Hotel of the Golden Dawn

James Tate
 

It was clear to us that the real owners of the hotel were spiders. They were everywhere but you had to look carefully. They had ingenious ways of disguising themselves, except for the clerk at the check-in desk. He was clearly a spider, a pale pink translucent spider, a kindly one. In fact, in my experience, all the spiders in the hotel were benevolent. One stroked my brow as I lay in bed trying to sleep. Another kept flies off of my eggs in the morning. Many of the guests I saw in the lobby seemed to me inhuman, or at least toothless and drained of their blood. It was a convention of some kind, button makers, astronomers, comedians, florists, prison guards, lamplighters, editors, whatever, and they were having a very good time. The desk- spider and the door-spider eyed them proudly.