Visitors - FFM 2010

"Mommy! Come quick! The spiders 'r doing it again!"

Ethel shouted up the stairs at her son, Bob, to get the aerosol can.

"Hurry up, Bobby. I'll get a light!"

The mother quickly grabbed the kitchen matches from the little shelf above the sink, and then hurried out into the garden, where her youngest, Kiera, was staring at the spiders. Ethel grabbed her and pulled her back, even though she knew there was nothing to do until Bob came with the aerosol.

"Mommy, why are they doing that?"

"They're from Mars, sweety. We don't know."

The spiders from Mars were creating a net, a net consisting of themselves. Each about the size of a palm, and red as the sandy planet they came from, they crawled on top of each other like trapeze artists, only kept aloft thanks to their spindly frames. Ethel didn't think they really looked all that much like spiders, but that's what they were known as.

They started to make the vibrations. Kiera sobbed quietly. Ethel covered her daughter's ears and shouted towards the house.

"Bobby! Hurry – up! They're almost done!"

The red, pudgy face of her son came running as fast as he could out of the house, his jeans unbuckled and his t-shirt on the wrong way. But at least he had remembered to bring the can of hairspray.

"Sorry mum! I was sleeping, mum!"

Ethel told Bobby to hold his sister – she practically had to scream to be heard over the vibrating sound the now harmonious spiders were making. That's what the man on TV had told them: avoid spiders attempting to create 'harmony'. She placed the can between her legs, and then lit a match. She went as close as she dared, keeping the match lit, and then shook the can vigorously a few times before bringing the muzzle right up to the flame, trained straight at the perfect geometric figure of the singing spiders.

Moments before she let the jet of her makeshift flamethrower incinerate the strange balancing act – like the man on TV had told them to – she almost thought she could hear some sort of melody, underneath the sound they were making, a melody, with words; like a scratchy recording of an ancient radiowave being pinged back across infinitesimal distances, an echo of an echo.

...
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie
...

Afterwards, Ethel led her children inside, and then used the garden hose to clean away the charred remains of the silent spiders.