Read Online The Trap by Melanie Raabe, Imogen Taylor - Free Book Online

realise what an unnatural posture I have adopted. My torso is inclined as far to the left as it can go, and I’m cowering in the far corner of the sofa. I ask myself whether this is the way I want to be: like a rabbit in front of a snake. Whether I can afford to act like this, either now or in future.
    I sit up straight, throw back my shoulders, lift up my chin. I reach out my hand and give the man with the spider a nod. My fingers are trembling, but I do not withdraw them.
    ‘Are you okay?’ the therapist asks.
    I nod, letting all my energy flow into my hand, which I hold still.
    ‘All right then,’ says the therapist and brings his hand nearer to mine. For a moment, the creature squats there, motionless. I watch it, with its thick, hairy legs and its round body—that, too, is hairy but with a small bald spot. The legs are striped: black and tan, black and tan—each with an orange dot in the middle. I only notice that now. The spider sits there, quite still on the man’s hand, and I tell myself I can do it.
    Then it starts to move. Everything about it looks wrong. My stomach rebels. Specks of light dance before my eyes, but I keep still, and the creature crawls onto my hand. The first tentative movement of its legs on my palm throws me into panic, but I remain motionless. The bird-eating spider crawls onto my hand. I feel its weight, the touch of its legs, its body brushing my skin. For a terrible moment I think it’s going to crawl up my arm and across my shoulder to my neck and face, but it stops on my hand. It squats there, shifting its legs. I stare at it. This isn’t a nightmare, I think; this is real life, it’s happening right now and you can take it. This is your fear; this is what your fear feels like, and you can take it. I feel dizzy; I’d like to faint, but I don’t. Instead I sit there with a bird-eating spider on my hand. It has stopped moving. My fear is a dark well that I have fallen into. I’m suspended vertically in the water. I try to touch the bottom with my toes, but I can’t.
    ‘Shall I take it off you?’ the therapist asks, startling me out of my trance.
    I can only nod again. Carefully, he picks up the creature in the hollow of his hand and stows it back in the container that he carries in a kind of sports bag.
    I stare at my hand. I feel the throb of my pulse, the furry feeling on my tongue, my tense muscles. My T-shirt is clinging to me, drenched in sweat. My face contracts as if I were about to cry, but as so often in the past years, no tears come and I cry in dry, painful sobs.
    I’ve made it.

10
    I’m sitting in my favourite armchair, looking out into the darkness and waiting for the sun to rise. The edge of the woods lies before me. I would love to see an animal in the cool light of the stars, but nothing stirs. Only an indefatigable owl gives a hoot every now and then.
    A clear sky arches over the treetops. Who knows how many stars are really up there. Stars only have one means of telling us that they no longer exist: they stop shining. But if a star is a thousand light years away and stopped shining yesterday, then it would, in theory, be a thousand years before we found out on Earth.
    Nothing is certain.
    I curl up in my armchair and try to nap. An interesting day lies behind me, and a hardworking night. Tomorrow I have an important talk with an expert and want to be prepared.
    It’s soon clear to me that I’m not going to sleep. I try to relax in my armchair, to build up a bit of energy even without sleeping. My gaze rests on the meadow behind the house, and the glistening shore of the lake. I sit there like that for a long time. At first I think I’m imagining things when the stars seem to shine paler and the sky begins to change colour. But then I hear the birds twittering through the window; they start up as if an invisible conductor had signalled to them with raised baton. Then I know the sun is rising. To begin with, it is a mere gleaming streak behind the trees,