The Spider and the Killer

I had been looking for my sandal, the one lost the previous evening at the falls. That is when I saw her again, Perelandra, a slave that I had read for by command of the strange man that had held me in service for ahns.

We had been talking when I felt the spider web upon me, likely gained while I searched for my errant shoe, but it seemed that was not all that I had gained, for I had collect the occupant of the sticky silk as well.

There is little that I cannot abide, but spiders are one of the few things that horrify me. I panicked, seeing the small arachnid parade up my arm and towards my hair, obviously in need of a new home. The slave whose acquaintance I had made deftly flicked the spider from my shoulder, a flick that sent the furry creature right beneath the boot of a killer.

I slunk into the crevice of the rock at his approach, not even daring to look up to see if he bore the mark which would place him clearly in killing mode.

He settled not far from us, she, the other slave, now sulking at the death of the small eight legged icky. He called us to his service, his boot propped upwards so that we could see his recent kill, the half attached spider that hung oddly from the sole of his footwear, an object we were commanded to clean. I held the leaf to catch the remains, while she scraped, all the while expecting my breakfast to be the next thing we would be ordered to sanitize.

And then the killer did a most inhuman thing. He told me to smell it, the dead thing he had liberated from life with a single step. Though the task was distasteful, I dutifully obeyed, but surely my expression clearly mirrored the adverse reaction I was having. Lucky for me, recently dead things have little smell.

Perelandra has promised to kill the next small furry offending creature herself.