the torchlight is snuffed and her vision is ebony dark, the dirt crackling against her face with every dig, until she’s burrowing into Gaea’s crust.

She enters a large cavern. Hollow and void, the sound of pattering water resonating across gaping walls. Dark and empty, devoid of life. The chill would affect her if she could feel cold, the cave a husk beneath ground that could be mistaken for Hades if she squinted her eyes hard enough. She takes root on a hanging spike, staring at a large puddle of dew beneath, its size equivalent to the lakes of her old countryside.

She can’t even see her reflection. She’s so small.

ARACHNE

But you do it all the time! To mortals, to gods…

ATHENA

That’s different.

ARACHNE

How is that any different?

ATHENA

Weave your own reasons.

So she does. She finds use for her burgeoning womb and weaves long spindles of thread around her new home, raindrops glistening upon lines of her innards, a sparkling white entwined about stalactites and stalagmites and pits and crevices and where mankind’s hands were meant to fill with wood and plaster and not string but this will do, this will do. And she nestles in the center of her masterpiece, within ghostly braids of pretty lines, and it's beautiful but she misses the colors, misses the loom, misses her needles and threads, and misses her hands and the blood she’d prick with each mistake.

She can’t make people with these webs. Only spirals. Round and round in endless circles, an endless eternity that gulps her in.

It wasn’t even that bad. All she did was weave what she saw, and all she saw was filth. She wove what she saw because that is what artists do but Athena is no artist, Athena makes plans, Athena has no creativity because creativity means pushing boundaries but you shove a wall in front of Athena and she’ll make it a city. All she did was weave the truth. Maybe she was embarrassed? At least she made her embarrassed. Her own victory. Embarrassment.

ARACHNE

Why didn’t you let me die?

ATHENA

It’s not unhonorable. You have a body. Treat it well.

ARACHNE

BUT LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO IT.

And she has kids. They’re as ugly as her. Little writhing things, sprouting from eggs like fresh springtime blooms, crawling in droves, a black mass of substance upon the cavern ground. She watches them go without a sound, their little legs skittering into structures and holes. Some of them stay below, adding more tapestries to her gallery. Some rise to the surface. It’s warmer there. Maybe they can feel the cold down here and have fewer qualms about leaving. At least they feel. At least they know what to do.

And they’re small. They’re small because they’re easy to miss, small so they’re easy to deal with. So the sandal descends upon them before they have time to react, so they are swatted and battered by the birds and the lizards and so they have no room to escape beyond their little nets, where they eat until they themselves are next, until they’re locked in the jaws of the predator and fighting for their lives and eight limbs should help but they do nothing, they were never meant to do anything but weave filth that will be torn without second thought to craft.

And they’re small so it’s easier for her. Because they’re so easy to kill. Because the pain is unbearable each time and it’s the closest thing to dying she’ll ever get to.

ARACHNE (cont.)

Why did it have to be me?

ATHENA

…

ARACHNE

WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE ME?

ATHENA

You were the closest thing I could find.

There’s the gorgon Medusa whom Poseidon raped and Athena changed, whose long locks of silk hair became scales and tongues. And there’s the Minotaur born of the passion between Pasiphaë and the ocean's bull, who wandered maddeningly about the walls of a labyrinth beneath ground. And Medusa was slain by Perseus and the Minotaur was slain by Theseus and then there’s the Hydra to Heracles and the Chimera to Bellephoron and—

But there are no heroes to kill Arachne. Because she’s already the lesson, she’s already the tale. Her story ends when the reader stops reading, because they already understand, because they know what to do and what not to do so she can’t be helped. Oh poor little Arachne, they’re thinking and she knows they’re thinking. Hubris doesn’t bode well for mortals. She learned the lesson so I shall too.

But how the fuck was she supposed to know? Why did she have to be the example?

ARACHNE

Closest thing to what? To make a point?

ATHENA

To make a point.

In the conversation in her head she spins a tale that she’d win. That she has the right argument and rebuttals, and she crafts them as if she were back on the loom, dainty fingertips clasping yarn and wool and threading them through the spokes, and the needles and pins are painting her perfect victory, and none could lay claim to her now, right? No one challenges Athena, and no one’s ever won. But she wins, she could have won, if only her mouth had worked—

ARACHNE

I hate you.

ATHENA

Okay.

ARACHNE

This was no punishment. You’re jealous. I was the better. I won.

ATHENA

Okay.

ARACHNE

You lost. You lost and you know it.

ATHENA

…

It’s unfair. I would have won. If I had a mouth, if I still had these hands, I would have won.

And her children crawl over her, scrambling little studs begging to be eaten alive. So small, so fragile, that even a mere stream would whisk them to oblivion. And she wishes her eight eyes could still cry, and she wishes her maw could still scream, and she wishes that she could crawl her way up that damn mountain and into that goddess’s head and weave webs from brain matter and crush her skull from the inside-

ARACHNE

(pathetically)

LISTEN TO ME. FUCKING LISTEN TO ME. YOU KNOW I WON. TELL ME I WON.

ATHENA

…

Exit ATHENA.