A Cellarful of Nose - Future Shoes

electric seat warmers and pink poof rugs.
But down there in the dirty room, the soles of one's shoes
scraping against cement, and multi-legged figures staring glumly
at you from the adjoining wall, form meets function. It feels right.
I went down there once or twice a day for about four years.
Once a year I dutifully brushed the spiderwebs from the pipes and
rafters with the tip of a broom. The webs always grew back.
And when I brushed them down, I always felt bad, because
those cobwebs were a lot of work for somebody. It was the
Catholic in me, or maybe the Buddhist from a previous life. But
somebody thought he belonged there as much as I did, and look
what I went and did.
They were the creative ones, stringing floss across the
ceiling, I was the jagernath, the destroyer of worlds.
Sitting on the toilet, I got to know one of the guys. He was a
spider, not a daddy longlegs exactly, but long-legged, certainly.
He was a wall-crawler, too big to be a line-climber.
And what was most amazing about him – I just realized I
never named him, not even in my mind; "Buddy?" – was that he
was always in the room. In fact, he was nearly always within a
foot of where I saw him last time.
Now, I know nothing about basement ecospheres. Maybe
subterrenean arachnids dine on mites, or skin shavings, or
trilobite eggs. I don't know.
But this guy had nothing. No web, no nest, not even a place
347