BROUGHT UP BY SPIDERS

When I was a newborn I fell into a well.

I may have been dropped. I'm unsure. I was barely out of the womb.

I fell many hundreds of feet into the pitch dark of night and cried my lungs to rags.

At the bottom my descent was suddenly softened by gentle sheets of thread.

A papoose of webbing cradled me and I lay still in the cushion at the base of the world.

I stopped crying and cooed as rustling began in the thick of the blackness.

A large shadow stepped forward, tentatively, and then another.

The shadows trotted towards me across the threads and stared with lots of bulging eyes.

I gurgled.

The walking shadows nibbled the vernix from my body. They lapped at its cheesy taste.

Then they spun a blanket of silk that draped my little form and made me warm. 

I cooed.

The biggest shadow came closer and felt my face with something soft and furry.

It palped my cheek and forehead and slowly drew an invisible line around my skull, tapping my thin fontanelle.

I felt drool drip onto my mouth and I instinctively drank.

It was good and I puckered my mouth wanting more.

The big shadow lowered her maxilla and I suckled. The thing stiffened, then relaxed.

I could hear the feeder's book lungs slapping as I gorged my eager stomach with fluid.

When I was full the shadow rose and I smiled into the darkness warm and contented. 

My wardens both trilled, touched tarsi and padded away into the night gently clicking.

I slept soundly in their web and when I awoke they were both there like attentive maids.

Feeling the tender maxilla once more I suckled on something thicker than the last. A gloopier, more nourishing liquid with lumps. I gobbled it up from both shadows this time.

When their sucking stomachs ceased pumping I lowered my head and fell back onto the gossamer.

Day after day they fed me twice and I was growing.

Occasionally they re-wrapped me in a fresh cocoon as ice bloomed on the darkness around me and I felt cold flakes touch my face.

Every now and then the biggest shadow once more traced a line across my skull and morsed the tightening fontanelle, my brain twitching just below.

Every now and then I was pricked very gently and sensed something hot flow into my arm. It hurt the first time but after many many jabs I enjoyed its warm venomous tingle.

Several years passed and I had grown too big for the shadow web. My guardians, who had both tended me with care and affection, stared at my glistening eyes, their nightly coat of film intact since dawn. They cocked their heads and I sensed some agreement had been reluctantly reached.

Snipping away the bedding my parents positioned themselves beneath me and they climbed onto the darkness.

Piggybacked I rose with them as they ascended the night until eventually a circle was cut out of the dark.

They clambered on until they reached this circle. It was a cold pool of brightness that stung my pupils terribly.

My parents hauled me into it and I lay on the edge of something hard, my head still facing them in the safety of the black well. 

They cooed and clicked and stroked my face lovingly and I knew that something was about to change. I felt my book lungs empty and my throat tighten as tears sprang from my string of eyes. 

I caressed them both and gently, steadily they pushed me over the hard rim into the bright stuff.

I landed on my feet and looked up at the round wall from which I'd fallen. I scrambled to get back in but lacked the skill to climb the vertical stone.

I scoped all around me, my face wet with uncontrollable sadness and I was sure I heard my parents tapping in the darkness as they climbed home.

I remembered my mother tracing a line around my skull and rubbing my closing fontanelle and I felt my brain tighten. She was telling me to use it in this strange bright plain.

In the distance I saw a tumble of buildings and sensed food and warmth. I heard a baby crying.

Excited, my ring of legs quickly carried me there.

KNOCKOFF

I always had a feeling that I was a fake, a bootleg.

I first heard of it when my parents had me checked over for weak joints.

"He's got weak joints I'm afraid," said our GP.

"He's always been a fragile boy," explained my mother.

"He's not fragile. He's poorly made. Johnny lacks articulation. He's cheap," replied the doctor, "Give him vitamins every day and fish oil."

My mother bought 6lbs of fresh cod liver at the fish market as I stood there staring at a jar of real fish eyes blinking back at me.

My Dad ground those livers with his bare hands and wiped his face, smearing the stuff allover it. He ground his teeth and flexed his massive biceps as the offal perished in his grip. He was more like two men than one. I was half a boy.

They ladled the liver oil down my throat as my weak arms flailed like cooked cotton.

"Uuuurgh" I cried with non-patented lungs and filled up with fish juice like a small jug.

"Now you can run around and be a stallion like me Johnny" my Dad roared pounding his bare chest with his tattooed fists.

My Mum smiled as I got up stiffly off the kitchen table and flopped to the slippery lino.

"Black pudding for tea. Get some blood in you boy," she smiled dropping thick puds in boiling water. They looked like nooses being sterilized.

I ate the puddings awkwardly with a knife and fork in my rigid hands. I sat at the kitchen table. My Dad shook a storm of salt and pepper over me.

"Put hairs on your chest that will!" He declared rifling his fingers through his own.

"I don't have any hair Dad. I don't have any at all. It fell out after a few months remember." I whimpered.

He stared at me and shook his big head.

"What did we do wrong Son? Why are you so cheaply made?"

I dressed in second hand clothes and knotty woolen socks an Aunt had knitted. Nothing fitted right and my boots were too big. My toy rifle didn't work and my helmet was cracked, the chin strap dangling. It was shoddy, the whole damn thing. My unfinished face scrunched as I tried to cry but there just wasn't enough detail to do it.

I crawled into my plastic bag and lay flat with my clumsy rifle at my side. My Mum had put a medal in there to cheer me up but the pins were blunt and it wouldn't stick to my army jacket.

Staring out from the open cupboard I saw my parents phoning the agency. They wanted a real one they said. Not a knockoff. They wanted full articulation, flocked hair and proper hands. Oh and a facial scar. That was important. The neighbour's small man had a facial scar.

I smiled without lips and tried to imagine a scar. I slowly closed my already closed eyes and turned.