Heart Of A Spider - Season 1 - Episode 5

4 years ago

Heart Of A Spider - Season 1 - Episode 5

THE MORNING air felt moist and cold. There wasn’t enough of a breeze to enter a windsock
at the Melbourne airport. Smoke from a blue sedan parked in the drive of a modern two storey
brick veneer home vanished long ago. The meals on wheels lady snorted before checking her
watch again. She commenced tapping her foot on the verandah.

“Oh dear,” she whispered. “Mr. Brown knows I arrive promptly at 8:00am. It’s now 8:31am.

I have a horrid feeling something terrible has happened. I wonder where the police are.”
She gave the entire street a cursory glance before stepping closer to the nearest window.
Cupping her hands around her eyes, she looked through the glass.

A paperboy whistled a sharp bone chilling shrill. The old woman staggered backwards, falling
over her own feet. The cane basket she carried crashed onto the verandah step. Muffins rolled
away. Milk spilled over the slate tiles. For nearly a minute she sat trembling, her head in her
hands. Gathering her composure, she clawed her way up the side railing of the metal balcony
frame so she could face the laughing boy. She raised her bloody fist.

“You young whipper snapper, you made me drop Mr. Brown’s breakfast. His wife arrives
home tonight. She went to go visit a sick friend. I told her I’d be here to give Ernest Brown his
breakfast.”

“I don’t care,” the boy called sarcastically, shrugging a shoulder.

“If you help me, I will give you two dollars.”

The boy rode his pushbike in circles several times, each circle tighter than the last. He stopped
at the end of the drive.
“I’ve considered your request. Make the offer four dollars and I’ll accept the proposal,” he
called, leaning on the green painted picket fence.
“I will give you the last clean muffin and the two dollars if you climb up to the second-floor
window to see if Mr. Brown is awake?”

The lad looked up at the window, grinning. “It’ll cost you five dollars and the muffin.”

The woman shook her head in disgust. “The price is too high. You will not even help an old
woman in her moment of need.”
“No.” The boy gave a short grunt. “The cost is now ten dollars and a muffin.”
“May God have pity on your soul?”
As the lad rode off he heard the woman’s feverish knocks and her desperate calls. He
hesitated only briefly to laugh at her from the end of the street.

A man parked his car behind the old dear’s two-door electric blue sedan. The moment the
engine fell silent the driver stepped down and walked to the verandah steps. A thin woman and a tall police constable shadowed him.

“Are you okay?” the driver asked.
“No, I’m not,” croaked the old woman. “Mr. Brown knows I will be coming this morning. He
has yet to answer my persistent knocking. I’m starting to have a panic attack. I’m so worried I’m beside myself. I know I shouldn’t have, but I’ve looked through the lounge room window.

The room is awash. Clothes, papers, and glass fragments litter the floor. The TV is on its side and is smashed to pieces. I need the police. I believe Ernest Brown has been murdered.”