I can't sleep for all the knockings and cryings. My eyes were heavy
as I sat there with all my not-friends that chose to show up whenever they
pleased. Currently, it was with me around my table. I, with golden-brown
peices of poultry to mange on, sat for hours while they were my entertainment.
Always so hard to carry on much of a conversation with them it was,
because sometimes you'd swear they were there, but then it was but just an
empty chair.
No one played the piano. It was bound to be dark-sounding, bound to
be out of tune with all those tangledy cobwebs I pictured inside. Sometimes
I could see them through the piano. And sometimes the spiders would leave
thier webs to crawl about. The guests hardly would seem to notice when the
spider would chance to climb up and march all over thier faces.
"Soon, my friends, the spiders'll have you all engulfed with web
just like the others," I'd say.
I guess I live alone. I never saw much need to get married. Never
had many lady friends. I remember one I guess I could see I thought I loved.
She was the first girl I ever risked liking, but she, of course, let me down.
Since then, there have been a few girls I've tried to fancy, but I'm not as
young or as, let's say, foolish, as I was then. I'm past the foolishness of
innocence and love, so now its not at all fun.
"What's that you say?" Well, he just sits there.
"Speak up, Friend." Suppose he's afraid if he opens his mouth he
could suck up another spider? I've seen it happen, but now I wonder what he
said.
My back's to them now and my back is to the dark because I just pushed
in my chair and turned to walk out. Out I am.
Clinker-Clatter of the plates and the dishies as I put them in the sink.
Moan of me from deep inside and up my spine as I stretch and think of bed or
should I write things down?
I retire. Beside the fire my eyes tire and my one desire is just to
sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Fire goes out; blanket covers me.
Awake to the thick-thack...thick-thack of someone flipping my light
switch. Floods of light decide not to fill the air. About four of them I
hear talking -like discussing. It is decidely so.
"It is decidely so," they said so I guess it is. The feet are grabbed
first, then the rest of me, the upper part, is also ramsacked and shaken all
wobbledy about and not handled with so much care at all. 'Plop' on the floor
and because of it my back hurts, but then comes thier kickings.
"Trick or treat" comes a knocking on my door.
"Trick trick trick or treat" and so I get up from the table, all
bruised and sore, first apologizing to my web-entangled friend for yelling at
him to tell me why he did such a thing.
The chorus of "Trick or treat" is too much so I try to silence them.
I hear one boy in trousers saying the old, but never clever, 'Smell my feet'
line. It's so ambiguous, but prehaps I always take it the wrong way. It's
more than I can handle.
I pull them inside and make them cry. I don't know why, but I wrap
them up like the spiders and shove them in the closet so I can finish eating.
Maybe it was a trick on thier part, but more like a treat on mine. I can
still here thier knockings and cryings.
