Spider’s Bite

a short story

Poppies! Poppies! Poppies! I sang, skipping along the countryside. I had been restless for days and very much in need of the delicate flower. Such a beautiful flower, such a delightfully intoxicating blossom! I was in the height of frenzy, my friends. Your dear old Lorenzo, eyes sparkling with tears and a weary body carried on a pair of restless, dancing legs. I was such a merry-looking fellow, really. But, friends, on the inside, oh! On the inside lived a cruel and tormenting disease. I turned right there on the road and coughed releasing fiery droplets of blood that settled like unholy dew on the pretty blossoms along the road. Oh! Such a horrendous malady! Only if you know of my disease, my friends, should you be able to understand my unsettling tale. You see, I was a desperate man, an ill man, a man banished from his own home because of the poison that ran through his veins.

Fortunately for me, your dear old Lorenzo, my ailment resembled very closely the ailment one suffers when injected with a spider’s venom. The symptoms of my malady (combined with the yearning for poppy) were so similar that anyone unaware of my rare and deadly affliction would readily, and maybe eagerly, call me a victim of some vicious arachnid. The only difference, really, was that a man, such as your dear Lorenzo, when affected by my torment will linger on in pain. A lady, when infected, will die…