Chapter 202

Chapter 202
Emily's POV

This is the memory I had forgotten.

Darkness. So dark. The space is small. The ceiling slopes at sharp angles. An attic. I'm in an attic.

I was six years old, maybe younger. The attic became my entire world. A small window barely let in enough light to see. The corners remained perpetually dark, perfect homes for spiders to spin their webs undisturbed.

They were my only friends. The spiders. Always watching, waiting. Silent companions in my silent prison.

I remember a caretaker—a woman whose face remained permanently blank, as if I were an unpleasant task rather than a child. She never spoke to me, never looked directly at me. Just delivered food three times a day with mechanical precision, changed my clothes when necessary, and disappeared again.

I learned to be quiet. To observe. To exist without making a sound, without demanding attention. Like the spiders in their corners, I became an observer of a world I couldn't participate in.

If no one speaks to you, do you still exist? If no one sees you, are you even real?

There was one spider that stood out from the rest. A silver-gray one with elegant long legs, which built its web in the corner nearest my bed. I talked to it every day, whispering my secrets, fears, and questions about the world beyond the attic.

"You're like me," I would whisper to it. "Not human. Something else. Something quiet and watching."

Of course, the spider never responded. But in my desperate loneliness, I convinced myself it was just because it hadn't yet learned how to speak the spider language I was trying to master.

One day, I overheard voices outside my door. Caitlin was speaking to the caretaker.

"She seems to have developed cognitive issues," Caitlin said, her voice sharp with concern or annoyance, I couldn't tell which. "She thinks she's a spider. Do we need to intervene?"

I didn't understand what "cognitive issues" meant at the time. But I understood I was being discussed, evaluated, judged. The words made me retreat further into my silent corner, more convinced than ever that I wasn't like them—those loud humans who talked about others as if they weren't there.

Her solution was Simon. A boy, slightly older than me, with frightened eyes and perpetually trembling hands. When he was first brought to the attic, I approached him curiously, reached out to touch his arm.

His reaction still haunts me.

"Don't touch me! Get away!" he screamed, pressing himself into the corner, making himself as small as possible.

I didn't understand. Was he like me? Another spider-child? Or was he human? Maybe humans were just grown-up spiders who had forgotten how to spin webs.

I watched him secretly for days, fascinated by this creature so like me yet so different. One day, I switched our food trays, giving him my dessert—a rare chocolate pudding. I wanted to see how he would react.

He noticed immediately. Looked directly at me for the first time.

Simon talked constantly, mostly to himself. "I'm dirty. Unclean. That's why they put me here." These words meant nothing to me then, but his tone—that broken, hollow quality in his voice—I understood perfectly.

Then everything changed. The expressionless caretaker disappeared, replaced by a woman named Megan. She was different in every way. She looked at us—really looked. She spoke to us. Smiled.

I remember her kneeling before Simon, holding his trembling hands. "You're not dirty, Simon. The people who hurt you were the dirty ones."

When she noticed me watching from my corner, she approached slowly, carefully, as if I were a wild animal that might bolt.

"Hello there," she said gently. "My name is Megan. What's yours?"

I couldn't answer. But something inside me stirred at the warmth in her eyes, the first real human connection I'd experienced.

Megan started teaching me words. Simple ones at first. "Food." "Water." "Please." I learned quickly—perhaps too quickly. It surprised her.

"You're so smart, Emily," she would say. "You just needed someone to teach you."

Each word was a key, unlocking doors I never knew existed. Each new sound gave me power, connection, humanity. When Megan told us she would have to leave soon, panic seized my chest. I'd tasted something—perhaps recognition—and I couldn't bear to lose it.

Then one day Megan did something unthinkable. She took us outside.

The brightness was overwhelming. The sun, impossibly large and intense. The world stretched in every direction, boundless. Buildings towered like mountains. Water flowed in a river nearby. People—so many people—hurried past without noticing us.

Megan held my hand tightly. "Emily, this is what freedom feels like. You're free now."

The words echoed in my mind, but they made no sense. What was freedom to someone who'd never known choice?

We walked along the river for hours. Simon kept looking over his shoulder, convinced we were being followed. I just stared at everything, trying to process a world too big, too loud, too bright.

Eventually, I got hungry. Tired. Started missing the predictable safety of the attic. The regular meals. The quiet darkness where I knew exactly what to expect.

We fell asleep on a park bench. When I woke, Caitlin was there with men in suits. They took Megan away. She looked back at me, her eyes full of guilt and sorrow.

But I—God help me—I was almost happy to go back. Back to where I wouldn't be hungry or overwhelmed by choice.

Back in the attic, things were different. I had words now. Questions formed in my mind, then found their way to my lips. Why could Megan and Simon go outside? Why couldn't I?

The answer I found was simple in my child's logic: they were human. I was a spider. Spiders belong in dark corners, in attics. Humans belong in the world.

Then came the day that changed everything. Megan took me to my mother's room.

They said my mother was sick, which was why she had been kept in that room. When Megan handed me over to my mother, she turned and left, and my mother locked the door.

"Emily, I'm sorry," she sobbed, holding me close—the first real embrace I could remember. "It's all mommy's fault. I'm so sorry."

She just held me like that, but her eyes were distant, looking at something I couldn't see. Then she reached for a bottle of pills on her nightstand. Emptied it into her mouth. Swallowed. Laid down beside me on the bed, holding me until her arms went limp.

I was locked in that room with her body. Days passed—I'm not sure how many. I watched her... change. Her skin developed greenish patches. Started to smell. In my child's mind, I thought this was what normally happened to humans.

I nearly died too. No food. Little water from the bathroom sink that I could barely reach. By the end, I was hallucinating, talking to spiders I imagined crawling across my mother's decaying face.

Then the door broke open. Police officers stormed in. A big officer covered my eyes, carried me out. I remember being put into Caitlin's arms. She was crying too.

"Emily, your mother is dead. She was my best friend."

I didn't really understand what "dead" meant then.

Caitlin took me back to the attic one last time. She said it was to cure my cognitive issues. She found the silver-gray spider in the corner—my friend, my only constant companion for so long.

"Kill it," she ordered, her voice hard. "Crush it."

When I hesitated, she grabbed my hand, forced my fingers around the spider's delicate body.

"Emily. You're not a spider. It's not your companion. Remember that."

When I felt it die in my palm, something in me broke. Shattered. After that... nothing. The memories end here.