On a cold winter night

Welcome to The Spot Writers. This month’s prompt is to find 5 words in a news article that jump out at you. Write a story using those words.

Here you can find the article I read. The title is: ‘Murder Hornets’ in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet, and the five words I picked are the following: Spider-Man – dragonfly – winter – night – underground.

This week story comes from Chiara. Chiara is currently in Berlin, Germany, not quarantined anymore but still doing her best to catch up with semi-abandoned writing projects.

On a cold winter night

by Chiara De Giorgi

Dragonfly-Woman cursed under her breath, then stilled herself in the dark.

After the discovery of murder hornets in the U.S.  that year – following wildfires in Australia, locust swarms in Africa, a very infectious disease that spread all over the world, and other ill-matched catastrophes –  she knew to expect anything, and the giant spiderweb she had just been caught in could mean a lot of things- mostly horrible things.

Her heart sank when she felt the spiderweb move. She closed her eyes and swallowed. Was this going to be the end, her end? Eaten by a giant spider, underground, on a cold winter night? After all she’d been through, after all the people she’d helped and saved… it didn’t seem right.

She opened her big, marvelous dragonfly eyes. She wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Dragonflies can detect so many more colors than humans with their eyes, however they can’t really see anything without light. Dragonfly-Woman had fixed the issue with enhanced contacts, which gave her an owl’s vision. Now she could spot a bulky form slowly making its way towards her, making the web’s threads vibrate, slowly but steadily.

She steeled herself, ready to set her delicate-looking wings in motion. Would she be able to cut through the spiderweb, though? Spiderwebs are incredibly resistant, after all. Maybe I could just cut the beast’s head off, if it comes to me at the right angle, she thought, and smirked. I’ll make sure it does.

“Hey, spidey, spidey spidey? Why are you hiding in the dark-ey?”

The bulk suddenly stopped. Damn!

A surprised voice rose from the darkness:

“Dragonfly-Woman?”

“Who… Spider-Man?” she asked, shocked, as the big bulk came nearer. “What the hell are you doing down here?”

“What am I doing here? What are you doing here! I thought you were dead!”

“Me? Dead? Why?” she asked, surprised, then remembered. “Oh, yeah… Well, you know how dragonfly females pretend they’re dead when they want to put off their suitors…?”

Spider-Man cracked a glow stick and suddenly a greenish light washed over the walls of the tunnel. It gave his face a gaunt and sick look.

“You pretended you were dead?” he almost shouted, outraged. “To escape my… avances? That’s insane!”

Dragonfly-Woman scoffed. “Was it?”

“I was devastated!” continued Spider-Man. “I roamed with no purpose for months, I almost got killed by a giant murder hornet, and were it not for Lady Bug I wouldn’t be here!”

“Well, I’m sorry, but--- Wait, what? Lady Bug? That vapid bimbo?”

Lady Bug jumped into the light, a belligerent expression on her plump face.

“Excuse me, did you just call me a bimbo? Did she just call me a bimbo?”

“Er…”

“You let him believe you were dead, so you clearly didn’t want him. So now what? You changed your mind, you slut?”

“Don’t you dare call me a slut!”

“Or what?” Lady Bug laughed. “Did you forget you’re trapped? What if he left you there? Hey, here’s an idea”, she added, turning to Spider Man. “What if we left her there? She’ll die for real, this time.”

“You would never…”

“Oh, but wouldn’t I?”

“Girls! I mean, insects! Insect-girls! Whatever! Shut up!”

After a few seconds of silence, Spider-Man reached for a blade in one of his pockets and cut the threads that kept Dragonfly-Woman captive, then stood in front of her as she plucked the sticky tendrils away.

“I am over you”, he announced in a tired voice. “I am over everything, actually. I don’t want to go back to the daylight ever again, it’s too depressing. I thought I’d let a rat, or a bat, bite me, but I don’t like the competition, and Rat-Man and Bat-Man were here before me, after all.”

“What are you going to do?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“We’ll be fine”, whispered Lady Bug, “just like we were before.” She turned to Dragonfly-Woman and looked at her with sadness in her eyes. “You can go, or you can stay. It’s all the same to me. To us. Our world got dark long ago.”

Dragonfly-Woman’s eyes glinted in the darkness. When she spoke, her voice was resolute. “I will go back outside and check the situation. As the Crow-Man said, it can’t rain all the time. I’ll come back for you as soon as it’s safe, and we can be friends again. No hard feelings. Okay?”

She stretched her right hand out, and Lady Bug slowly reached for it and shook it, a smile blossoming on her lips.

“Okay.”

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/