A Flying Leap

Mary looked out of the window. The world seemed such a busy place outside. Noisy. She had never ventured out of this house. The house where she was born, and her ancestors before her. She was not much of the adventurous kind, one could gather.

She loved this place, with its quaint mustiness, cobwebs and all. Her best friend Rosy, always wanted to go out of this place. She had lived here since she was born too.

They loved scurrying about the house. It was a huge house. People who lived outside thought it was haunted. There were stories abound, about monsters rushing in, in the dead of the night. “How stupid can they get?”, she mused now. She knew better.


Her mom called across to her, to come and have food. She and Rosy scampered along, laughing throughout the way. They were a content lot. The room was lit only by the lights in the street below. They didn’t care much for the absence of light.


Suddenly the light was cut off. A huge creature stood on the window ledge. Everybody rushed for cover. So this was the monster that everyone talked about! The creature came at them, claws in the air, teeth bared and tail ramrod straight. As it made a move towards the dinner table, Mary jumped to the window. The ledge from which she could see the world. The world she had never been in.

The creature turned to her, coming after her. Mary knew what she had to do. She jumped out of the window, to the world she had never seen, to escape this monstrous creature.

There she hung, two years later, on a silver cobweb her mother would have been proud to see. Mary, the spider, had learnt her lesson well. The cat that had wandered into their home, never showed up after that night. Mary’s family had scattered. She could have moved. But she had her own family right here now. Just over the ledge.

She was not of the adventurous kind.