Troubadour Horror Zone: This is the seventh part of our new horror/thriller series, featuring creatures or myths. We will be posting a new story each week, written by a different author each time, with an introductory essay written by Chris Deal. This week the theme is about the trickster Anansi, and the story is written by CL Bledsoe.

Essay on the trickster: by Chris Deal

We have rules, you know, codes of conduct we are meant to abide by in order for society and the world to function in an organized manner. You run a traffic light and you get punished with a ticket and a monetary fine to instill the knowledge that what you did was wrong, that people could have been hurt by your actions. You kill a man, and the state will take your life, either through incarceration, or through capital punishment, so as to demonstrate to you, and to the rest of the populace, that you cannot live in mainstream society if you violate the rules set up. The idea of the social contract, a political and philosophical idea put forth by men like Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke, states that to maintain political order, or to create a sense of safety that people can use to go about their day to day lives, these very same people must give up complete sovereignty over their actions to a body that will instill order and a rule of law. The idea of the social contract is central to the understanding of why governments were created, perhaps even religions and familial organization.

If there is order and a rule of law, then there must be people who violate this order, people who go against the grain and strive to achieve their own ends above the desires of the people, or perhaps those who simply want to have a little fun and cause a little chaos, those who disobey the rules that have been instilled by law and concepts such as behavioral normalcy. These figures have popped up in mythology, folklore, and religion for as long as such ideas have existed, often in the form of the trickster.

In mythology, the trickster is a figure that in some way, will break either the rules of nature or those of the gods (though, of course, these are often the same things,) in a way that could be either completely benevolent, malicious, or some mixture of the two. The figure will not be above playing tricks on the gods or man, and can be considered a fool or a very cunning individual, or, again, a mixture of the two. A prominent trickster figure was the Norse god or giant (jötunn,) Loki, who instigated the death of Odin’s son Baldr (or Baldur). Baldr and his mother shared a dream in which he would die, and to prevent this, his mother Frigg had every object on earth swear never to harm Baldr, all except the plant mistletoe. When Loki heard of this, he made a spear out of the plant (some traditions hold that it was an arrow). Since no object could harm Baldr, the gods had taken up the pastime of throwing things at Baldr and watching them bounce harmlessly from his body. Loki gave the spear to Baldr’s blind brother, Höðr, who threw the spear that then killed Baldr. This murder would be the first of a series of events that would culminate with the Norse concept of Ragnarök, the final destiny of the gods.

The trickster character is very prominent in native cultures, where they are often seen as cultural heroes, beings that would change the world through the discovery or invention of something vital to the people’s survival. Prometheus, a Titan of Greek mythology, is a clear example of the trickster as a cultural hero. Prometheus tricked Zeus during the feast of Mecone. During a sacrificial meal given to Zeus, he hid the meat of a cow in an ox’s stomach and wrapped bones in glistening fat, angering Zeus when he chose the fat hidden bones. In retribution for Prometheus’ trickery, Zeus hid away fire. When Prometheus stole the fire and returned it to humanity, Zeus retaliated by making Pandora, the first woman, having Hephaestus create her out of clay, and then by chaining Prometheus to a great stone. Every day, his liver was eaten by an eagle and every night, because Prometheus was a Titan and immortal, his liver would grow back and he would suffer greatly again and again until he was saved by Hercules.

Another trickster is the Coyote, a figure widespread throughout Native American mythologies. In Plains traditions, such as Crow, it was Old Man Coyote who impersonated the Great Creator and created life in the form of man and the animals, and went as far as to name his creations. Other stories have Coyote as a clown like figure, playing tricks on the other animals, such as when he stole water from the Frog people because he was not happy that they had all the water and the rest of the animals had none. Coyote, with the help of the Spirit Chief, also killed the Thunderbird, the killer of men. Coyote figures in most Native American traditions.

Another prominent trickster is that of Anansi, a figure of West African folklore who is credited with obtaining all the stories of the world from the Sky God, Nyame. Nyame wanted the Python Onini, the Leopard Osebo, the Mmoboro Hornets, and the dwarf, Mmoatia in exchange for the stories. Anansi was able to trick all four and gave them to Nyame. The foolishness of the trickster was portrayed in another story, where Anansi stole all the wisdom in the world to keep for himself, keeping it all in a pot. He thought the wisdom wasn’t secure enough there in the pot, so he tried to move it to the top of the tallest thorn tree he could find, only it was too big for him to carry. He tried tying the pot to his chest, only it got in his way, preventing him from climbing. His son, Ntikuma, who had followed his father, yelled out that he should tie the pot to his back so he could climb up the tree. With his annoyance and frustration, Anansi dropped the pot, losing the wisdom to a rainstorm that washed it all to a river that ran into the sea, distributing it all around the world.

Trickster Story: Spider by CL Bledsoe

Underneath Boy Solum’s house there was a tunnel that led to a female spider’s nest. The spider had lived in the tunnel since before it was a tunnel. She used to have a regular burrow, but Boy’s father had unwittingly built the house on top of the burrow and left the tunnel for easy access underneath the house. Early on, the tunnel was covered by a grate, but at some point, this had been removed and never replaced. Soon after the house was built, the spider had begun to grow and take over the tunnel, devouring any animals that came near, which was a boon, in that Boy’s father had suffered quite a skunk problem until the spider began to grow. Unfortunately, the spider also devoured all of Boy and his siblings’ pets when they became too curious.

The spider had begun as a normal sized spider, but thanks to a leaky septic tank located in the yard just outside her tunnel which attracted quite a few bugs and vermin for her to eat, and a genetic predisposition to giantism, the spider grew.

And so the spider had ample food, but no mates. In fact, the spider’s appetite had grown voracious, and when any other spiders came near, she ate them, along with everything else, rarely even recognizing them as possible solutions to her problem. She spent long hours huddled under the occasional creak of the floor above her head lamenting her plight. Even the fattest raccoons, the youngest squirrels, couldn’t console her.

Every so often she caught a whiff of a male who seemed to carry all the genetic markers the spider sought in a mate. Being a spider, she was reclusive, but her need to continue her lineage was so great that one night she left her burrow and crawled up through an open window and into the house above. She found the emitter of the pheromones sleeping in its own den and wondered what she should do. The spider knew that this male was different from her, but she also knew that she was different from other spiders. She existed in a miserable liminal state, disconnected from the familiar world of her ancestors, but plagued with the same needs.

The man was uncomfortable because he knew that this was the last year he and his brother were going to be able to keep their farm. They were already selling off chunks of land to developers, and making more money doing that than farming, though it was a short-sighted profit. They were too old to work the land, and the man had already encouraged his sons to find other careers. The man was uncomfortable because all he’d ever done was work, and now, with the prospect of no more work, he felt adrift like an unmoored boat. He knew that the world changed as one aged, but he’d kind of hoped it would be for the better. After the upsurge of freedoms and opportunities following the lean years of his youth in the Depression; after the abundance following his service in the second Great War, in which he lost a brother; after his lifetime of working the soil, his own neighbors had abandoned him to save a few cents; the world had become petty, dumb and mean, stagnant like standing water, fat, but at the same time, unhealthy and malnourished.

The man was dreaming about his childhood when the spider crept into his room. In his dream, the man picked cotton with his younger sisters. It was a true dream, a moment he remembered well; the white soil coughed up dust beneath their bare feet. His sisters were clad in flour sacks which had been sewn into dresses. He wore overalls with room to grow. He’d looked out over the field, his family, and known, clear as the blue, cloudless Arkansas sky, that there was something better for them. It was something he’d never learned from his father or mother, but still, he believed it wholeheartedly. It was a moment that shaped everything he was to be from then on.

Aside from her size, the spider had inherited other things, namely, an ability to sing. All spiders, and, indeed, most bugs and animals, sing, but the spider’s song is special. It’s a siren’s song, luring travelers into the web. As this spider had grown, so, too, had her lungs, and her song now created in the man’s mind an image of great beauty. Specifically, he thought the spider was a woman, come to bed him, which she was, in a sense. The spider sang softly and made her way into the man’s bed. She attempted to mate with him as best she could and then, in a rare moment of precognition, instead of devouring the man, the spider decided to leave him to sleep, in case the awkward mating wasn’t a success. This is how desperate the spider had become.

She turned to leave but, overwhelmed with the habit of gluttony, turned and stung him quickly, injecting her slow-acting poison in his side. That way, he’d live long enough to allow another shot at breeding, but still be simmering, waiting.

She crept back down to her lair and fell into a deep sleep, imagining, already, the stirrings of eggs within her.

The man woke refreshed and with a hopefulness he hadn’t felt since long before his wife had died, back when the world was fresh and new for him. All day he thought of her, of her soft brown hair that looked like rich, damp soil, the smell and taste of her sex, her skin that was so thin and pale her veins colored it blue. Despite a rumbling in his belly, he went about his work with an energy he’d thought long gone from himself. He wished he had cows to milk or something physical to do, but at this point, the farm was mostly a bare-bones operation, and there was mostly only maintenance. So he did it and scratched up a few odd repair jobs and did those, then he drove out to the old levee where they used to watch the stars just after they were married, and watched the standing water with a delicious sadness.

The spider stayed in her burrow waiting for the change of fertilization to spread through her, but felt nothing. She lay all day in bliss, and then, into the night, the bliss began to shift into confusion, anger, despair, and once more into desperation. Once again, she followed the pheromone trail and once more she lay with the man, singing the song of forgetting and using all of her wiles to inspire fruitfulness. When it was over, she once again ignored her appetite and returned to her burrow, less sure this time, but still hopeful.

The man woke again, remembering not the first time he and his wife had made love, but the awkward fumblings, the heavy petting, that preceded it. His belly seized and shrank just the way it had the first few times he’d seen the toss of her hair revealing her perfect neck, ear, the mound of her backside discernable beneath her pleated skirt.

There was no work to do, again, so the man slung on his poison can and sprayed around the house for bugs. The spider was deep underneath the house, protected, and sat and waited while the already-poisoned bugs on the edges all came running towards the center to escape, where she devoured each and every one.

The man’s oldest son had been laid off when the plant he’d worked for a decade and a half moved to Korea. He spent his days gambling away his retirement in Tunica, hating himself for not job hunting, and yet still making no effort towards that end. The man had been avoiding thinking about this situation, but decided it was time to face it head on. He made some phone calls, and when his son stumbled in, broke and pissy, late in the afternoon, the man sat his son down and offered him a job selling catfish and buffalo fish to townsfolk, mostly blacks, who were the only loyal customers. It was fall, and if they hurried, they’d have time to get everything ready to catch the Thanksgiving crowd. The son was strangely quiet, as though pulled from quicksand after he’d already gone under, and he and his father made the long drive south to a man who raised fish, something they had previously done, but gotten away from with the plight of the farm. As they hauled their first load back, the son, though in his thirties, felt like a boy again, protected by his father. The man was thinking only of his wife’s wrists, the small of her back, and her neck, again, of which he was particularly fond.

The eldest son noticed the change in his father, but said nothing, and that night, after the old man had gone to bed, he received a phone call from the fishery in Walden. The son went to wake his father, and discovered a dark mass lying with him abed, writhing, moaning. He turned and walked away, forgetting the man who continued to wait on the line a full fifteen minutes before hanging up and deciding to call back the next day. The son never spoke of it to the father, and, aside from the odd dream, through a long-practiced force of will, never remembered the event at all.

If the spider hadn’t been so distracted by her own desperation, she would’ve noticed that the man wasn’t dying. Aside from the odd emission of foul smelling gas, he was physically healthy. This is because the spider had injected the poison directly into his stomach, where it had been neutralized by acid. The spider, on the other hand, was feeling not only sorrowful, but sluggish, weak from all the poisoned bugs she’d ingested. She lay that next day, imagining and then hoping and then finally feeling the stirrings of eggs within her. Her eyesight failed and then her will. As the life emptied from her, her husk was filled with joy and then this, too faded, and with her last effort, she pushed the eggs out onto her soft underside and died. It would be many weeks before the eggs hatched and devoured her body. Many of the offspring would die from the same poison that killed her, but one would not. As the man and his eldest son worked the fish, beneath their sleeping heads at night the spider would grow to the size its mother had been. It, too, was a female. It, too, would feel the pangs of need and would struggle to find solace. It would huddle its days through, filling its maw with whatever wandered its way, while the men worked and slept and ate above, feeling only the slightest itch of hunger below them.