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I’m the youngest of three siblings, both my sisters died at a very young age, but that was mostly their fault. I am the only child in my family to survive my hometown’s traditional Slaughter Fest where all parents take their young children, leave them in the aisle and throw stones at them—that’s the tradition. Some kids survive, most of them don’t; but in their defense mostly all who die are a year old or less. Ducking stones would be a problem if you cannot stand, or move, or see. Nah, just kidding, no, we don’t have such stupid traditions. Who throws stones at their children! We only chop their heads and barbecue them.
My parents never liked my sense of humor; my sister did; ok, not really, but she supported me when they did not. She was always there for me. She was my best friend, my only friend!
And yes, I do have a sister. But just one, and she’s very much alive. Probably.
My name is Rigie Tam, I am an amateur stand up comedian. My parents didn’t want me to do that but I did it anyway, thanks to my sister Rio. Dad always wanted me to be her. She always wanted me to be me. I always wanted to be George Carlin—but alive.
Rio is three years older than me, by age; by anything else, she’s at least thirty years older. A first class MBA, she’s helping dad in our restaurant business. At just twenty seven, she’s going to be the director of the company. I am a college dropout, who doesn’t know shit about how exactly my parents managed to keep us alive all these years! All I know is that we are a chain of restaurants, but I don’t know the menu. But then Rio loves that kind of work so I’m okay with it. And she never let dad force me to join the business, she knows I won’t. Even dad knows that but he is too proud to accept it.
I’m an artist, I cannot be tamed down like that in such a rich and powerful lifestyle. I am here to struggle.
Rio is my world. I can talk all day about my sister. She’s the inspiration of most of my stand ups. I love her more than anything else, and I cannot imagine my life without her. She loves me the same. But she also loves spiders. I hate her.
It’s beyond me how such a sophisticated young girl could get a spider tattooed on the back of her neck. But then we do silly things, like loving spiders or owning one as a pet! And she doesn’t even keep it in a jar or box or in a book, like the way she should be; she keeps that thing in the open! Ew. I cannot stand that eight-legged monstrosity. Eight legs! Why on earth would anyone want to have eight legs! Two are enough. Four are MORE than enough. Eight is such an overkill, it’s just stupid. If I had eight legs I would be confused to death deciding which leg to put after which. That would be horrible. Spiders are horrible.
But she wasn’t always into spiders. I remember when we were kids she used to be scared of spiders. One day, when I was about eight, we saw a large spider on the window. I wanted to hit that but she couldn’t move, as if she was stoned out of fear. It was when I shooed it, she came back to her senses. Now look at her, she has a spider as a pet! I’m not sure when and where did she get that from, but one day she came home from college with that thing in her hat. And since then she became so obsessed with spiders. Even though my parents liked it, they even allowed it in the house. You have no idea how big a deal it was!
We were never allowed to have pets. When I was young I wanted a bunny, but dad did not allow me to get a cute little bunny. And this was a horrendous SPIDER and they allowed it, that was just preposterous!
I was never okay with that thing. I was scared; to the point that I started to become paranoid. It was about three years ago, after a long mental struggle I had become so paranoid of everything that my parents had to take me to a psychiatrist. That was a bad time of my life. I had almost lost it, to me the spider was an evil monster and it was controlling everyone in my family. I had been dreaming stuff all day, bad stuff. I had been looking for patterns of the strange and obscure, just to figure out the plan of the spider. Now it seems silly but it was super serious at that time. I could sense that something was wrong, but could not articulate what I was thinking. Now I know it was the eyes of that thing that was giving me chills. Imagine you have eyes all over your face. That’s how it’d look in its human form. Just so horrible. But I was not just terrified, I don’t know, it was a strange feeling. It’s like when you are scared of something so bad that you start to hate it, that fear becomes anger, and you just want to kill that thing but you don’t understand why.
But I didn’t tell anyone about the paranoia. My mother thought it was because of the breakup (yeah, there was a guy but he’s not important anymore), for my family I was in depression because of that. I didn’t think it was necessary to tell them the real reason because I believed they were under the spell of the spider anyway and no matter what I say, they would not trust me. I so wanted to show them how the spider was controlling their minds.
Rio was doing her masters but was coming home early from college to be there with me. I was getting medication but there was still some unknown horror in my mind, feelings were still crawling under my skin. One evening I told Rio about the paranoia. She was staying in my room. I told her what I had been afraid of all that time. About the patterns and change in behavior of our parents, I told her everything. But she said it was all in my mind. The spider was not controlling anyone. It was only affecting my thinking because I was letting it. I was allowing a fear to take over my rational thinking. It was not about the spider but about me. She helped me look at the situation from a different perspective, and it helped. It helped more than any medication. We talked till late that night. It was good.
But I woke up with a scream! I had the most horrendous dream of my life. Rio jumped out of the bed when she heard me. I was sweating, panting. She comforted me and encouraged me to tell her what I saw. I was shivering from fear and I could not speak but she helped me let it out.
“It was a silly dream”, I told her. “It felt like an extension of reality, we were talking, just as we had been, and I started to feel drowsy, and suddenly you became silent. I thought you’d slept, I couldn’t open my eyes, too. In a moment I thought something was over my face, I felt strange pinches, I startled and saw the spider on my face! I jumped and something happened that I don’t remember. Then I looked at you and you were staring at me, with white eyes! I tried to wake you up but I couldn’t move, my voice was gone. Then something happened and I woke up.”
She laughed hysterically! I laughed too. It was better.
But what happened that night scared her. She got more worried about me. The next day she took the spider with her and left it somewhere on her way to the college. It was a huge relief for me and it helped me a lot. Within the next month I was almost normal, my paranoia was gone and I got back to my funny self. Much as my parents were happy about me I knew they were not about the return of the dark jokes. But my sister was.
Last year I got a call to do my first official standup. I had been applying online to local clubs, bars, and small restaurants but Rio suggested that I apply in other cities. I could not imagine living alone, without her, but she forced me to give it a shot. I did and got a call in less than a week.
I moved out.
Moving out is a good thing but it’s not easy. Everyone should live independently, it teaches you a lot about life, about the things you cannot learn while living with your parents. Things like what it means to be homeless; what it means to literally kill for food, or money for that matter; how to break in into grocery stores or into other people’s houses to fulfill your daily needs; how to make rat stew also, how to catch one in the first place. It doesn’t only teach, it gives you some of the best experiences of your life. You can never compare the excitement you get when you stay up all night counting the cash you’ve earned by rubbing off strangers in the street corner, that’s just priceless!
But It’s not all fun, you have to work hard to survive alone. It teaches you discipline; it teaches you the value of your time and money. It teaches you a lot about people. But most importantly, it teaches you about your own self. We are continuously evolving, always learning new things and living alone gives you the time you need to reflect upon your growth as a human. It gives you time to evaluate what you were and what you are becoming—I am becoming happier.
It’s been a year now, and I still don’t like spiders, but I am not paranoid anymore. I’m happier now, happier like I was with Rio when we were kids, when we had no worries, no jobs, and we used to play all the time. Now my work gives me that happiness. Today I saw that guy was at my show, he tried to contact me backstage but I didn’t talk. He’s just ‘that guy’ to me now. He’s a spider too, not literally, but he is almost the same. He has many eyes looking for his prey all over the interwebs, that’s how he caught me a couple of years ago. I was immature and stupid. Anyway, enough of the back-stabbing ex. Shit happens and you move on.
I dropped out of college because it was boring, I didn’t want to learn business. I wanted to talk shit. My parents were so pissed about that, maybe they still are, but after I moved out I gave all my time and energy to my work. My first gig was a phenomenal failure, even on that tiny scale. But it was the beginning, today I am not a failure, at least. And one day I will be a success. This is the place I always wanted to be and it was my sister who made it all possible. I miss her.
We talk on the phone, almost daily, but it’s not like meeting in person. I’ve been asking her to visit me for a month now but she’s terribly busy. She’s not even updating her Facebook these days and we don’t have time for Skype. It’s been a long time since I saw her and mum. But I understand that, she’s running a business. I’m also busy with work, prepping gigs, meeting producers, promoting myself that I couldn’t make time to visit home; never thought we’d ever be living aloof like that. But we do silly things!
Today I found a spider in my room and that brought back a lot of stupid memories. One thing that never occurred to me, when Rio had that spider, was that I never really noticed what species it was. I was so busy being paranoid, that I never for once thought about that. It was certainly a weird looking spider. I google-ed that today but I didn’t find any spider that could match the one Rio had. I even thought of calling her to ask but I didn’t, I didn’t want her to be unnecessarily worried about me. Now it is almost midnight and I am thinking about that dream. Funny how the brain works, when I had that dream I was paranoid and it was all horrible, I was terrified, but right now I am thinking all that and I am smiling. I am calculating it, trying to nitpick the loopholes in that dream. How could I believe it was real! That’s just silly. She only had one spider and I dreamt of hundreds, or… did I? I don’t remember. But dreams are a cool subject to study. (If I had any idea, I would have taken Oneirology in college.)
I cannot wait to tell Rio about this new experience, I will call her in the morning. She’ll be happy. She always says if you can think about someone without feeling like an emotional mess, you are over them. And I think that also applies to spiders.
After tons of small shows and big shameless self-promotion, I finally got my first major gig last month. Now I’m touring for more than twenty days. I’m exhausted beyond the proper limit and I am missing my family. It’s been seven months since I last saw them. I called Rio today and cried a lot. I’m going home tonight. I need this.
It was almost midnight. Dad was out of town, so the driver came to receive me at the Airport. Rio couldn’t come, she was in the office. But she called so I’m not angry with her. I’m angry with dad, he didn’t call. As the car entered the gate, I couldn’t stop myself from crying, everything was the same. The gate, the stoned pathway, the array of orchids and the smell, everything was making me nostalgic. As we reached home, I literally ran up the stairs to see mum. I hugged her for a full five minutes; we both were crying; I couldn’t be happier. But Rio wasn’t home, she said she’d be leaving for home soon.
That was about an hour ago. She’s not yet home. I’ve had the best dinner of my life. And I’m waiting for her in her room, looking at her stuff. Not much has changed. But there are a few Marilyn Manson posters. She was never into that kind of music! Something clearly changed while I was away. There are also a few gifts, things with hearts, this girl is so dead now.
Rio came home late. And she had a lot of explaining to do. But the moment I saw her all my anger got replaced by the sheer feeling of shock! Had she not been my sister, I would not have recognized her. She looked so different, as if she was the daughter of Marilyn Manson and Gene Simmons, with makeup on. Na, not exactly, it’s just that she was looking happy.
His face was glowing. I missed that glow, it’d faded away since she dedicated herself to work. I was extremely happy to see her like that again. She told me about the boy, and we had a video chat. He was the guy who gifted her the spider in college (what else did she expect from a Manson fanboy). But I had no idea. She said they were just good friends in college, but for the last few months she was missing me badly, so he filled that void and they came close. It was a sweet story, I was smiling when she was telling me about her adventures in love. She was looking so cute. He seemed to be a nice guy, too. I was happy for my sister.
It is 4am. And I am sitting in Rio’s bed. She is sleeping beside me.
We chatted for some time but we both were tired so we decided to sleep. I didn’t even check my room. I was home for her. We slept and I dreamt of the spider—again. That dream was so real. We were sleeping the same way we had slept, Rio had her back towards me, and I was looking at her spider tattoo. And it moved. The bloody tattoo moved! It moved as if the black ink was alive and it started to get out of her neck, like a weird monster. And it turned into the same goddamn spider she had as a pet. I tried to move but I could not, tried to wake her up but only managed to turn her when that thing jumped at my face and I woke up screaming!
My pulse is falling, I cannot think clearly right now. I know it was not real. I know it was a dream. Or maybe it still is. I am sitting, looking at Rio and she’s staring back at me with those empty white eyes.
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