By Colleen Anderson
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
~William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
After the breakdown, the howling void of New York feeding on her, Kylie withdrew from the whole wide world. She sold her condo and moved north, far north and east to Smithers, BC, where you could still rent a place for six hundred a month. The town’s smallness limited the worst drug available to acid, and the idea of a wild party amounted to six people drinking wine until 2 a.m. Best of all, the cool blue regard of the mountains, the golden rustling poplars, and the river’s heady rush made it an ideal place to recuperate.
A quiet place. Unnerving and remote enough that it took getting used to, for the first month. After Soho, where the quiet hours had held a constant conspiratorial hum, metal bins that clanked hollowly and other disembodied scrapes, coughs, yells and scufflings that haunted the Stygian gaps between buildings, this place seemed alien. But Kylie wanted alien. Yes. Yes, she did. She knew that, deep down. She just had to reach that center and wrap it in the rich nature of leaves and earth and not regard it as something that watched her.
The Bulkley River rumbled by, unperturbed by her presence though she couldn’t say the same. Her easel held a canvas covered in a wash of pale blue. Between her lips, the well-chewed, wooden end of the brush felt like an old friend. The mumbling river should have smoothed her brow. A beautiful ribbon of water, full of azure and pale jade from the glaciers. Truly it was, but it didn’t inspire her. The mountains, too passive and watchful, the trees, their leaves fluttering like dancers faded after a night at the ball. She’d moved positions three times, yet a good angle remained elusive. Where had her passion gone?
Deeper within her, nestled the tenacious, rooting dark seed of addiction. The drugs had been easy to stop, easy to start, to switch to drinks, or food, or sex, or shopping. It hadn’t mattered, something always whispered alluringly, and she hurtled through the city’s lifeblood, always touching the wild jangling people who throbbed with so much life.
Part of her yearned for that past while she shuddered, convincing herself that the river spit chilled her. A deadly allure, to fall into, and be consumed by the raging vortex of constant activity. A person could never keep pace with a city.
Her addiction had been New York. Beginning with the quaint coffee shops, the endless galleries and shows, the myriad shopping trips in the chic center; a thousand things to do, watch, be. The infatuation developed like a voracious spider growing fat in its web. She had started working for the magazine, and the true slippery ride started, and oh so heady. It began with work, then friends, then going for drinks. Then the all-night parties, the coke to keep awake the next day, the trade shows and galas to attend as part of information gathering, the need to see and be seen. To be part of the hub, alive and at the center of what made life lively. And always, the city had demanded more.
She stayed for her art, she had said, to grasp the colors, but in the end the vampiric city sucked the life out of her, spiraling her into a long perpetual motion of need and fear. Her art, a loosely coined term to cover the weak Photoshop manipulations of other people’s pictures, suffered. No. It had died and come back as a cadaverous husk sloughing originality and taste for fast-food colors and the party line in stock graphics.
Kylie finally imploded after two tight deadlines, a bucket of coffee for food, three gala affairs and enough coke to resurface Santa’s factory in a new shade of white. After a week’s hospitalization, she left the city, skeletally thin, numb; another bit of chaff tossed from the vicinity to make room for new flesh on which to feed.
Smithers—not even a blip in her interests, a place even cockroaches ignored, a town she had driven through once, so far from the center, fashion and fads—had called to her. Or rather, in the absence of the city’s droning, hypnotizing call, she had imagined its beckon. Come here, be with nature, learn to draw and paint again. Find yourself.
Her six years as a worm in the Big Apple made this an unknown land. Did soldiers feel this way after returning from war; the normal looking like alien landscapes? Four months later and she’d put some weight back on, but she needed more balance.
Smithers exuded a difference; tiny, with only five thousand or so, cocooned between mountains, with just enough music and art to save it from being completely dead. Sex offered itself everywhere, but Kylie had studiously avoided the concerts, even the coffee houses, keeping to herself, to her books, her paints. She would make this work. She must recover her center.
Kylie stood and stretched her too-slim frame, bending over to ease her back and shoulder muscles. The inspiration must return, the eye for true beauty; not the thin pastiche of plastic and commercialism. She just needed some time. Watching the river, she backed up to a white-barked tree, a rustle of yellowing leaves glowing golden against the hard blue of the sky. Tilting her head to each side, adjusting her view, she noticed a web strung from the tree’s branches to a shorter bush beside it.
An oddness caught her eye, held her. Suspended, it contained a perfection, a diamond glisten to the water drops upon each strand. Gossamer did not describe this structure. The strands looked strong, tensile, like cords, almost pulling the neighboring bush to the tree. A construction of silk.
Kylie dragged her chair and easel over and sat facing the tree and web, the water rushing by behind. What looked wrong? Something…the angle. She had seen webs that formed a faultless symmetry, lines and ribs a unique architecture. There were webs also, spawned of chaos, filling corners as if an old man’s beard had sloughed off every which way. This went beyond. Not chaos, not symmetrical geometry, the filigreed network lay on a horizontal plane, like a platter, with struts of silvery white reaching into the branches.
Activity besieged it. Such webs usually hung quiet and quivering in anticipation of the next unwary, succulent morsel. This one jostled and trembled with the goings to and fro of…of insects. No, arachnids, spiders mostly but a few others as well. Kylie realized her consternation by the ache of her jaw as she nearly bit through the brush handle. What type of spider worked in concert with others? Most were solitary. In fact, she knew nothing of what differentiated a female or male, how or even when they mated. How much nature went on around people who were cowled in blindness?
For the first time, after so many months, Kylie felt the stirring of intrigue, of interest. A worthwhile ally, or muse to render. Strangeness. She’d had enough of beauty and the plasticization of it in New York. There had been many examples of splendor, preened and pampered, formulated and contrived. She sat in the middle of natural beauty. Maybe unnatural, but in a way that spoke of nature’s aberrations, not those of mechanization. Here, a true mystery began, not one manufactured, that hearkened back to times when firelight flickered on cave walls, chants and drumbeats echoed through caverns and hearts equally, and one connected to the very pulse of the earth.
Kylie applied colors to her palette and began painting. Vermillion, chartreuse, ocher, umber; a myriad of pigments formed a world across the canvas. But it was a small world. An expanse within a microcosm. Limiting. Most of the major details had been set when she stopped, pushing the stray strands of her bangs back.
It changed, coalescing before her eyes. But as she pulled back from the image, she looked to the real-life action. Allure held her, pulled her forward; silver and jewel sparkles, dark movement, somehow disturbing. Something enticing about a spider’s web gone askew, drawing her in.
* * *
Each day, the strange platform drew Kylie back, to complete her painting and renew her connection to something other than New York. Every piece she finished symbolized hope for freedom, a lightness that did not come. Something about the hectic activity of the spider’s web, the comings and goings repulsed her. It was too busy. The too-many-legged scuttled with too much purpose. Kylie shook her head. Even now, these months gone by, the bustle of the big city affected her view. And still she yearned for it. Wanted to be part of that activity, not the pastoral passivity that she tried to practice. A soul-sucking vacuum awaited those who succumbed; they, unwitting lambs in the frenetically heady moment−until it ate you.
Tears trickled down her cheeks. Healing eluded her. She needed to bring about a change of heart. Where did she have to go to reach a detachment from that wild world that had eaten her more than she had ever received from it? Ferocious swipes at her face knocked the tears away.
The web challenged her and revealed itself slowly over days of applying pigments. She’d filled five canvases, knowing she loved its busy-ness, fearing that she might succumb. It wanted to draw her in, reveal her static existence. If she could not shed her unhealthy addiction, she would be trapped, snared by these unnaturally acting insects; just another thing in the web. Yet, the beautiful and unusual lace captivated her.
Three weeks swirled by; four, and still Kylie painted the tensile labyrinth which showed no sign of decay, of entropy. It held on, adamant in its determination to survive, and its denizens scuttled to and fro. To study minutiae, she moved closer, peering along the strands to the anchor points. Then she saw the ugliness that had remained hidden. Wrapped in mummified casings, each anchoring strand held drops of insect carcasses. Carapaces glinted through the silvery threads: the iridescent exoskeletons of beetles, black spotted ladybugs, blue bottle flies, even other spiders curled like a clutch of eyelashes. Fascinated, revolted, she squinted at the details. Several spiders, bulbous and shiny, scurried to these spots, busily chewing on some wrapped morsel as if it were a burrito.
She bit her lip, feeling the pull. Weight had slithered away from her again. Obsessed with painting, with this peculiar web, she had not yet achieved the equilibrium she thought nature should instill. Perhaps if that balance showed more in the web.
The unbalance remained. Kylie laughed, a little hiccup that escaped her as she rubbed her hands up and down her legs. The extra sweater and coat took only the slightest chill away. But icy fingers dug deep into her gut and squeezed. How can you escape the web unless you understand its maze?
Cringing, dancing skittishly at the thought, Kylie moved closer to the web and reached out to pluck one of the cocooned carcasses from its lair. She pulled it off; it resisted slightly, tugging the strands with it as if reluctant to let go its final resting place. Kylie dropped the wrapped shell of some insect to the ground. It adhered to her fingers and barely moved.
She shook her hand. Then shook it again, harder, breathing fast. Panting. Still it stuck. Squealing, she spun in a circle, trying to dislodge the thing until a glimmer of logic shone through and she swiped her hand across the grass again and again. Shivering, making odd little noises, wiping her hands like Lady Macbeth, still Kylie had to look, to discover if her damage had changed anything.
The webby doily sported a small tear. Picking up a slender twig, Kylie pulled off another mummified cadaver, wrapping the strands around the stick like candy floss. She lay that one on the ground, then proceeded to grab more sticks and wrap more desiccated bodies. In no time she had a row of twigs with webby Q-tip endings. But it hadn’t stopped the spiders on the web.
Kylie giggled. She’d made a Swiss cheese web. Not very tasty though. She watched the repair work of a couple spiders while the others scuttled in various directions. The encroaching shades of night made her bend closer and closer to the alien, insect sculpture, but she refrained from touching it. Eventually, the night painted everything, so she packed away her supplies and left.
* * *
Her dreams throbbed and bulged; busy-ness, scurrying, dark shapes, strobelight colors, laughter. Kylie moaned, tossing, feet kicking, trying to escape until she sat up gasping, swallowing swathes of darkness into her soul. Darkness to blanket, to cocoon, to hide her away from the frenetic core. It was within her, part of her. Addiction. What would remove it? What? No other place existed for her to run to, no land farther on Earth that offered salvation. It stalked her, no matter what.
Dawn did not find her for Kylie had escaped its opening eye and made it to the riverbank. She dropped the easel and brushes and stood staring at the water obliviously rushing from some mountain lair, scurrying on its way forever and ever, never at rest, never at peace. She paced it, walking with the flow, stumbling over rocks, striding back, chewing her knuckles, stopping and staring, then repeating the motions. The sun had been watching her for two hours when she finally halted and stared at the ground.
Tubes lay like colorfully abandoned corpses, lifeless without the brushes that gave them the outlet of creation. The brushes and easel were sadly derelict. Kylie shuddered and turned away, toward the tree, the bushes and the abode of the frenzied inhabitants. She clenched her fists, afraid to see what had happened to her destruction of yesterday.
She had left behind the tornado of nightlife, and yet here it was, clothed in nature’s garments. She shook her fists and screamed at the sky, jumping up and down, stomping the earth. The eye of the storm. She had to crawl toward the center, to the calm. Only to bring silence, stability, quietude. She just needed to find that small pebble and let the stream move around her. Her breath came in gasps, small mushroom clouds of air pluming from her mouth. Frantically, looking about for that serenity, Kylie saw a fist-sized river rock. Scrambling over the bank, she grabbed it and ran back up.
Then she sat cross-legged, between trees and river, and plunked the rock down in front of her, on her legs. Her hands burrowed like underground animals into her sleeves, seeking warmth and latching on to her wrists. A deep breath ran a jittery path to her lungs. Again, she breathed, feeling the clutching panic at her heart. Again! And slowly, slowly the tunnel cleared as she inhaled the crisp autumn air. The corridor opened into the eye of tranquility. Kylie deflated, letting all air out of her lungs, relief flooding her.
Concentrate. Concentrate. She worked at letting the tension drain from her shoulders and brow. Her heartbeat settled and a vast plain of gray opened before her. Calm, peaceful gray. Silence seeped into her like crystals into water. Pewter over silver, sky over water. A scene to be captured. A ripple appeared in the water. A crow cried, shattering the silver into a thousand coins. They danced, falling, bouncing around. Beautiful, tantalizing, Kylie had to touch it to be part of it.
She opened her eyes and beheld the trees, the gossamer doilies still strung in the branches, the largest, aberrant lacy disk somehow as whole as the day before. Before she had wound holes into it. A gray plate with small meals enwrapped. Ensnared once again, Kylie moved to watch the web, drawn into the sickly activity, unable to look away. No, she couldn’t look away, couldn’t turn the other cheek, couldn’t resist the living gyration of construction and ingestion, the fatalistic demise of the victims.
The city, any city moved too quickly, eluding capture by any Jack in the Beanstalk entrepreneur. Cities pulsed with life—too big, too grandiose, too long lived for one such as Kylie to catch and hold onto. The web, the weird life within it, revealed only a glimpse of itself, something older, far more encompassing and inescapable. Something abiding and sentient. Everything swelled, bigger than the mote of Kylie’s existence. A sob escaped her as she realized she adhered to the web as much as those shiny, strand-wrapped specks. She fell and fell and fell. Nothing would stop it, nothing, except something farther than Earth.
Kylie scrambled over the tufted grass, grabbing up her canvas and paint. Quickly she pulled off the caps and squeezed citron yellow onto the surface, and then a tube of carmine, another of chartreuse. She smeared it, covering the white expanse, drawing lines, covering her fingers in colored sludge. Again and again, she squeezed and smeared, squeezed and smeared. Retreat, a place she must find, a quiet too far for the chaos of Earth to reach. Too far for her to be drawn in. So far, that she might never return, never fall into the web. But even as she receded she knew that someday she too would be cocooned away to be enjoyed later, something to savor. Maybe a work of art, maybe her mind. Where was the eye of the storm?
The sun drowned itself in the river. Kylie still squeezed crumpled tubes and smeared her hands over the canvas. She never noticed the spider that crawled up her sleeve.
* * *
Colleen Anderson, a Ladies of Horror Fiction, Canada Council, and BC Arts Council grant recipient, has been published in eight countries. An award-winning author, her works appear in Amazing, Cemetery Dance, Weird Tales, and HWA Poetry Showcase. She is a Rhysling Award winner for “Machine (r)Evolution” and a two-time winner of the SFPA’s dwarf poetry contest. Author of four poetry collections, Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins, is her latest with another coming in 2026. Her fiction collections, Embers Amongst the Fallen, A Body of Work are available online, with a mosaic novella coming in 2027. Colleen freelances as an editor, and has served on the SFPA executive as well as British Fantasy Award and Stoker juries. She lives in Vancouver, BC where she searches for mermaids. www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com