A Web of Spider Bites

Chapter 4

Have you ever thought about how or when or if something will end? Have you ever thought that you might never be able to move on? What will you do when said item or experience is taken from you? Where will you go to supply the loss you have experienced? We're told never to think about those things because we should make the most of the time we have. What if we want our time to be over before time has run out? What do we do then? We shut ourselves away so we don't have to deal with the loss, so others don't have to deal with the loss of us. The fewer things you have or love is the fewer things you have to be taken from you.

Little do Bell and Ben know but they have both lived like this. They both shut everyone away because they saw how things can change to darkness within a matter of hours of something happening. They both had to grow up before their time. They're so a like and they don't even know, but they both want to know each-others back story.

Both of them now are lying awake thinking about the possible reasons as to why either of them are the way they are. They have both promised themselves that they will ask when they next see each other. But both of them don't know if they're will be a next time, for all either of them know Ben could leave her there to starve that way he hasn't actually done anything and won't see her getting worse and slowly die. Bell knows he could do this and Ben knows it's a possible idea.

No matter how alike they are, they are both doing separate things at this current moment. Ben is watching her on his TV. She is sitting their lifelessly. Bell hasn't moved since she started hugging her knees, not one movement. This confuses Ben more than anything ever has. It's like trying to explain what square rooting means to someone who has never heard of square numbers.

However, alone in dark room with rotting wood, screaming stairs, clutching chains, chipped bricks with some cement missing until half way up where the wood begins. This will be where the ground ends and the fresh country ends. Sat silently cuddling herself down there is a young beautiful girl named Bell. This girl never sees the truth that other people tell her and only believes the voices in her head. She is currently sitting there trying to except her fate of being trapped there for her last few days alive.

Looking around the room without moving her head she can see there is another set of lazy chains hanging off the sick wall. Over time the use of this wooden shack has been twisted; what could have been used for a sweet little holiday home for a sweet family is now used to torture pre-broken girls because no one can miss them because they have no one. Underneath the chains is a mattress that looks in pain; a few sharp springs stuck out from the silk looking cloth that covered all of the secrets that belong to that giant sponge. The only difference between the chains about the mattress and the ones Bell is attached to is the length available. The ones holding on to Bells wrist are around 5 meters long. They are attached a quarter of the way up the walls and allow room for the unlucky person to walk around a few steps. Whereas the spare ones are placed at the same height but are only around three quarters of a meter long. Meaning the persons arms would be held up allowing all the blood to fall below their shoulders and grow weak.

Before Bell could begin to question the mattress that laid there so patronisingly the door burst open and stood slouched against the door frame is a drunken Ben. He has removed his plain leather jacket along with his white top so now all his tattoos are exposed. He slowly climbed his way down the screaming wooded stairs and sat next to Bell again. Bell sat there unsure of what to do but she was sure about everything: He is drunk and stinks of alcohol. This brings back memories and flashbacks into Bells messed up head. A tear escapes her tired eye and ran down her pale face.

"I saw that." Ben manages to say without slurring.

"Saw what?" Bell replied innocently

"Everything. The way you haven't move a muscle in the last hour and that tear that just ran down your face."

"Oh" Is all Bell can say back. What are you meant to say to someone who knows everything?

"Hey, hey, hey. Why are you crying? A beautiful girl like you shouldn't cry." Ben states as he leans to face her and brushes a tear away with his cold thumb.

Bell cringes at the way he calls her beautiful.

"Why would you cringe? Do you not like the truth?"

"It's all lies isn't it though?" Bell asks a rhetorical question but she knows Ben will still answer it.

"I don't lie, especially when I'm drunk."

He's just saying this out of pity. Bell tells herself

"I brought you some food." Ben says as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a sandwich that he stuffed into his tight jean pocket. He places the sandwich in front of Bells feet as he expects her to eat it.

"Thanks but I'm not hungry." She lies, she's starving but she'll never admit it.

"You haven't eaten all day and it's like 5pm" Ben states to which Bell doesn't reply. Ben waits another 5 minutes in deathly silence until he speaks again "I know what you're doing. You think you're fat so you cover up your body so I don't see it and you won't eat so that you don't put on calories. I'm not a complete idiot." Ben tells her

Another few tears escape Bells tired eyes, she knew someone sooner or later would click onto it but she never thought that it would be a good looking man who happens to kidnap her and see's it within a matter of hours. Ben is still looking at her like a lion looking at their prey; if he lets his stare roam anywhere else, the victim may disappear.

"Why are you crying?" Ben asks again a little softer this time.

"Because."

"Because what?" Ben asks

"Have you ever woken up and looked at yourself in the mirror and cried because you don't like the monster staring back at you? Have you ever looked at a meal and told yourself you don't deserve the meal? Do you know how hard it is to stop eating all your favourite foods just so you look pretty? Because that's what it's like. Have you ever smelt Alcohol and wanted to cry because of the past you've had?" Bell asks as she sigh's a breath of disappointment because she knows she is now going to be seen as weak. "Once you have been through that then you'll only then come close to understand what I feel."

Once Bell has finished her moving speech Ben doesn't say anything back. He picks his inked skinny body up and sprints up the screaming stairs and out the room, locking the door behind him.

Bell just sits there stunned whilst sobbing into her soft pale legs. I knew he wouldn't care. I should never have told him; I've just scared him off. He's never going to come down again because I'm such a fuck up. He won't ever look at me again.