"How was your day?"
"Fuck."
"Hmmm?"
"Fuck."
"I heard you. What happened?"
"Studied. Thought about sex. Walked the dog. Killed a spider."
"Ah. Boring-'fuck,' then?"
"Fuck. No."
"Had sex 'fuck?'"
"No."
"Then what?"
"I fucking killed a spider!"
"Why's that so awful? It guts get in your eye or something?"
"Dammit! No! I killed it! I should fucking die, too- levitical law says so. Death is to be punished with death."
"You don't agree with that. Besides, it is just a spider."
"No, it was just a spider."
"Fuck you."
"Dammit it's- it wasn't 'just a spider.' It was real. Alive. A body that moved. Stopped moving so well when my book smashed it. I realized what I was doing and started to cry- cry, crush, cry, crush. I couldn't kill it and make it suffer. I'm fucking heartless but I just couldn't do that. Mutilate it. Send it back home on five legs to its lover. See if that lover still felt the same about it. Instead I just took its lover away completely. Fuck- I just- I keep thinking..."
"Yeah?"
"I keep thinking... the damn spider wasn't doing anything. I committed a random act of violence. Murder."
"And you keep thinking...?"
"I keep thinking of my lover. I see the dead body on the street, run over or avulsed limbs or blood screaming from a silent heart. How unexpected. How my heart would ache when it know it's other half has stopped beating. How life would keep breathing and my lungs just wouldn't stop until I sucked in all the oxygen in the world. And I'd die and the world would just keep turning because it stops for no catastrophe."
"Oh, God."
"Fuck."
"Let's go home. Please."
"Home. That's where I decided the spider was headed. Never got there, did it? Probably its lover had a surprise planned- there'd be moths and sex- I told you I was thinking about sex today- and a beautiful web. And I killed it. The spider never got there. I squished it, saw its legs crumple and twitch."
"Let's go to... the city. No spiders there."
"No spiders, but my lover might be there. Corpse on old pavement, bleeding or naked and so, so still. Bullet wound or tire treads. Maybe just a chalk outline, maybe not. Maybe like the spider- crumbled heap on the ground and no one's got the heart to move the body."
"It's still there?"
"Yeah, and so's my dead lover."
"Your lover's dead?"
"Of fucking course."
"Why?"
"Karma's a bitch."
