Tuesday's Tales - 19th feb

Working to this week's Tuesday's Tales prompt of 'Spider,' I am continuing with a short snippet from another piece of my current WIP

She shouldn’t have walked out in a temper like that. Ha!  When did she ever listen to good advice? Even when it was her own advice?

She’d taken her tantrum, for that was what it was, out on her loving parents. Said some unforgivable things to them, and rushed from the house without a cardigan, let alone a jacket.  It wasn’t their fault her boyfriend had changed his allegiance so abruptly.

She studied the rain running down the cave walls; well, hardly a cave, more like a scrape in the rocky hillside, and wondered when the rain would stop.  Wondered when the throbbing pain in her twisted ankle would subside enough for her to retrace her steps back home. 

Her parents would ground her for a week. And who could blame them? She’d been devastated after Tyler dumped her in favour of the newest recruit in the ‘meals-on-wheels’ team.

No not those members of the Women’s Guild, or whatever they were, that went out delivering meals to the needy folk who couldn’t get about any more.  No, their teachers had signed them up for work experience helping volunteers deliver meals to patients in hospital.

A movement in the cave entrance caught her attention.  A spider scurried round its web every time a rain drop landed on it. Poor spider, she thought, fooled by the rain, just the same way she’d been fooled by Tyler.

Perhaps he’d come looking for her. Her heart thudded in anticipation then resettled at its normal pace. Of course he wouldn’t.  Why would he tell her parents he wanted to speak to her?  The newbie, what was her name… Rachel, had made a point of telling her Tyler asked her to pass on his message…

The scumbag couldn’t even tell her to her face he was dumping her.  Well thanks to the industrious spider, which had extended its web almost across the whole entrance of her shelter, anyone passing by could be forgiven for thinking there’d be no one beyond the web and not take time out to search the area.

Perversely she welcomed the seclusion, but as the rain continued to fall and water seeped over the floor and ran in rivulets around where she sat, her stubbornness melted into anxiety

Who, she wondered, using anger to try and force her rising fear away, had killed a spider?  Didn’t they know that if you killed a spider it would rain?  Whoever it was must have killed millions of them, the rain was falling so hard now she couldn’t see past the wall of water beyond the cave entrance.

 

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