"Spiderwebs" • No Doubt (by Travis Flatt)

The Minotaur sits. 

The Minotaur will miss his supper. 

The Minotaur learns the lesson of shapes. He watches the spider, fat, black and yellow, as it spins its web at the third left back from the pisshole. He’s seen tiny, brown, and scurrying spiders, but never one large and web-spinning. The web it’s spun is enormous. Enormous and woven into infinite intricate divisions. When did the spider have time to weave such a web? Since, seemingly, the Minotaur last slept in the meatroom, where the Minotaur sleeps and eats. Or eats and sleeps. It depends whether he’s coming or going. Or going or coming. Shapes frighten the Minotaur. He understands the line. He suspects the square. His mind is a line and almost a square. Few things frighten the Minotaur. Nothing frightens the Minotaur. The dark chamber frightens the Minotaur. It is a room with many shapes. Losing his path frightens the Minotaur. At the end of the lost path waits the dark chamber. Once, as a calf, he stumbled upon an enormous, downward-slanting chamber that grew darker and darker as it descended into the dark. The ceiling was a maw of jagged teeth. He couldn’t know to call them triangles. Certainly not stalactites. He thinks of them as teeth. Amongst the teeth clung creatures with wings who, when disturbed by his hoof clops, shrieked and fluttered, clouded him, and slit his shoulders and neck, lapping his warm, sticky blood, so now he never wanders, never strays, from five lefts and six rights to the pisshole—five rights, six lefts returning—when he must empty himself. Maybe the spider crawled here from the dark chamber as an ambassador of shapes, wishing to create a new dark chamber on his path to the pisshole. Or, maybe it wishes to teach him shapes so he won’t be afraid anymore. Maybe he should eat it and stop it from perverting his path to the pisshole. The horn has blared, and now he is late for his supper, which is dropped—a small, bleating creature, hairy, horned like him, and tied to a rope—through a long, slick, dark hole in the roof of the meatroom, then raised back up when he’s finished his nightly feeding. Or daily. His mammalian blood is dimly aware there’s a difference. Down here, there is asleep and awake. Periodically, flat faces appear, either from the pisshole, which is unlikely, as they smell like fear, not piss; or, seams in the walls, which is unlikely, as the Minotaur cannot fit through these, despite how he tries; or, most terribly, from the dark chamber, which is likely: they speak the language of the Mintoaur’s dreams. He cannot grasp the moon. Not long ago, a flat face that he strangled prayed to “the moon.” That benediction bothered him. The flat face called for the moon and made a shape by joining her finger and thumb (an almost perfect circle) unfamiliar to him. A shape opposite of the square. The Minotaur learned opposites early in his calfhood. His castle is opposites. It is rights and lefts, ceilings and floors, walls and the Minotaur. The Minotaur’s blunt digits cannot reproduce the moon-circle that flat face made with her thin ones. The spider attempts to weave that shape—the circle, the moon—and comes closer and closer until the Minotaur recognizes a warped, jagged moon at the heart of the web. The Minotaur watches the spider weave its web and memorizes the shapes, names them, divines the divisions. He recognizes teeth (triangles) and walls (rectangles). Satisfied he’s a scholar of shapes, he stands to return to the meatroom, but now, gazing down, he sees the web. He is horrified how the line is a lie and the square is the truth. The line is stampeding blind. The square is his castle. His castle is a cage. This is what he feared, without understanding he feared it. Hanging his huge heavy head over the web, his eyes melt to tears that drop and catch on the spider silk, making many shining moons. Now, the Minotaur understands before and after. Before he sometimes sees in his dreams and looks like countless glistening moons caught on a black ceiling—many moons and one greater moon, like the spiderweb. After is his castle. Before lies on the far side of the dark chamber; after lies on his side of the dark chamber. The Minotaur must burst open the square, unfold it into a line, and follow.

The Minotaur misses his supper. 

The Minotaur runs.

Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear in HAD, Bull, Variant, Fractured, and other places. He enjoys theater, dogs, and theatrical dogs. His Twitter/X is @WriterLeeFlatt and his Bluesky is @travisflatt.bsky.social