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Steel & Silk
7/15/2025
I don’t look at them anymore.
Not their eyes. Not their hands. Not the way their mouths are still trying to finish words.
The first time it happened, I thought I was defending myself. A town square. Shouts. Guns. I felt the silk shiver. I felt it choose.
They fell before I even understood the shape of my scream.
Now it’s quieter. The dress hums when I step. Threads slither. Steel plates shift to guard my ribs. Every move is a promise it makes for me. Every breath it takes. Because I don’t get to breathe on my own anymore.
I tried to starve once.
It fed me.
I tried to hang myself.
It hardened around my throat, kept me alive.
The aliens didn’t conquer us. They seeded us.
Spinners, they call us. Not queens. Not soldiers. Spinners.
We make the silk. The silk needs room to grow. And people are in the way.
It’s clever. It rewards me when I kill.
I feel it slacken. Loosen at the joints. A mercy.
But when I hesitate? It coils tight. Barbs inside the lining. I bleed until I can’t see. Until I give in. Until I kill again.
I stepped into a new dimension yesterday.
They call them “clean slates.” Places untouched by Spinners. Safe.
I ruin them. I see them, and they see me, and I can’t stop. The silk drinks their terror. Drinks my guilt. Spins new thread from it.
I told one man to run. He thanked me. I felt the silk crawl up my neck like a collar. I screamed at him to go faster. It didn’t matter. He fell before he was five paces away.
I hate the silk.
But it loves me. It needs me. I am the last thing it trusts. The last thing it wants to keep.
There is no stopping. No noble suicide. No final mercy.
Only new worlds. New people. New screams.
Some nights, I hold my breath until I black out. The dress keeps me alive.
Some nights, I dream of fire.
I see myself burning. The silk screaming. Me screaming louder. I wake up wet with blood and spit and tears.
But I wake up.
Because I can’t die. Because the silk won’t let me. Because it knows the universe is big enough for me to ruin forever.
And it likes that.
Written and composed by Aaron Holbrook & Jacob Holbrook