October 2025 "From a Gothic Window" by Paula Rawlings

    I see everything from this window. I spend most days here. I watch the creatures below roam the streets and enter this building, but I especially watch for Diakon, the hunter of the Spinnen, my people. Behind me on my side of the window, his pale translucent feet often slap an offbeat rhythm on the floorboards. He balances and teeters on two lower legs. His upper legs, sparsely haired like mine, often retrieve a feathered, talonless weapon, twitching and thrashing it about like a sword. He touches every surface he can reach. He’ll lift, climb, crawl, and grunt. He produces a salty liquid from his facial orifices. It does not taste good.

     Today, Diakon is followed by miniatures of himself and a hunched, mottled thing who must be molting for the way his exoskeleton flakes. The little ones are like my children when they hatched from their egg sack, but with fewer legs, fewer eyes, and smoother exoskeletons. The flaking thing is like the corpse of my mother hanging in the corner of my web. Diakon, the miniatures, and the mottled thing are about to produce the most awful sounds. Diakon ushers the little ones behind the altar, and they cluster, yet line up in rows. They begin screaming at Diakon. The mottled thing unleashes wails from pipes hanging on the wall by banging on white flapping teeth stuck to a wooden box ten times his size. Diakon shifts parts of his face, reaches about with his upper legs, and screams back at the miniatures. The pipes’ wails ascend, and the Diakons’ screams scratch my eyes, and the miniature’s cries reach the beasts in the streets below. Bits of the mottled one’s exoskeleton fall to the floor for the Gefleckter to eat. The walls shake, and the metal holding the stained windows vibrates.

     When the screams stop and the miniatures leave, the mottled one follows, and after reaching into the mottled one’s throne of wails, he retrieves his feathered, talonless weapon. This time, he climbs the walls starting from behind the altar, It’s so strange how he wipes them. It makes no sense. He doesn't eat anything he kills He simply destroys lovingly woven webs, coupling couples, and lovingly spindled sacks of eggs. I stridulate at the massacre, but it's too late. Five sacks. Ten. Twenty. I lose count. An innumerable loss of lives, and my fangs drip.

     The Diakon’s grunts and huffs increase. I know he’s getting weary when clear, salty liquid drips off his—as he calls it—nose, but he’s at my window, and he crawls up the wall, reaching toward my web. He lowers his head to rub his nose against the crook of his upper leg, exposing vulnerable parts of his body. I lower myself and am repulsed at his smooth pedicel. I recoil at the feel of my legs against his exoskeleton, but for the sake of my people, I lower my dripping fangs to his flesh and bite.

    I feel my silk thread snap as Diakon’s feathered appendage smashes against my thorax. Three of my legs snap off. I watch them fall. The Diakon thrashes. I run down his back, trip down his lower legs, slip over more exposed flesh. The plane of white is ridged with tributaries of red and blue. They pulse with Diakon’s exertion. I feel the giant lean forward and crash against my window, shattering the glass. He screams. It's a pretty scream, and we fall from the gothic window.