The Basic Necessity of Spiders on the Ceiling

There’s something terribly appealing to depression about spiders on the ceiling, Haphaestion thought in passing before returning his concentration to lying perfectly still on his bed but for his twitching right big toe. His right big toe often twitched but he rarely directed it to twitch. It just did. When he was a child, it had been quite disturbing in that immature way things are disturbing to children. Similar to how children subconsciously fear death before they really understand what death actually is. But admittedly, the random twitching of appendages is more concrete than death and almost as irrational as Arachibutyrophobia, which makes it all the more frightening to children. He sometimes wondered if he should tell his shrink about how his big toe twitched and how disturbed he had been by it as a child but he suspected that it would simply result in another strange diagnosis and more pills.

            More pills was unacceptable, not only unacceptable but also unfathomable. More pills meant spiders would no longer be appealing and he could no longer lie completely still but for the twitching in his right big toe and that was unacceptable. Life without stillness and spiders was no life at all for Haphaestion just as life without sex and alcohol was no life to his best friend, Anastasia.

            Many people often wondered why they got along, Haphaestion and Anastasia. She was a party girl and he was an intellectual. What no one ever understood was that they both feared the things that sought most above all else and that they both wanted to die but didn’t know how. Shared paradoxes are the strongest bond Haphaestion had ever discovered with the exclusion of inebriation and food. Many people also often wondered if they were having sex but they weren’t. She was beautiful, sapphire eyes, chestnut hair and porcelain skin kind of beautiful, so she didn’t need him. He was brilliant and in love so he did not want her. It worked out perfectly. They both had a someone to bring home as proof of self-actualization without the burden of monogamy or romanticism. In short, perfect.

            “Well, it was,” Haphaestion murmured and quickly, without moving any more than absolutely necessary, began to scream.

            When Haphaestion screamed, it was quite the event just as a broken piccolo in the skilled hands of a deranged flutist is quite the event. Haphaestion’s screams drew attention simply through utterance because, you see, Haphaestion’s screams is a misnomer. Screeches would be a much more accurate description but even that cannot possibly encompass the true horror of the sound.

So horrific was the sound that within a minute half the ward was screaming even the black haired girl with black nails embedded in her skin who wouldn’t even move to eat began to scream. Within five minutes of white orderlys, threats and pleading, the entire hospital was screaming. His screams even roused coma patients and the dead locked away in the morgue. Haphaestion only stopped screaming when a desperate orderly nearly suffocated him after he had gone half insane from Haphaestion’s horrific screaming.

As the world went black, Haphaestion smiled. Anyone sane or intellectual watching would wonder, at least in passing, if this had been his plan all along. But Haphaestion delights in mystery and banter and so would debate you on either side non-stop until the day he died, which through the lens of suicide is not as impressive a commitment as it might seem. However, it is quite a statement about Haphaestion that his shrink must never know about.

            “How are you feeling?”

            “Sedated”

            “Other than that?”

            “Why does it matter?”

            “It matters because answering questions is polite.”