Naomi
Naomi’s farewell note had taken some time to write, even though in the end it consisted of only one sentence. Astonishingly, she’d felt strangely relaxed since closing the computer and putting it back in the bucket.
Despite the imminence of her death and even though she had no idea how it would happen, she no longer felt afraid.
This must be what Catholics understand by the purifying power of confession.
Deep down inside her, in the shadowy world of her consciousness, she’d always sensed that her life would come to a terrible end. It must do, if an entity existed that ensured justice was done.
And it did.
It sat at the other end of the rope and had made her confess the unutterable. Drag what had been suppressed into the light of day.
Write it down.
My confession.
Naomi would have liked to have seen it, the spider deciding her destiny. She’d loved to have known what the person looked like who’d managed to unmask her.
Now she knew how the spider had discovered her most intimate secrets. And why it wanted her to die. Ever since she’d given a thorough answer to the question ‘Who are you?’ Naomi had known the spider’s past and thus its motive.
She understood why she had to be punished and this understanding gave her an inner peace. She wasn’t scratching any more, her breathing was regular and her eyes were barely twitching, like someone whose body was being shaken by a vibration.
It’s happening, she thought, without knowing what the spider had planned for her end.
She heard a scraping sound, like that of two millstones grinding together, then she saw the crack in the middle of the well open. Slowly, but steadily.
More curious than fearful, she got up from her sitting position and watched what was happening to the ground beneath her feet.
It’s moving!
The two halves of the circle were vanishing into the sides of the shaft, like a sliding door into a wall.
She noted with interest that the gap was now a foot wide, and that she could hear the churning water bubbling beneath her. If the floor plates kept moving at this speed it would be less than two minutes before she’d completely lost the ground beneath her feet.
And plunged two and a half metres into the Atlantic.
Naomi smiled at the prospect.