Fiction - Watch and See by Ananya Gondesi

A bowl of grapes. It’s the only thing sitting in a spotless kitchen. A man walks in, cleanly shaven. He matches the atmosphere of the room, like he’s meant to be there. It’s eerily quiet. No sound is heard except for his footsteps on the floor. They’re harsh and unnatural, and it makes him unsettled. Now it’s ruined the whole thing, he thinks to himself. He walks over to the bowl of grapes. Carefully picking up the chair and moving it back so it doesn’t scrape the floor, he sits at the glass table. He takes a white handkerchief and wipes his hands, puts it back in his pocket. He reaches for a single grape and puts it in his mouth. He continues like this, sitting in complete silence and eating grapes like a complete psychopath. Finally, he stands up and wipes his hand once again before folding it neatly and putting it back in his pocket. He coughs, then again...then again. He continues to cough, holding onto his chest. Something’s stuck, he thought. I think...I might be choking. He holds his neck in his hands as the air is slowly draining just like the color from his face. Something flies out of his mouth and he catches it in his hands. It is a tiny, shriveled up spider, still shaking in his hands.

A moment of silence.

Millions of tiny spider shovel out from inside of his mouth, coming out and covering every inch of his body, crawling on his skin, shaking, going inside of his well tailored suit, falling on the white floor. He can’t even scream because there are so many spiders coming out of his throat. He falls to the ground as the spiders run out, and finally there comes an end as he is not able to breath anymore. They scurry back into the bowl of grapes and nestle back inside of them, leaving the kitchen as clean as it was before.