Vent Space

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It was half dark, but the world outside was full of sounds of morning. A bird called, a horn blared. Voices rang out from beneath the window. She was between dreams and waking for the past hour, unable to discern between the two, suspended between fractured truth and a mystery. As soon as she situated herself, she’d slip back into sleep, and fall into the bizarre images interplaying in her mind.

In the dream there was a face. It looked like a face she knew, but it was shadowed, contorted, and obscure. Gradually though, it materialized and sharpened. It was closing in on her. She sensed the sweat beading on her body. Unintelligible voices rattled beneath the window. Soon they sounded as if they were coming from inside the room. She felt her heart in her chest, swelling. It felt like a truck inside her, her hot blood racing.

Suddenly a violent jolt sent her upright in the bed. The image in the dream faded, as if a door that led to her subconscious was rapidly closing. Within seconds she forgot about it entirely. The door shut. She threw back the covers and stretched her arms overhead, her fingers interlocked, the tiny bones cracking. She looked outside. A bird called, a horn blared. Voices rang out from beneath the window. The pale brilliant sun peeked into her bedroom. It was morning, and she had to get ready for work.

Orb Weaver of the Garden Variety postures like a relic from the year 2500. Cracked wide open as the strata of a stone broken clean, the face bears the marks of a cavernous interior life. Networks of symmetrical tubeways bend and wilt into colorful groupings of dimples, brows and incisors. Flatness stretches neurotically outward, tunneling through expressions of doubt, glee, confusion and dread.