I see them arching above us all, towering giving way to their name, and I cover my ears but naught else. They see me, even when I am not to see them, but what truly hurts is when we listen. We must never listen.

I am not old, though my actions and aversions have often gifted me the title. Even the old have phones, write sloppy-worded messages to their savvy grandchildren who grow up with their hands wrapped around crystal-screened devices while the Towers wrap invisible hands around them. They call it a web, which is mixing metaphors. Or appropriation. The ebb and flow of information is the feast, no longer sucking blood from prone figures or gorging on meaty innards. Murder is something that humans do, not the thin ones that stretch to the sky. It is bloodless, willingly given, and convenient.

What if every word you spoke was as recorded as you feared? Privacy is the war being waged, distrusting one another regarding easy numbers or vocal chatter. People now feel so connected to one another without knowing the paths their secrets take, the guise of being alone tricks them. Yet little rectangles in black plastic or rose gold may always be present.

The television is an output device, and I wiggle my ancient metal antennae to get the best signal even while I know they’ve been gone. Transmission, that’s the slayer. Giving back. Pushing out your message. Connection. Nearly everything is connected nowadays. I am not afraid of my television with its straightforward broadcast. I worry about who is on it, how they are the voices which call to us with familiarity, making us echo back.
Hello
Hello
How are you
I am well
Come to me
I will

No, not spiders at all. Spiders catch, set up invisible ropes on the way to destinations; spiders hinder. This is not spiderlike. The world-wide-web is nothing of the sort. It is the destination.

Phones and computers and transmissions feed on invisible waves in the air, jutting all the way into the reaches of space and back. The Towers would be fat if they weren’t so eternally hungry. I can feel their tongues on every video chat, their purring tendrils encasing each word with lust as it passes by, assuring that another will answer back. With every search engine request, a maw opens to dribble thick saliva upon externalized thoughts, lubricating the queries to be delivered all the quicker, all the more reliably.

It was easier once, when the figures dashing in the corners of our eyes were singular, when they wanted something tangible and ate their fill, absorbing voices to mimic cries for help or seduction. Trust is always at a Tower’s core. You could beat them by not believing your senses and moving on.

Have you seen a modern cell phone tower?
They stretch into the sky, even now so unsightly as to be hidden in the facade of a palm tree or conifer, relying on the familiar, co-opting innocuous appearances so it feels just like magic.
It IS magic.
Not all magic is well-intentioned.

I continue without phones or credit, letting ever-disappearing banknotes slip from my hands because cash, cash, always cash, and stamps you no longer have to lick escorting letters to awaiting fingertips. It is the only way.

It is thrilling to see such change, like butterflies evolving past their survival-need of nectar. Perhaps in a way it is more like spiders. A spider’s feast does not survive. I watch the words jolt to the ozone and back, listen to banal discussions and know they are an intoxicating meal as they transmit to and fro. I cannot see how we, people, are being eaten and digested, not yet. But the wendigo Towers are always hungry, and they will always feast.
I wonder how it will kill us.
We are prey animals, not meant to survive, and we do not know we are being chased.

I do not hide my face from these Towers, do not flinch under the weight of wi-fi internet buzzing around my ears. I am hidden until the Towers have done their feeding, until the crystal-screened serving platters go black. I know they will come for me then, again. Until that time I watch, and wonder, when will we people be spent.
How they will feed next.
How I will see them when they crawl out of their palm-tree costumes and stalk when the harvest runs dry.

The Towers are always hungry, and I must keep my ears closed tight, waiting for the current to slow, and change.