The Web We Weave...then run screaming from.

Keith had just left the house, and Mama remarked at how much weight he had lost, although she said it in the way one would remark on the quantity of puss leaking from a ghangrenous wound. This is when dad chimmed in, his words trailing off into a gutteral whisper of disgust, "Yeah, but he's still got that...baaack." He then outlined what he considered to be Moody's back in the air with his hands, as if he was caressing a large fleshy shell.

"It's kinda like Liz Gray" Mama continued, again with the voice inflection reserved for a coroner, "lost all that weight but has that big hulk back" Her face then matched her tone of voice, which somehow prompted Daddy to respond.

Daddy's face looked like he had just seen Schindler's List and was stiffling a chuckle, "I HAAAAATE backs. I just haaaaaaaate them. They're so grosss! I'll bet if Keith Moody and Liz Gray had a kid, it'd just be a baaack." he hissed.

Mind you that this is less than fifteen seconds after Keith crossed the threshold from our house. He had been helping Abbey and I work on Abbey's term paper, which meant he had spent the night writing while Abbey and I bounced around the room, tapping everything with sticks.

I gazed out the window and saw him sauntering towards his car. His thinning waist and the large insultable bulk that swaggered like an old man carrying a bundle of lumber. Dad came and stood behind me and we watched perhaps the nicest guy in the world leave our darkened house. "You know, he's worked really hard to lose all that weight. It's taken him two years." I mentioned casually.
"Huh, ....that's soooome discipline." he said.

As the lumbering figure made it's way through our yard, we reflected a minute on Keith. With each step across the grass we were reminded of his genteel nature, a kindness beyond his means, a heart of gold, and the spider webs that criss-crossed our yard from tree to tree. Dad and I watched as he flailed and slapped himself trying to get free of the webbing matting his hair. Soon Abbey and Mama would join us at the window sill. Keith flounders around the yard for a few more seconds and we can hear him swear as he makes an awkward, ducking wind-sprint to his truck. He glanced back at the trampled webs, then got in his car and sped away.

Later that night, as I was lying in bed, I remembered hearing him swear. His frantic run from yard to car caused him to cuss in front of all of us. Then it occurred to me. Just before he got in his car he looked up. For a split second he looked back at those webs. He gazed with unsure disbelief in his eyes, as if he was trying to look through a cloudy night and into the stars. It was only for a split second but it made me wonder. 'Was he looking back at the spider webs he had just stampeded through, or was he looking at something else?' 'Was he looking past the webs to the house?' 'Or was he looking through the window?' The clarity of his swearing came back to me. Was it the webs that asked him to look back? Or, was it the cackle of four indigent Greenes as they watched their only friend stummble from their home.

The irony of watching others flail,

Your Brother,
NutHorse