“And what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sonya asked. Her eyes narrowed to thin slits, malice pouring out of them.
“Nothing Mommy,” Izaak replied, “Just eating a cookie.” His small body was trembling within the shadow of his mother. The cookie loosed miniscule crumbs unto the ground.
“And did I say you could have a cookie?”
“No-o….but-but I was hungry and….” Izaak was cut off before he could even begin to explain his reason for eating.
“And you what? Thought it was just ok to go into the kitchen and start eating sweets. And didn’t I tell you time after time that eating sweets before dinner would spoil for appetite!” Sonya spat, her voice getting more infuriated by the second.
“Yes mommy, but I was really hungry and it was just a snack. I’m going to eat dinner I promise!” Izaak replied frantically. He was on the verge of tears for he knew what was coming next, and he was going to do everything to prevent it from happening.
“Don’t you dare lie to me you little brat!” Sonya yelled. Her anger was in full bloom, erupting into the small kitchen. Izaak could all but avoid his mother as she strolled around the kitchen, knocking appliances and cooking utensils to the floor. The toaster hit the linoleum tiling with a satisfying crash, and a jar of stirring spoons followed the toaster’s path, each spoon clacking against the ground. Then like any eruption, the maelstrom of fury cut off in an instant, trying to act like nothing had just happened.
Izaak looked up from the floor and saw a smile form across his mother’s face. This was not a loving smile however, but a smile gone horribly wrong. The lips were stretched so far that Izaak thought they would snap if his mother tried to open them any wider. The dim light of the tiny kitchen cast a glare across her teeth and made them look as if each and every one of them and been filed to a point.
Izaak, however, was not concerned with these minor facial tics. He was more concerned with his mother’s eyes. As he looked into them from the corner of the kitchen, all he could see was malicious intent. There was no love in Sonya’s eyes and there never would be, she was devoid of love.
“Well,” said Sonya, licking her lips with a reptilian like tongue, “If you aren’t going to eat dinner then that’s fine with me, but you can just spend the rest of the night with your friends.” Sonya swung her head, turning her attention from her son to an ominous looking wooden door.
“No Mommy please!” Izaak screamed. “I don’t want to see them, please Mommy, please!”
But Sonya would hear none of it and, in a sudden swoop, grabbed Izaak by the arm and started to drag him to towards the basement. Izaak screamed all the way across the kitchen but his efforts proved useless.
The deadbolt slid open with a deafening crack, the door was flung open, and the lights were snapped on.
His mother’s tightened on Izaak’s arm as he was forcefully dragged down the creaky wooden stairs. The basement was by not any means huge, but it wasn’t terribly small either. It was made entirely of concrete, for it had been built right into the foundation of the house.
The basement was completely devoid of windows as well. The only light coming from a number of small, bare fluorescent bulbs, dangling from the ceiling. And even though there were only a couple of bulbs, the light shone brightly, for it reflected off of hundreds of small glass boxes that lined the walls. These blocks of glass were not for decoration however, but for thousands upon thousands of spiders.
Each box contained about thirty spiders and Izaak’s mother had just about every spider imaginable: big ones, small ones, brown ones, black ones, ones that were furry, and ones that weren’t.
However, the most ominous thing in the room, more menacing than the spiders themselves, was the larger box in the corner of the room. It measured around four feet long and three feet high and five of it’s six sides were made of glass. The top was comprised of a fine mesh screen with solid iron bars crisscrossing over it.
The very sight of this glass prison made Izaak try ever the more frantically to free himself, but he proved no match for his mother. His bare feet scrambled frantically atop the cool cement, finding no kind of traction what so ever.
They reached the box and with her free hand, Sonya produced a key from the pocket of her blouse. She thrust it into the padlock on the door of the cage. She turned it, forcefully, and it made a soft click as it unlocked. Opening the door with one hand, she threw Izaak in to the prism with the other. Then, she closed the door and locked it again, insuring that there would be no escaping. Izaak looked up and saw his mother turn away from him and venture into another corner of the basement.
After an agonizing minute, his mother returned to him holding a small container covered with a dark rag, its contents obstructed from view. The same insidious smile returned to Sonya’s face as she grabbed the rag and whipped it off the box.
Spiders. That was all that Izaak could see within the box, spiders. It was filled to the brim with small brown spiders and they were so compacted in there that no light could penetrate its way through to the other side.
Izaak’s mother produced the key again and opened the lock once more. Izaak could do nothing but watch as she opened the door, leaned in, and placed the box on the bottom of the prism. The spiders squirmed with ferocity as his mother slid open the top of the spider container and quickly withdrew her hand, closing and locking the door.
St first nothing happened, the spiders just continued to squirm amongst themselves. But, after about five seconds, they started to flow out of the container, spreading out on the floor of the prism. It was a never ending sea of spiders.
Sonya just smiled that infamous smile and walked back across the basement and up the stairs. Her footsteps resonated on the wooden planks as she climbed to the kitchen above. Izaak listened as she reached the top of the stairs and, to his surprise, her footsteps stopped on the landing.
Izaak listened even more intently now, hoping that those footsteps would come back in his direction, hoping that his mother would return to his prison and set him free, hoping that his mother would take hold of him and tell him that she loved him.
The spiders had reached Izaak and still they flowed from the box. He winced as a couple of them started to scale his feet, but still he listened for his mother.
Then, as if in a mocking gesture, his mother called down the stairs, “Mommy loves you!” The lights then went off and the door was slammed shut. Izaak could hear his mother laughing in the kitchen.
A great deal of spiders had reached Izaak now and many of them had already begun to climb over him, acting like he was just another obstacle in their way. All Izaak could feel were millions of tiny legs scrabbling over his flesh.
And finally, without warning, Izaak wept. He wept because his mother didn’t love him and never would. He wept because he was once again locked in the box in the dark with hundreds of tiny spiders. He wept because his sixth birthday was ruined.