There was a girl, black eyes and pale, flyaway hair, squatting at the edge of her backyard. The surrounding forest bowed down toward her victim as she lunged forward and smashed it into the moss at her feet. Whomp, whomp, complained the hollow ground as she smacked it time after time.
She stood up with a twitching black ant in her palm. It would recover, in time. After checking it was still whole, she cupped her other hand over it and padded across the moss to the gabled brown house at the head of their emerald-bleeding property. She wiped the green plant matter from her feet on the doormat. The green under her knees could stay.
Inside, she glowed white and yellow as she passed through the shady rooms. No one else was home. Every sound carried, even the click of the bathroom light switch when she flipped it on. In its light, the room blazed pale and fluorescent so that everything about her, excepting her eyes and knees, blended into every surface.
The ant started rolling over. She slapped it again, hard enough to shock it.
In that bathroom, the light awaited her. Clasping her hands back together, she stepped underneath the thick, glass-enclosed bulb and looked up at the eight-legged shadow inside. It didn't react as she dragged a stool out of the corner and stood on it. Pinching one of the ant's legs, she lifted it to a single chip in the glass. She watched its shadow appear in the enclosure's bottom, then plopped down to the floor, waiting to see if either of them made a move.
Neither did, but that was to be expected. The and was still listless and the spider didn't like to move in the light, eight eyes blind in that blaze. It was a funnel spider, big as a milk jug cap, with arched legs and a collection of dead insects piled up along a designated edge of the glass. She replaced the stool, staring upward the whole time, and then backed out the door. Her hand clicked the switch down and left the two creatures in darkness.
She didn't need to watch to know what would come next.
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