Malachi

“I know I look like a monster now, but I used to be a good man. In another life, I had a kind wife and a beautiful son. My wife and I wanted a big family with lots of children, but we lost many babies before they could breathe in the world’s wonders. The grief almost killed us, but we refused to give up. Our faith paid off. We were finally given one strong baby boy, and we cared for him with full hearts and unconditional love. My family was everything to me, but I lost them. And then I lost myself.”

“What happened to them?” The young girl quietly listened to the old man’s story as she stepped closer to him. He sat in a harrowing live oak tree dripping with Spanish moss and sadness. Within the weaving tree’s ornate filigree was the old soul of a lost man wearing the mask of a wandering spider. He had eight crying eyes that were as black as a raven’s feathers. The little girl reached out to touch one of the wandering spider’s eight hairy legs. She felt his haunted past prickling down her spine, and softly spoke to him again as he creeped into the palm of her hand. “How did you lose your family?”

“My son was eight years old when we lost him. He was taken by a cruel man with a few other neighborhood boys. We searched the hot summer days and the cold cloudless nights. The boys were missing for four days before they escaped their kidnapper. All the boys came home except my Jacob. My boy didn’t come home. My only son gave his life to save the other boys. Jacob died so they could live. He was a good strong boy; an honorable boy with a soul too pure for the living world.”

The girl couldn’t imagine the cruel grief of losing a child. She was only a child herself. She lowered her long lashes as her chocolate brown eyes welled with the wandering spider’s heartbreak. Sorrow and salt stained her pink cheeks.

The soft-spoken old man leaned back and sat upright on two long spidery legs and bared his grotesque body. His small size seemed to triple and he became a fearsome sight marked the unjust death of his only son. The brownish-grey hairs on his poisonous fangs dripped with rage. He became a monster in the palm of the girl’s hand. He seethed and wept and continued retelling his fall from grace.

“My wife and I died with Jacob that day. How could we go on without him? My wife fell to pieces. She couldn’t leave the house. She couldn’t even leave her room. I couldn’t stop myself from sitting in Jacob’s room. I spent hours there. My wife killed herself eight days later. I lasted four summers without her and Jacob before I hung myself with Jacob’s bedsheets. They didn’t smell like him anymore. How could I go on without them? Now I’m stuck here in this nightmare world tortured by death and demons.

"I used to a good man. Now I’m a monster trapped as a spider wandering through Spanish moss chandeliers. I'm lost here forever. I have nothing left but an eternity of loss.”