Simon Says: Natural and Convenient

Background

Simon and Wilma have been inseparable friends for 10 years right up until the end. The 69 year old mountain recluse devoted her life, mind, soul, body and strength to the supporting of his passionate masterpiece. Simon Says, "To Destroy is to Create."

Thick gray matted musky cobwebs enveloped the entire bedroom. So solid, the stench alone, took Steve's breath away.

"Jesus Christ," he gagged, "I can hardly breathe." Instinctively, he swiped at the webs hanging in his face. Furiously, he continued wailing in circular motion, until he was able to make visible a path to what appeared to be an antique four-poster cherry bed, which was completely draped by the nauseous entangled strands. So unlike any other room in the house, each of the three men immediately formed far-fetched ideas.

"What's the deal," Doyle, the most annoyed of the threesome, remarked.

"I can't tell." Steve quickly interjected. "With this amount of cobwebs covering everything, it appears to be a room that's not been used for a long, long time."

"Maybe, it was the old lady's mother's room." Doyle jerked.

Because navigation was virtually impossible throughout the heavily encrusted unexposed bedroom, Roger pushed up against Steve and Doyle without realizing.

"Hey, watch it, Boss man. I damn sure don't want to get stuck in here. This room gives me the creeps." Doyle's uncaring snide voice snatched.

"What do you see, Steve?" Roger wiped the considerable discordant strands from his eyes.

"I think there's a mattress on the bed. I can't tell though."

The mattress, hardly visible, due to the enormity of the interlacing filthy rope thick strings hid it from view.

Steve, with enormous difficulty, pressed his way through the huge room; which unfortunately, had been reduced to a small space, due to the silken stands.

Roger and Doyle followed close behind. Steve's hands groped through the layered bulk until he penetrated a section large enough to spot a piece of furniture. Both hands found their way to the edge of an antique Queen Anne dresser which stood in the corner.

He wiped clean the silken strands on the top enough to expose the picture of a naive young girl. Eager marble -size piercing brown eyes beamed energetically; enough to penetrate maze-like, through the moisture stained glass frame.

"What do you see?" Doyle asked while coughing. "I've got to get out of this filthy dusk mold trap. I can't breathe. It's obvious the old woman hasn't been in this room in years." He backed slowly out of the room into the hall.

Roger remained.

Steve brought the old picture more in line with the thin slice of sun light raying from the window. Viewing it up close, he could make out, a young girl who stood with legs crossed, obviously showing off new high-topped button up shoes protruding from under the frock, in a two-layered blue petticoat. She leaned affectionately against the massive trunk of an old knotted pecan tree, branches heavy laden with nuts.

In her small poised mouth, she had tucked a thin crooked branch from the same tree. An unforgiving expression revealed a certain sadness masked by an unnatural grin. The initials WRD loves FTL were carved deeply in archaic letters on the tree. He turned the picture so that the other guys could easily see it.

"Can you see this?" Steve arched. "I wonder if it's Miss Downs when she was young?"

"Yeah," we can see it alright, but what's that got to do with what we're here to do? We're not in the romance business; we are in the tear down business" Roger snapped.

"That's right, Steve." From the hallway, Doyle sarcastically added, "We don't have time to stroll down memory lane. Where's the old woman?"

"Well, she sure as hell ain't occupying this room. Let's get out of here. She's probably at the back of the house." Roger dinned.

"You want me to search the basement, boss?" Doyle wanted to know.

"Yeah, and I'll go upstairs. Come on Steve. This ain't no good. We're wasting time. We don't have but so much of it, you know." He fought, by swiping in the air, his way through the barricaded strands, to the left side of the room, where a huge empty easel stood.

Steve placed the framed picture back on the dresser, found the door to an antique wardrobe exposed. Inside were the contents of 'worn through the hangers' putrid dresses aged and yellowed from non-use. More massive webs blocked the clear view.

"I can't see much more of anything in here." Steve announced.

Roger instructed Steve to leave the contents of the room alone.

"Like Doyle's done said, ain't no way anybody's been in this room for years."

"Alright. But, my god, what a terrible mess? Looks like some kind of mortuary. You know, like one of those spooky rooms, you hear people talking about that no one ever opens after someone dies in it."

Steve also tried to back out of the room, but stumbled against the wall, covering himself with the atrocious spidery twine.

"How in the world can anybody get around in this place? My legs can barely move."

Roger irritated and impatient scoffed, "She ain't in here. So what are we doing still hanging round?"

"I don't know, Roger. There's more to the old woman and this old house than we can see."

"Well, ain't you the genius of the day. You already know that. She's a crazy old bitch who hasn't done nothing but been a pain in the ass the whole time we've been dealing with her. I'm not surprised at anything we find in this dump."

No doubt about it; the mens' minds had been irrefutably dislodged due to the unimaginable uncomfortable surroundings.

"Looks to me like there ain't been nobody in this room for more than a hundred years, at least." Steve uneasily replied one more time.

Roger remembered HE was the foremen and resumed control. He made up an acceptable explanation.

"Never mind about that. You know how these old ladies are; they're real strange. Eccentric, is the word, I think. They live by themselves, get all sorts of crazy notions in their heads, talk to themselves and hide their money in old mattresses."

Doyle returned, overheard their conversation and commented.

"I flat don't give a damn. This whole house gives me the heebie-jeebies. I couldn't find her nowhere. I'm getting the hell out of here." Doyle staggered near the parlor but close enough to still hear what's going on.

Roger quickly agreed.

"If you're waiting on me, you're backing up."

Roger proceeded to follow Doyle when Steve, who had not yet exited the bedroom, yelled for him to stop.

"Hey, wait a minute, Roger. Something on the bed just hit my leg!"

"What do you mean? What...what is it?" Roger probed fearfully. Steve looked back at Roger in the doorway.

"I can't tell. There's something, but I just can't make out what it is. Should I try to move it?"

"How the hell do I know? I came in the same time you did." Roger charged.

Roger stayed back at a safe distance. Young impetuous Steve plunged forward.

He pushed aside the thick fibrous strands to discover an old woman entirely wrapped, from head to toe, in the smooth silky threads of a massive web. She had been so neatly rolled and packaged in a human size cocoon, it was absolutely unbelievable. There was no sign of struggle.

"My holy god! I think it's the old woman. She's completely covered up in a blanket of cobwebs. How on earth did this happen?" blurted Steve, implausibly.

"What in the hell you asking me for? Do I look like a detective?" Roger gargled.

Doyle yelled, "I don't give a shit how it happened. I'm getting the hell out of here, now. This is a friggin' madhouse."

"What should we do with her?" Steve, the only one, who showed the least bit of concern and investigative interest in the demise, propped himself up on the edge of the bed.

"I said, I don't care how it happened. Let's just get the hell out of here. Now!" Doyle bounced down the doorway never once glancing back.

"But, we can't just leave her like this." Steve pleaded.

"The hell we can't," Roger argued.

"No, Roger, the least we can do is try to unravel her."

"I say no; but you do what you want to do....I'm gone" Roger followed his words, leaving Steve all alone.

"Roger, wait a minute. You know everyone will ask questions. What are we supposed to tell them?"

From the hallway, in front of the bedroom, Roger responded,

"Just leave her alone. We know we didn't have anything to do with it. That's all that matters."

Steve felt completely helpless; sorry for the old woman so he pulled some of the thick tangled webs away from the side of her face to reveal a distinctively marked bite of some sort directly in the middle of her forehead.

"Come on, Steve, get out of there, I told you." Roger yelled extremely loud.

"Hey, I think she was bitten by something."

"It don't matter. It's not our concern. Let the authorities handle it."

Roger demanded Steve to get out.

"But, Roger shouldn't we, at least, do the decent thing and try to turn her over?"

"Hell no!" Roger, adamant in his command, already halfway to the front door, headed for the phone in the truck.

Steve lingered behind. Outside Doyle was frantically pacing up and down the on the dead grass.

"Alright, alright. I know, I know. I've already called the police." From the side of the truck, unnerved Doyle, grabbing the bottom part of his exposed belly, informed Roger, repeatedly, as his blood pressure turned his fat jaws redder.

Both men stood outside anxiously waiting for Steve to emerge. Steve took longer than he should. He stood paralyzed to the floor of the bedroom gazing at the old woman who had been bitten and suffocated by a massive blanket of cobwebs.

Simon was furious. Not one of three dubious men had even acknowledged his presence in the room.

Simon simply couldn't believe the ordeal. It was a complete and utter fiasco. He stared incredulously at Steve. If Steve had been as intuitively astute and psychologically sound as Wilma and paid attention, he could have almost heard Simon's articulate thoughts, too, since he expressed them so fluently.

"That's how stupid mortals are. They miss the obvious sublime beauty in things."

It was all about Wilma. It had always been all about Wilma. How dare the imbeciles make such a noxious episode out of his grueling sacrificial artistic labor? The workmen were incapable of understanding Simon's benevolent actions.

So insulted and disgruntled was he that he scampered to a higher vantage point of the room from which he been observing the actions and conversations.

Implored and without words, he indignantly braced his elevated position. Instead of being revered for his long-suffering efforts on his incalculable masterpiece, he had been completely ignored.

They missed the mark, entirely. How could three, supposedly intelligent, grown men have misunderstood the situation so thoroughly? They had incomprehensibly overlooked the magnitude of the feast he had prepared for the world.

Before Steve finally decided it was time to leave the room, his apprehensive mind overloaded with compassion pondered,

"Why, after 69 years of struggle, should MISS Downs' life have to end like this?"

From a single strand hanging directly overhead Wilma's head, the irreprehensible poisonous brown recluse spider proudly proclaimed:

"Simon Says DEVOUR: Deprivation's Design!"

The end.