Good afternoon everybody! It’s 53degrees and climbing today, so we’re looking at a relatively calm afternoon, with a chance of rain...

Fluffy grey clouds passed by slowly overhead. A few tiny drops of moisture fell as if to emphasize the weather man’s statement. The crackle and drone of the little battery powered radio at her side fell on deaf ears, however. Megan was elsewhere...

...Traffic is slowing down a little as the lunch hour passes, so make sure you give yourself a few extra minutes before heading back home or to the office...

The water stretched out before her churned and splashed upon itself. Waves lapped greedily at the thick wooden support beams of the boardwalk she has chosen to perch on. Her legs dangled over the ledge, hooked beneath one of the boards that made up the safety railing.

..was great, Shirley! And now, back to the muuuuusic~!

A soft song started to play. Piano keys sharp and lonely against the distant screeches of gulls and hushed sounds of the bay water. Megan sighed and set the clear bottle in her hand back at her side. With the label having been peeled off, the mystery liquid inside was left to the imagination of those wandering past. An experienced eye, however, would be able to tell that it was filled with rather strong alcohol. Of course, that would mean coming close enough to spot the bottle in the first place, and the thirty or so spiders she had crawling around her had so far kept annoying strangers from attempting to bother her.

She’d been sitting for.. an hour? Maybe less.. maybe more. Honestly, she hadn’t bothered to keep track. She was too busy trying to drink her problems away... and not succeeding. With half of a bottle sloshing around in her tummy, she should have felt something by now. Sleepy, sick, giddy, ready to march through town and hurl drunken slurs at people... and yet, she felt nothing. Not even the buzzing, fluttery feeling of being tipsy.

She would have considered the possibility that she had been tricked somehow, and that some interloper had switched out the alcohol in the bottle she purchased with something non-alcoholic... but it still tasted like alcohol.

She honestly didn’t know what was going on... and it was getting rather annoying.

Thankfully, though, her temper had been curbed by other thoughts.

A pale hand reached out at her other side, and carefully scooped up a large Wolf spider. The creature clung to her palm, more than willing to let his creator do with him what she willed. The twenty five year old hooked her arm back over another, higher, plank on the railing, and fixed blue eyes on the arachnid in her hand.

They were hers.... Her DNA. Literally, her blood, sweat, and tears. They shared her eye color, her hair color.. and sometimes her temperament. She had spent many years with only spiders by her side... and yet, they were still only spiders.

A moment later, the arachnid was flung out into the churning water. She watched and listened as it hit the surface, starting the long struggle to swim back to shore. Spiders could swim, but not very well. It took more than an hour for one to sink under the surface, and another twenty minutes for them to fully drown. She knew, for she had been watched it happen ten or more times already. The panicked scream of the arachnid echoed in her mind as all eight legs twitched and jerked. Asking, why? Why, mother? I don't want to die! It’s brothers and sisters behind her were silent...they already knew what fate awaited them. The screaming was only for her... only for her ears. No one else could hear it. No one else would even care.

It was a spider after all. A bug. Vermin. A creepy crawly to be stomped on, sprayed, flushed, and squished. There was no love for them... no bond, nor sympathy. They were like Roaches. Filthy animals that humans just loved to hate.

The twenty five year old picked up the bottle once more, and swept up another spider in her other hand. The fuzzy black creature squatted down. It waited. She gulped her fiery drink, before dropping it back at her side. Eight blue eyes locked on two. The same color... the same color. At one point, the spider would have called her mother.

...At one point, she would have cared.

But life is not fair... and Spiders have a funny way of screaming.

Life tosses out bones... tempting gifts to desperate souls. It lures people in with promises and hope, and when you're good and snagged, it reels you in. She had fallen for it, and she had paid the price.

Tears welled, hot as a cold wind rolled back her. She had taken a bite from a promise, and in return her heart had been ripped to shreds. She had opened herself up, let someone in... and he had died on her.

...He died for her.

Her fingers curled inward, entrapping the spider centered in her palm in a slow cage. Her expression never shifted, as she squeezed. There was no room for love.... not anymore. She would never make that mistake again. She would pull her feelings in, keep them buried, and direct them only at herself.

...yes. She could love herself... eventually. When the pain faded. When it felt like she could take a breath without gasping, and her eyes no longer leaked on their own whim. She would love herself. No one, nothing, could take that away from her.

Everyone else could die... but as long as she lived, she would have Megan.

Her fingers un-clenched.

..The black spider within shifted, unharmed, and watched her. After a few moments, she sighed and lowered her hand. The arachnid carefully crawled back onto the boardwalk to rejoin it's brethren. She didn't need to kill them to stop the pain anymore... To make herself feel better. They were a part of her. Her flesh and blood...

They were more than spiders, more than tools, and more than pets. They were brothers, sisters... children.

She would love them too... because no one could take them away.

Her apartment looked... empty. Barren of the life it had once held. She'd picked up the trash, which ended up being most of Roaches stuff, and before it... there wasn't much left. The living room was clean, and while any normal person would have been more than happy with stray slices of pizza not laying around on the floor or smashed onto the ceiling, she found that it irritated her to no end.

After all the time she spent cleaning up after him, complaining about his constant mess... she missed it. There was no one to burst through her bedroom door and destroy her peace and quiet. No one to scream and squeal in an assortment of entertaining voices. No one who needed her, yet didn't like he had... No one to watch stupid tv shows about women being floozies in New York.

As she stood, surrounded by black trash bags crammed full of junk, she felt her heart twist and tears welled in her eyes. "oh... goddamnit." With a huff, she discarded the dish gloves she had been using to clean, and collapsed onto the couch. She honestly didn't know how much longer she'd be able to stand living in the apartment she'd shared with her... her friend.

Her very dear friend.

Without so much as wiping the tears from her eyes, Megan stood and made her way to the door. She snatched up her keys and a jacket, sniffling quietly before ducking out through the front door. There were too many memories, it was maddening. She couldn't look at anything without bursting into tears.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she worked her way down to the parking lot and hopped on her scooter. Maybe if she went out for a little while to clear her head, she'd feel better. Then she'd be able to approach the situation with a clear mind, and finally figure out something to do.

Well... Apartment hunting had turned out unexpectedly well.

In the span of a few hours, she'd managed to track down not only an apartment, but also a roommate to share the space with. Said roommate was...er... a little shady, at best... but Megan didn't really pay that much mind. Considering the fact that she was basically being allowed to move into the loft without having to sign any papers, or submit any kind of down payment, she was more than happy.

...It also helped that the place was Huuuuuge.

She'd been expecting an average sized apartment of some sort, but when she was led to an old rickety maintenance elevator, and then up to the tippy top of a large building, she was floored by the sheer size of the apartment. The girl she was soon to move in with was a budding artist, not the paint-y kind either, the blow torch and metal parts kind. She needed a lot of space to store away various crafts and projects. Megan could sympathize, seeing as the space she had back home in which to cram a both of her looms, her sewing machine, and all of her silk and supplies was quickly dwindling.

This place though... she had a spare room all to herself for working in, as well as a cozy little bedroom up above the main floor. Her bathroom was large enough for a her to drag a metal tub in, which would make dying her cloth easier than trying to stuff everything into a bathtub. Aside from all of the room she'd have, the rest of the place was so open that you could literally see from one end of the apartment all the way to the other. The only walls she'd managed to find were connected to the kitchen, and the ones that kept the bathrooms private.

"Wow... this place is... wow."

Rachel, the woman she was about to move in with, chuckled. "Yeah, I thought that too when I first moved in. But then you cram all of your crap in, and it's suddenly a lot smaller." She waved a hand absently and wandered off toward the sprawling living room. Megan grinned, and followed without a word. If there was one thing she'd noticed about Rachel right away, it was her attitude. Also, the fact that she apparently liked her privacy, to the point of being hostile. That was just great, though, considering that Megan had a similar sentiment. The whole 'You mind your business, I'll mind mind' would work wonders for her.

"So... how soon can you move in?" Megan plopped herself down on the couch, and crossed her legs. "....Well, anytime, really. I've already got everything packed up and ready to move... just needed to find a place." She reflected back to having met Rachel only hours ago, while the woman had been stapling 'roommate wanted' posted onto light poles around the city. After a brief, slightly tense introduction, they'd wandered off to sit in a coffee shop and chat. Megan had found out about the woman's artistic background, as well as her love for getting into trouble and throwing elaborate parties with all of her tattooed artist friends. Rachel had then learned about Megan's own love for parties, and her work as a "fledgling designer". Which, Megan felt, explained why she needed a room to stuff all of her fabric and sewing materials into, without blatantly exclaiming that she was making armor for a lot of people.

"Well then, how about we head over to this apartment of yours and get your stuff? I'll call a few buddies of mine, and then we can have a party tonight to get you settled into the house.. yes?"

Megan grinned, intertwining her fingers behind her head. "Sounds like a plan to me, Roomie!"