Naomi
‘I killed my best friend,’ Naomi Lamar had typed into the computer on the floor of her well-like prison.
Mel and I were ten years old and both of us were grounded because we’d been caught playing in the disused gravel pit yet again. We’d been forbidden to go there, you see. It was a weekday afternoon, our parents were at work and we both sneaked out even though we were grounded. We met – of course – at the gravel pit. It happened just before we had to leave to ensure we got back home before our parents. Mel wanted to slide down the northern slope on her plastic bag one last time. She was buried by a sand avalanche and disappeared. I screamed, called for help and dug with my bare hands, but couldn’t find her. She’d literally been swallowed up by the earth. I slunk home and didn’t dare tell my parents. Mel was found two days later and everyone assumed she’d slipped out of the house alone. I still think today that she died because of me and could have been saved if I’d raised the alarm. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.
She’d written this nine days ago and sent the computer up in the bucket. The hunger cramps in her stomach were unbearable, but a few hours later no food came, only the laptop with the spider’s answer:
‘That’s NOT the worst thing you’ve ever done.’
And right below it:
‘Every wrong answer will be punished.’
Two hours later came the bowl with the rice and the label: Spirometra mansoni.
She’d had to eat it. She would have starved to death otherwise. At the time Naomi reckoned that instant death was the worse of the two.
But it wasn’t.
To know that you were carrying a parasite – the nastiest sort of tapeworm – and were slowly being devoured from the inside, that was the worst thing that could happen to you.
Naomi was sure the spider knew this.
It wanted answers, a confession, and it would only get these if its victim’s survival instinct was broken.
Till now the thought of her daughter had kept Naomi alive. But now the horror beneath her skin that was gradually making its way to behind her eyeball was eliminating all desire to live.
‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’
‘I’m so sorry, Anouk,’ Naomi whispered, taking hold of the computer. With fingers whose nails hadn’t been cut for weeks she typed her second confession:
‘I committed adultery. In the most despicable way possible. I had sex for money.’
She flipped shut the laptop, put it inside the bag and placed it in the bucket. She tugged several times on the rope and, as she scratched herself again until she bled, waited for the spider to pull it up, satisfied with her answer.
So finally she could die.