I peek my head through the door and there she lay, aside from the carefully organized desks, sitting in her lair with her trophies strewn about. Residue from previous battles laid scattered around her, inviting an all too familiar presence. Lurking, furiously writing away at her work. Pretending she cared for us. I could see the tests all organized in a neat little pile and all the same, embedded with her particular ambiance. Math and number, oh the confusing numbers, written among her piercing red pen, attacking little children’s hard work. Why was she a teacher? I walk forward, hesitantly. Alone. Afraid of her lash, but she looks up, that plastic smile shining at me.

“Good morning,” she whispers, as if she thinks she’s talking to her soon to be lunch. “Come over to my desk,” as she gestures towards her web, lies written everywhere. I glance towards the desk, cluttered with pictures of her, mostly showing off her body, swollen after years of feeding off her prizes. Posters and trinket crowns cover the walls, the most prominent objects in the room, with phrases surrounding them such as “I AM THE QUEEN.” How conceited was she? I approached her lair and prepared for the worst.

“So, can you tell me how I did on the test,” I asked, really not wanting to know the answer, knowing what it would probably be. The first, and hopefully last of a collection of my mistakes

Her hungry eyes peered down onto the scribbled red pile. She starts flitting through the papers as I try to calculate what percentage I would probably receive, trying to recall that day. What did I put for that problem #3? The ruffle of paper stops at the same time as my heart. Those poisonous eyes scan up and down as an expression of forced sympathy plasters her face. I already know the answer.

“Well, on the first page you did really well,” she says in a false cheery voice, as if to somehow comfort this fretful child. “But on the back…you didn’t do so well.” Blunt. Hard. Unforgiving. Her poison had reached me, catching me in her hold and I was at the spider’s mercy. But strangely, I did not have the deprived and destitute feeling that I had expected to have, but instead, it was more positive. I had the feeling, no, the yearning to do better, knowing I could do better than how I had just preformed.

As I leave the room, the shadow leaves, and fly breaks free.