As beautiful as the desolation was, she could stand it no longer.
The hideous, melodic heartbeat of the clock; the way spiderwebs bloomed like roses; the tears that stained her hankies with the scent of the ocean…
It was too quiet, she thought, no, too loud.
Too many thoughts, not enough to think about. Tick tock tick tock... Yes but what does’ tick tock’ mean? Was it counting down the seconds until she, too, would tick away? Did it stand for something? Morse Code? Was it a spirit trying to catch her attention? Was it him?

Her ramblings kept her company, insane and yet still sound. Paranoia occasionally floated by, but she never hosted it for long. So it was, and so it would be, for what seemed to her to be eternity. She was old, but she tried to convince herself she was undying.
This woman had no name as far as anyone knew. She was always called “The Widow”, or, more often than not, the neighbours vaguely described The Widow as ‘her’.
It was hard  to speak of such a creature, let alone give her a name as if she were human. She was so incredibly dissociated; some doubted she was conscious at all, anymore. Her life was null of interaction. One would almost feel guilty to call her by name… if they knew it, anyway.
It felt strange when she would trip and hear herself gasp in pain. Did she actually do that? Was that her voice? She forgot she had one. The pain reminded her of the body she carried. Without these occasional incidents, perhaps she would drift off as a ghost and never know that a change had ever occurred.

It had been so long since she’d held a conversation that she forgot what it sounded like when someone posed a question, or yelled angrily. No one ever gave her a reason to speak anymore. The mail-person came and went. “Dinner” was prepared in her isolated kitchen (tea, bread, cheese, and ham from the grocery deliveries). No one solicited. There was only Silence from the outside world.
It was perfection, she supposed.
She was wrong- some might say fatally. It was truly death; oh, so much death. Sameness, dulled senses, corpse-like eyes uninterested in the sun’s bright rays and whatever they illuminated.

She was once a cordial hostess, a loving mother, a forgiving friend. That changed in the span of three days.

In a way, her husband had broken more than just her heart when he finally croaked. He had taken her acquaintances, friends, and family members. After locking the door, she never once tousled its knob for more than a few minutes.
Occasionally, she would retrieve the vittles from her porch. Only then did that mass of oak sway forward, suddenly jerk back, and then become sealed once more. Everything in that house was shrouded in dust and decay, which fluttered out of the pitiful entrance, like the swirl of sunlight she desperately tried to avoid.
After opening the door (ensuring the grocer had been gone for at least 23 minutes), she stooped down, snatched the packages, and hastily locked everything back up…  But something slipped in among the three loaves, and as she coiled up into a fitful sleep after her dinner, horrible creatures began to shimmy over her.

They bit her bones and cursed her for letting him go so soon. She expected them, of course, but not this early… Was it early? She didn’t know.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….

The woman’s reclusive tendencies were brought to the forefront of public attention, when, on a sleepy Sunday morning, she was spotted at the local church.

She was  bedecked in black, per usual, with her now-wrinkled face was covered in a layer of crêpe.
To an unfamiliar onlooker, this Widow would appear to have been recently bereaved; grief stricken and freshly scalded.
But there were no unfamiliar faces (though many had never seen her) save the few curious children that had never had the joy of seeing her. They knew who this woman in the third pew was. Everyone did.

There she sat, not returning the stares so graciously afforded her way.  The Widow watched ahead. She was not expected to rise, nor kneel, and the Eucharist was clearly out of the question; the last time she had gone to confession must have been… 50 years ago, at least.

After mass concluded, she made no hurry, nor any delay in leaving. It appeared to be a forced mechanicalness, as if she was trying too hard to be normal and carefree.
The priest waved at her with a sincere smile, though he had never spoken to her before.

She looked through him, blank. He put his hand down and turned to greet the others, confused but not surprised.
There was something not quite natural about The Widow as she made her way across the room.
It was… alien; different than a true person, or even an animal.
She walked as if she had gears rolling around inside of her, forcing her body forward like bulldozer’s wheels. Many links, jointed appendages, seemed to pull her forward. The very muscles in her face, torso, and arms shifted. They bulged in different places. She looked like a sock full of marbles rolling down a stairwell; convulsing, twitching, making sporadic motions and hesitating. She scampered out the door.
Under the crêpe, it was hardly noticeable. However, “hardly” left enough room for a pair of young, sharp eyes.  

She hit the curb as she stepped into the road, and dragged her heel forward. A lump swelled and fell again.
The pair of eyes belonged to a boy, about thirteen years old. He bent down to help her, thinking she had been hurt. He should have ran at that point, or never stopped at all; it would have been better for him, and everyone else. He outstretched his hand.
After offering up one of her signature bleak faces, she lifted her veil. A glassy stare pierced into the poor child’s s face. It gave him a nauseous, light headed sensation deep within his chest. His face contorted fearfully as he stumbled backwards.
As she stood upon the shoulder of the street, her face changed. The eyes in her skull rolled back, her mouth opened up, the bones and muscles boiled, bubbled, and bobbled. Her neck flung itself back like a door on a hinge- much more liberally and willingly than her home’s unyielding entrance. Spiders spilled out of her eyes, nose, mouth, and erupted all around her. They curved outwards from the figure they once possessed within their host, then dispersed, covering ground fast. The Widow became a puddle of inky fabric and grey skin at the boy’s feet.
Men and women jumped- they screamed- as they hysterically ran towards the nearest high-point.

Of course, this was useless; the spiders easily overtook them, their skellic legs scaling benches and trees. They pressed greedily into the skin of their victims, digging holes and forcing openings through their bones. Everyone cringed, writhed, ran. It was horrific, a sight comparable to watching an animal die by electrocution. They stuttered out, faded away like The Widow had.
There was no blood. Only webs. Gossamer strands strung through their teeth, inside of their eyes, netted over their hair.
They choked the screams from the citizens, quickly, silently.
The Widow slowly rose back up from her puddle, this time fluid, lithe, graceful. Her old skin peeled away like a dress, and the webs underneath solidified into a curvaceous woman, and her hair darkened into the colour of the clothes she bore.

She was ready to call her husband back, and this time, there would be no hangings or burnings or stone-throwings. Only him, her, and the corpses full of webs…