Sweet Romance13 min read
The Spider and the Village
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"Tell me again," Barrett said, settling onto the hard chair by my bed. "Start at the beginning."
"I already told you." My voice scraped like dry paper. "I told you everything I could remember."
"But not everything we need," he said. "Try."
I looked at him. "You are sure this is the right thing? You are sure you want me to start?"
"Yes." He folded his hands the way a man tries to look patient. "I'm listening."
I breathed. "All right. Once more."
1
The first weeks felt like a holiday. The mountain air was clean, the children bright-eyed, the school small and warm. I would wake before dawn and walk the dirt lanes. I would collect little wild flowers, boil water, and pretend that this was the whole life I wanted.
"Why did you come?" a small boy asked once.
"I wanted to teach," I said. "And maybe to forget something."
He giggled. "You can't forget here. The mountains keep everything."
I smiled then. It was easy to smile at the beginning.
2
Then there was the boy who first smelled like cigarette smoke and bad jokes. He stood by the rice fields the day I left school to buy instant noodles.
"Hey," he called, smirking. "New teacher. Pretty for the city."
"Don't touch her," I said before I thought. The girl he had a hand on looked small in the dusk. She looked frightened.
"Relax." He smiled a crooked smile. "I'm Jaxon. My father, Callen, runs things. You like flowers? I bring flowers."
"Please, let her go," I said, furrowing my brow.
"You're the teacher," Jaxon drawled. "Don't you want someone to keep you company at night?" He reached for my hair as if it were his right.
"Back off," I said. "Really."
He stepped closer. "Or what?"
3
After that day, the classroom changed like the sky before a storm. The children no longer looked like children. They looked like a crowd with knives hidden in their pockets. They whispered when I entered. A page of handwriting once filled with careful letters became one giant, ugly word.
"Read it," I said to the blackboard. The ink seemed wet even when dry. Someone had written one word across a whole page: "WHORE."
I felt trapped by the letters. The children watched my face with bright, terrible interest.
"Who wrote it?" I asked the room.
A boy laughed. "Why? You did it yourself in the city, didn't you?"
I felt my blood run hollow. "My name is Frieda. I am your teacher."
They said nothing.
4
I went to homes. I went to the elders. I heard their jokes and their sideways glances. The village, which had been kind at first, became a machine chewing me into rumors. "She is from the city," one old woman hissed. "She is soft. She will bring shame."
I asked Annika Boyd, a girl I liked, "Do people say things about me?"
Annika, who was older and brave in a small way, looked down. "They say you go with men, teacher."
"Who said that?"
"Jaxon," she whispered.
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Do you believe him?"
Annika's hands clenched, the way a child tries to keep an adult secret. "He says many things. He says he will make money. He says he will marry me. He says he'll protect us."
5
For a time I thought I could scare him off. I told him I had a phone that would call the police. "I will record you," I said.
He laughed. "It will be one more story. No one will believe a city teacher. We are what we are."
"Don't you ever—" I started.
"Don't what?" Jaxon asked, calm like a man who had already planned the route out of shame.
"Don't hurt them."
He smiled in a way that showed he never feared consequences. "They are mine to do with. You will see."
6
They dragged me the day the school bell gave out. I remember the pounding on the wooden door. I remember the boys who did not look like boys when they stood in a circle and held me while men hit my ribs until they thundered.
"Don't scream," one of them said. "You are a city woman. You are easy."
They shoved me along the lane. There was a sound like a hundred small feet, like pigs, like rain hitting a tin roof. They put me in a room in Callen Wells's house.
"Play nice," Callen said when he came in. He looked like a tired businessman with the wrong shoes for the mud, a man who had learned to take things that belonged to others.
"Please," I whispered. "I teach their children."
Callen shrugged. "This is our village."
7
They put me in the pigsty eventually. It was a small place with damp straw and no window. A crude strap fixed my jaw so I could not speak the way pigs are muzzled. They fed me scraps. The pigs grunted next to me. I learned to hold my breath while a pig ate the same slop I had.
"You're a good little animal," Jaxon told me one night. "You will make the family proud."
"Please," I said only once to air that would not help.
8
The nights blurred. I lost time. I learned how to bend like a thing that lives under a foot. I stopped shouting because shouting only brought more blows.
"You're a teacher," Annika once said when she slipped in to give me a cup of water. "Why won't you fight?"
"Because there's nothing left inside me," I said. My hands trembled.
Annika's face crumpled like paper. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, teacher."
9
One afternoon, when the sky hung low and the air smelled of wet earth, the madness that had been growing inside me became a blade. I could not bear the thought that Annika—the girl with the steady hands—was to be traded like a thing. I could not imagine the soft voice that loved to ask about ketchup in the city being closed by a man's hand.
"Let her go," I said, though it felt more like prayer than demand.
"Not today," Jaxon said.
"I will not be taken," I said.
He pushed, I pushed, it was chaos and bone and hot breath. I found a knife in the kitchen because sometimes wounds look like escape. The house smelled of old oil and rice and sweat.
"Stop!" Annika cried.
"You're making a scene," Callen hissed.
I don't remember everything. I remember the knife and the metallic heat, the way Callen fell with a sound like a small animal. I remember Jaxon crying out and stumbling backward, trying to make himself a young man again.
10
Foster Gomes and two others were there. Foster had been Jaxon's friend, a man who liked to lift and break things. He reached for me, hands like clamps.
I acted. I do not know what led me to act with such cold. Maybe years of watching myself be softened into silence. Maybe the animal under the straw. Maybe the part of me that had once been a mother and had nowhere else to put its outrage.
"Don't!" Annika screamed.
The blade moved. There was a sound I will never forget. It is the sound nightmares make when they become real.
11
When the shouting stopped, the dark came quick. I remember covering them with clothes. I remember arranging two bodies on the bed like they were sleeping. I remember calling the flames to the kitchen stove so the light would smear and the clock would lose its face.
"I can't take this town anymore," I told myself as I fed the fire.
12
After the fire, I walked in a kind of sleep to the pigsty. I lay down, the straw biting my skin. I expected to sleep that sleep that ends all things. But the heat and the smoke made the villagers come. They called the police. They found me there, moaning, covered in ash.
"She is mad," someone said. "The city broke her."
Officials took pictures. Someone filmed. No one gave me water. Someone laughed. The world kept, in that hour, a voice that would not stop judging.
13
They brought me to a hospital, but not the kind with warmth and private rooms. A ward that smelled of disinfectant and pity. My skull ached; memory slid like oil. A steady man in uniform came to see me. He called himself Barrett Cross.
"Tell me what happened," he asked.
"I told you," I said. "I killed them."
"Tell me again slowly." He kept his voice like a net, calm and even.
14
He showed a photograph. The image was of me asleep beside a man. It was a private picture, stolen from a moment of weakness. My hands trembled as if from a fever. "Did you…" he asked.
"I remember," I said. "I remember being hurt. I remember being locked. I remember being told to be quiet. I remember the smell of pigshit and blood and a man's laugh. I remember Anna's face."
"Annika?" he corrected.
"Yes. She was there."
15
Barrett's face grew serious. He opened a file with other names. One was Foster Gomes—someone who had been present at the violence. Another was the village head—Callen Wells—whose fingers were in many pots.
"You were found with mandrake traces in your blood," Barrett said.
"Mandrake? The flower?" I laughed, but the laugh was a bird trying to fly.
"Mandrake can cause hallucinations, memory loss," Barrett said. "We have witnesses who say that different things happened that night."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Someone reported seeing you set the house on fire. Several people say they saw you with a knife. But others say the two men were already injured before the fire. There are inconsistencies."
16
He looked at me long and then asked one question that split the air. "Do you remember being kept in a pigsty?"
"Yes," I said. "Every night. The sound—"
He held up a hand. "We have footage. From cameras. Your classroom was full the day you said you were taken. People saw you there. You can't account for all the hours."
"So I'm lying?" I demanded.
"No." Barrett's voice softened. "Maybe."
17
I tried to tie the memory together. I found a loose thread: flowers. Jaxon had given me small bouquets. Annika once handed me a bunch of wild petals and said, "My sister taught me which ones to avoid."
"Who told you that?" I asked Barrett.
"Annika Boyd told the nurse something that matched the plant's description. The chemical analysis from your blood shows toxins found in mandrake — datura."
I frowned. "He used flowers to make me see things? To make me lose the hours?"
"Yes. He is known for making people 'disappear' with bribes in the past," Barrett said. "But here's the complication: Jaxon and Callen are dead."
18
"Dead?" My voice was small. "I killed them."
"That's one version," Barrett said. "Another is that a different fight broke out and that someone else intervened. There are witnesses who say Annika was missing that night and returned later. There are people who say you were at the pigsty. The forensics show knife wounds and fire accelerants."
"So what is the truth?" I asked.
"Sometimes truth is made of pieces," he said. "You have many pieces missing."
19
The court of the village turned spite into evidence. Social media whipped every rumor into wind. People who used to smile turned away. But then the county's paper came down with an investigation. Someone found ledgers that showed Callen Wells had been skimming funds for years. People who had profited from his silence began to lose their sleep.
"I want them punished," a reporter said into a recorder. "We will name names."
"Good," I told him, though I felt nothing.
20
Then the public punishment happened.
It began with a phone call that spread like the crack of a dry limb: a county investigator found ledgers and twenty years of deception. He listed names. The first on the list was Foster Gomes—who had been seen chairing the night's violence in the dark.
21
The county arranged a public hearing in the village square at midday. I was still in the hospital, but the news was loud even in the ward. They brought cameras. They brought microphones. The square packed with faces: old women with folded arms, boys with eyes like knives, mothers with children clinging to their skirts. Trees threw small cool shadows. People pressed forward like a tide.
A platform had been set up. The investigator, an official with a badge, stepped up. "We will explain what we found," he said, "and names will be recorded."
Foster Gomes was brought in under guard. He walked like a man who had been taught to look hard in public, toughened by small triumphs. He blinked at the crowd, tried to laugh, but his laugh was thin.
"Foster!" someone yelled. "You beat our teacher!"
"I did what had to be done," Foster spat. "She was a city woman. She brought it to us."
"Bring what?" asked an old woman. "Was she lying? Did she steal from us?"
The investigator read aloud: "Records show diversion of subsidies. Witnesses place Foster at the pigsty that night. Testimony shows Foster helped restrain the teacher, and stored images found on his phone show him with Jaxon the night of the fire."
A murmur ran through the crowd like wind across dry grass. Someone started clapping—one slow, savage hand.
22
Then they showed a screen. It flickered, showing photographs: Foster's hand on a wrist, Foster laughing over a glass, Foster lifting a strap. People gasped. A child covered her mouth. A man turned his head away. Someone wept loudly.
"Why did you do it?" a woman cried from the crowd.
Foster's jaw trembled. "We were scared," he said. "Callen paid us. He made us keep quiet. He said it would be better for the village."
"Better?" someone shouted. "For whom?"
"For him," said another. "He kept the money. We got scraps."
23
An old farmer spat on the dirt. "You think you take other people's money and then their lives? You think nothing happens to you?"
Foster's face went pale. He tried to speak. "I— I only did it for my family. He paid my son—"
"Your son?" someone mocked. "You sell your hands for thirty silver and call it need?"
They dragged a chair to the front. A woman who had once lent Foster water stood up and slapped him across the face. The slap echoed. The crowd hissed and some cheered. Foster stumbled, his voice a thin thing.
"You're a coward," the official said. "People here trusted you. You betrayed them."
Foster began to shake. "I never— I didn't mean—"
"Meaning won't bring them back," an elderly man called out. "You will stand where you can hear what we say."
They read out the thefts, read the testimonies. People stepped forward to tell how small kindnesses had been purchased and how threats had been used. They told of Annika's fear, of the times Foster had been at the edge like a vulture. The words fell like stones.
24
Then came the worst: a woman carried a picture in a small frame. "This is my son," she said, pointing. "This is the boy who went to the county hospital with bruises because he tried to stop Foster. Foster beat him until he bled."
Foster's knees buckled. His face crumpled into something like grief, then hate, then panic. He began to plead.
"Please," he said. "I didn't— I only did what Callen told me."
"Callen is dead," someone replied. "And you chose to follow. You could have stopped."
The crowd closed in. They did not drag him to a pit or a stake. They did worse for him: they took away what he had that mattered—his place in the village.
25
"From today, Foster Gomes is ostracized," declared the official. "He will not be hired for village work. He will forfeit his claim to benefits. He will be named publicly as collaborator."
"Shame!" the crowd cried.
"Shame!" they chanted it until Foster curled inward, like a man hearing waves drown him.
A cluster of villagers recorded him on their phones. "Record this," one woman said. "Let the county keep proof."
Foster knelt suddenly, hands clasped like a child. "Please," he begged. "I'll confess everything. I'll tell who else took money."
"Confess now," someone urged. He named names—small names, but damaging: a postman who had hidden letters, a merchant who had taken under-the-table cash. The confession unfurled like a rotten leaf.
26
The crowd's mood shifted when more names fell. Not everyone deserved scorn, but everyone had a piece in the circle. The villagers demanded restitution. The county agreed to audits and to remove funds. A radio blared the news for days.
Foster's punishment was not a single cruel thing. It was a slow unraveling: his livelihood denied, his name shamed in the square, his reputation reduced to photos and gossip. People would not sell to him. Children would point. He could not find work outside where his name traveled.
He changed. First denial, then rage. He tried to bargain, then to deny, then to cry. His face, once hard, became thin with hunger and regret.
27
There were other small punishments. A man who had helped burn the house—one of the younger boys who once laughed when I taught—was publicly expelled from the village militia. He was made to stand on the platform, while the crowd recited what he had done. Tears came from him unexpectedly. "I was foolish," he said, voice small. "I am ashamed."
"Shame him," someone cried. "Let him grow with the shame like a slow wound."
They timed the punishments in public: removal from positions, notices pinned to doors, names read aloud. People whispered, "Let this be a warning," and the words hung heavy.
28
I watched the footage in the hospital. My chest felt hollow, but there was a clean shock to it. The world had turned on a few men who had done wrong. It had, in a small way, been on my side for once.
Barrett came into my room and said, "They punished some. The county is taking action."
"Did they say I was guilty?" I asked.
"No," Barrett said. "You were deemed mentally ill at the time—mandrake-induced psychosis. That means you won't go to prison the way normal people would. They placed you here for treatment."
29
"Is that justice?" I asked him.
"What do you want?" Barrett asked back. "Prison? A headline? What is justice for you?"
"I want them to stop," I said. "I want the girls to be safe. I want the hands that grabbed me to be empty."
Barrett's eyes were steady. "They can't unmake what happened."
30
Slowly, the village changed. The ledgers were followed. The subsidies were traced. Some people accepted shame, some moved away. Annika and Fisher—both girls—left for the county under a program. Annika had a strange look now: older in a way that was not about age. Fisher stayed small and hopeful.
"Will you come back?" Fisher asked me one afternoon, at the station where the sun beat like a coin.
"I might," I said. "But I don't promise."
She smiled like a child who folds wishes into her pockets. "Call us when you get there."
31
Before I left the hospital, Barrett asked me one last time, softer. "Do you remember everything?"
"I remember parts," I said. "I remember eating with pigs. I remember Annika's hands. I remember the knife. I remember the flowers."
"Do you remember the flowers being given to you?" he pressed.
"Yes. Small white petals," I said. "Annika told me which ones were dangerous. She was afraid but brave."
He nodded. "You saved someone," he said. "In a way, you did."
32
We went to the station. The city heat hit like a hand. Annika stood among students, hair pulled tight, looks cleaned of the village dust. Fisher hugged me and smelled of soap.
"Wait," Annika said, quiet.
"What?" I asked.
"You taught me to read a book like a map," she said. "You taught me to imagine a place outside. I want that."
"Make it," I said. "Make sure you do."
She took a breath. "We will. We will be protected."
33
At the last minute, Barrett turned and called out, "Frieda!"
I paused on the platform.
"Yes?"
"Sometimes," he said, "there are things that are not exactly the truth, but they are shelter. You built a story to keep someone safe."
"I was trying to save a life," I answered.
"And you made of yourself a monster to protect a child," he said. "Do you regret it?"
I looked at the crowd. I thought of the pigsty, the straw, the smoke, Annika's face when she climbed into the train, the way Fisher waved until she was a small dot. "I have strange peace," I said. "I am tired. But I taught children to read. I taught them that words mean things."
34
We said goodbyes. The train's whistle sang. I watched the village recede like a photograph bleach-fading under sunlight. Barrett stood on the platform, hands in his pockets, like a man who had made a hard decision and was willing to live with the shade it left.
"One last thing," he said.
"What?"
"Be careful with flowers," he said. "The mountain keeps its own poisons."
I laughed softly, a sound like someone shaking rain out of a sleeve.
35
When the train rolled, I remembered a spider that lives on the mountain—small and red, the locals called it the red-crab spider. The mother of that species sometimes offers herself so her children might eat. I had thought of that spider in the pigsty, hundreds of times: a creature who gives her own body so the next generation can be fed.
"Was it right?" I asked myself. It is a question without an answer.
36
I took out a small paper packet Annika had given me long before things went wrong. Inside were dried petals she insisted were for tea. I looked at them and then I put them back. I would not brew them.
On the last page of my little black notebook I had written in a shaky hand, "I am a teacher."
That is what I am. That is what I will try to be, no matter the smoke in my lungs or the pieces of truth that will never fit together again.
The sun brushed across the carriage window. The train hummed like an insect. I closed my eyes and thought of Annika, of Fisher, of the red-crab spider curling around its young. I thought of a strange, terrible kindness that once made a mother give herself.
"I am a teacher," I whispered to the empty seat beside me, and the word sounded less like a shield and more like a promise.
The End
— Thank you for reading —