Gay Witch Baby

Chapter 1

Nella sat in the dark of her kitchen, and waited for the harvestmen. It was cold, and a breeze was blowing through the crack in the glass panels on the kitchen door. It had cracked when Nella had slammed the door shut a month ago in a fit of rage, and they hadn't had a chance to fix it yet. The crack was jagged, and angry,and if Nella had hurled the door shut any harder, the glass would have broken all together.

A layer of dust was already beginning to settle. The house was old, and the ceilings were breaking apart under the families feet.Whenever anyone walked overhead, dust and dirt fell from the ceiling and onto whoever was below. Nella could feel the particles on her bare arms, which were already pockmarked with acne scars and random cuts and bruises. She wanted to brush it away, but if she moved, she might disturb everything.

The dead bees on the table lay pathetically on their backs, legs up in the air. Nella had been collecting them the last week,carefully scooping them out of the hives and depositing them in a glass jar. There were more dead than normal, and Nella bit the inside of her cheek as she counted them one by one. Fifteen dead.

The clock on the kitchen wall struck twelve, and Nella jumped at the sound. The inside of her cheek ripped a little, and Nella shoved her tongue into the cut. She could taste raw skin, and blood, and she got frustrated at herself for jumping. She'd be irritated in her mouth for the next couple of days, and knowing her, she'd keep poking at the cut and make it worse.

She wanted to stretch. No, scratch that, she wanted to move from this fucking table. She normally did stay up past twelve, but that was in her room, in bed, on her laptop. Not sitting at the kitchen table in a rickety chair, trying not to move. She was hungry too. There were snacks in her room, in the bedside drawer, a mix of crisps and sweets and dried pasta. Nella's stomach gurgled at the thought.

Nella was just about to stretch her arms when she heard it. The quietest of scratches on the wooden floorboards, slow at first, and then the pace quickened. Nella very slowly turned her head towards the kitchen door, and then looked down with her breath held.

The harvest spiders scurried across the floor, determined. They could smell the dead bees from the table, and their legs went out allover the place as they hurried. There were almost too many to count,or perhaps it was all the legs that confused Nella's eyes. The darkness of the room didn't help.

The spiders never came when the lights were on.

Nella watched as the spiders climbed up the table leg, crawling over one another in their haste to get to the bees. The first one to reach the top of the table surface did a little victory cheer with its feeler leg, and then moved towards the bees. When Nella was younger, she used to pull the feeler off the spiders, and then watch them twist around in circles trying to stabilise themselves. She was a weird fucking kid.

The spiders descended on the bees quickly. They clamped hold of the dead bee corpses in their mouths, using their fangs for a better grip. A few scuffles broke out between the spiders without bees, and the spiders with bees, but they were quickly quelled. Nella watched them jump off the table one by one, using their webbing like parachutes. The first time she had seen this, she'd had to bite back laughter, but by now, it was just something amusing to watch.

Just as quickly as the spiders arrived, they left. Scurrying across the floor like they'd left the gas on at home, the spiders disappeared underneath the door, flattening their little bodies to squeeze underneath. They never dropped the bees though, keeping them firm in their jaws. They knew if they dropped a bee, it would quickly be snapped up by another, quicker eager spider.

Nella watched until the last spider vanished under the door frame,and then stretched out, making as much noise as possible. She remembered right at the last moment that her mum and Bathsheba were asleep upstairs, but it was too late to stop the weird sexual groan that came out of her mouth. She pushed her chair out from the table,and then clambered out of it. Her legs hurt, and she shook them out, like shaking out washing.

"Fuck." She said, and cracked her back. "I sound like a fucking old lady."

She grabbed her phone from the table and wiped it on her shorts to get rid of the dust. It said the time was 12:05 when she turned it on, and she was suddenly very grateful that the spiders worked so quickly. She typed in her passcode, four of her mum's favourite numbers, and then opened up Instagram as she walked towards the stairs.

Nothing groundbreaking had happened whilst she was waiting for the spiders. An actress she fancied had posted a photo of her dinner. A sportsman she admired had taken a photo with a dog. The cute baby she followed had eaten solids for the first time. Nella liked the photos one by one as she walked up the stairs, only stopping to comment several heart emojis on a photo of a bulldog puppy.

"Nella?"

Nella almost dropped her phone at her mum's voice. She turned to see her mum's head poking out from the door, looking at Nella with big concerned eyes.

"Hey." Nella whispered. "I thought you were asleep."

"I couldn't sleep." Her mum replied. Her voice was quiet, but it always was. "Did they take the bees?"

"Yeah." Nella said, and relief washed over her mum's face."They're all gone."

"Good." Her mum said, and smiled at Nella. "Thank you."

"It's no problem." Nella shrugged. She did it every year. It was no bother.

"I'll leave you to get some sleep." Her mum said. Her fingers were wrapped around the edge of the door and they looked like a skeleton hand. "I love you."

"I love you more." Nella replied, and blew her mother a kiss. Her mum pretended to catch it and pressed it to her cheek.

Nella couldn't help smiling as she walked to her room, carefully shutting the door so to not make any sound. The bees had been taken by the harvestmen. Her mum was happy, therefore she was happy. And that was all that mattered.