Hey void. What’s up? I won’t keep you waiting for long.
It’s been a hot minute, but I have the second chapter of Zemblanity here and ready to go. In case you missed chapter one, you can find it here.
Fun fact: Allyson Alexander’s initials cause minor bullying at school since her dad is…er…was…a drunk. The AA jokes didn’t survive the first round of edits, and unfortunately exist only in my fleeting memory, because my dog decided a long while ago to pee on a bunch of my books and the first draft was one of them he chose to claim. He’s an asshole. He also has never peed on my books again. Seriously Jax. What were you thinking?
Without further word vomit, let’s see how Allyson is doing since shit hit the fan:
***
Chapter Two
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
Tick
Time and place sewn together in a blurred mass of grey. Allyson lost track of how long she sat over the corpse. Stray dogs barked and moaned from outside her house, her barrier. Streaks of daylight slashed through the shadows, carelessly highlighting the parts of her father she did not wish to see.
Dead.
Roger Alexander was dead. Nothing left of him but scraps of clothing and literal skin and bones. His body was stiff and dry, almost as if he was gone for years instead of hours (Days? She didn’t know, she couldn’t know). There on the floor, he didn’t look so big; his body collapsed on itself like a long dead spider.
The first of many pangs of anxiety hit her, forcing her back to her feet to pace the floor in a set pattern she’d traveled many times. If he was still alive, she’d receive a hearty smack to the back of her matted head for the nervous habit. That was one thing she wouldn’t have to worry about anymore. She could pace when she wanted, watch what she wanted, eat what she wanted, do anything she wanted, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
On one of her back and forth trips, Allyson glanced at the mirror at the end of the hall. She took in air so fast it hurt her throat. She almost didn’t recognize her own reflection. Something was different from before, but it was hard to tell what exactly from this far away. She wanted to walk, but her knees shook so violently that she settled on crawling to the framed glass.
It was her face, but not the face she saw last night while playing dress up with her dead mother’s clothes. From bottom eyelid to cheek were ugly red scabs trailing like a river bed before tapering off to smooth skin. It was as if someone took a knife to her, but she had no memory of weapons.
Trembling fingers reached for the first mark, and her body went cold all over. She touched the skin around it. It was sore, but otherwise felt normal. Slow, slow, her fingers came together, running along the divot. It burned to the touch. She didn’t pull away until she could feel her thoughts fuzz white.
“Like static.”
The words came from her mouth, but it wasn’t her voice. Not quite. Not as she remembered.
“Bad reception. Something happened.”
Different bits and pieces came back to her. Her tears were acid. They were acid and they ate through her cheeks and through his hand and through the wood. And then…and then…
“And then what, Allyson? What did you do?”
But it hadn’t been her. There was something else in the room with them.
“It came from the shadows.”
From the shadows in the hall, from the shadows in the floor, she wasn’t sure where for certain, but she knew it wasn’t from the light. It was hard to see at first, but it was there.
“And it killed him.”
There was no weight to the words. She told herself it was just the shock; that really she did care that her father was no more. But the more she thought about it, the less certain she was. With that uncertainty came and eerie sort of calm that she clung to like a lifeline.
“You deserved it, you know.”
Allyson sat on the floor for another good look of what remained of the thing she called Daddy. There was a hard lump in her throat that was hard to breathe past, and forced something that felt like a sob but sounded like a laugh. No one would believe it, not even if they saw it. Spiders shriveled when dead; not people. Not that fast.
“You were bad and you deserved all the bad things in the world,” she told the corpse. “You can’t just hurt people when you’re mad at them. You can’t just scream at them. There are consequences, Roger. And when you do bad, you have to suck it up and deal with the consequences.”
For the first time since she could remember, she felt bigger than him. She held onto that sudden empowerment as tight as she possibly could, but it didn’t come as naturally as portrayed in the movies. Her grip was slippery.
“Fuck,” she whispered against her open palm. “No one deserves to die.”
The shock was wearing off, and fast. She didn’t hate him. Sometimes, she even loved him. It was a sort of sick game, she supposed, trying to win his affection, but they got by. He was all she knew, and now he was gone.
Allyson stood and paced around his body. This couldn’t be real. Demons did not crawl from the depths of hell to claim the souls God had no need for. Human beings did not dissolve away to skin and bones.
And yet, there he lay. Empty eye sockets. Mocking her.
Why did it feel so natural, so at home, when the beast from under the house smiled at her with those razor sharp teeth?
“He probably died of a heart attack or a stroke or alcohol poisoning or a brain aneurysm and I made up the rest to make it interesting.”
In fact, she should pick up the phone right now and dial the police or an ambulance or somebody to come make sense of the situation for her. Maybe an adult would have better luck wrapping their mind around it.
She grabbed the corded receiver, her fingers hovered over the buttons, and she froze. If she involved adults, her fate was sealed. Not because she would be blamed, for no one in their right mind would believe a girl so young capable of such atrocities, but because she’d become a kid of the state. Allyson had no relatives that she knew of, and she’d seen enough classmates playing the foster home game to know what she’d be getting herself into.
Besides, there was still the matter of the body. The recently deceased were supposed to have meat on them. Her father simply did not. She didn’t want to deal with the questions when she herself was still trying to figure out the details.
Then again…
“Bingo.”
It was common knowledge around town that Roger was a recluse. A homebody. A deadbeat drunk on disability. It was a rare occasion to see him anywhere but the liquor store, and most times he’d send Allyson with his list anyway.
It was possible, fully possible, to pull it off without anyone knowing he was missing at all.
“He was already a ghost to them.”
What did it matter if his body was above ground or below?
“Speaking of which…”
The house was on the outskirts; the last house before acres of farmland. Even if someone drove by, they wouldn’t be able to see the backyard through the weeds and trash littered about. Even so, she’d wait until the safety of nightfall. Until then, she’d move him closer to the back door.
It just didn’t seem right to watch tv in the same room as a corpse.
Allyson couldn’t bring herself to touch him. She imagined his skin would feel like a plastic bag holding wet sand, with some bits crunchy as dried leaves. She was afraid of him splitting open or crumbling away.
With an old towel to protect her hand from direct contact, she grasped his ankles and pulled. It was like moving furniture. Heavy at first, but with a little momentum, everything went fairly smooth.
The closer she got to the door, the more aware she was of the sounds from outside. It sounded like a dog fight. A cat fight? She couldn’t be certain, but whatever it was sounded mean. Had they just started in, or did she just start paying attention?
All her worries of a piece of her father snagging on a splintered piece of floorboard were unfounded. The only part of him that managed to work its way loose was a single tooth. She’d not have noticed had she not stepped on it in the middle of the kitchen.
Arms still shaky from exertion, she knelt down and cradled it in her hand. She meant to walk to the trash and toss it away, but her outstretched palm couldn’t bring itself to rotate. It didn’t seem right to put it there. Later she’d bring herself to believe that it was for her own safety. What if someone at the dump rifled through the bag and found the tooth? No, too risky. Instead, she placed it in the pocket of her dirty sundress.
“I’ll figure out what to do with it later.”
Burying it with the body crossed her mind, but she shoved it aside, convinced it was likewise risky business. Her fingerprints were all over it now. Then they’d know.
“Know what?”
A problem for a different day. For now, she was proud of a job well done. She walked to the living room and went to the chair—his chair. She flicked through the channels until she landed on something as dark and foreign as her current state of mind.
I’m doing things a little bit different this time around. Usually I do a book review every other month, but honestly, this book I’m reading right now is slow going. Ugh. I’ll get through it; it’s just taking quite a bit longer to get through because it’s not all that interesting yet even a quarter of the way through. I’ll power through, though. Because I’m a completionist. I’m also a masochist.
Anywayyyy…
You may remember a while back when I shared the first chapter of the novel I was working on. At the time, I entered it into a contest on Booksie. I didn’t win, but I did get a few nice messages about it.
Fast forward. I’m in the final stages of editing before I figure out how to write a book proposal and send it off to some agents and hope one of them bites. Things are moving along quite a bit faster than they did in the beginning, and it’s only going to move faster since I now have time set aside five days a week to write (thanks to my new job). I’m excited. And I’m terrified. But mostly excited.
Point? I want you to be excited with me.
I present to you the first chapter of Zemblanity (formerly Death in a Sundress). Then, come back around in another few weeks to get chapter two. I’ll keep the trend going until I get to chapter five.
Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next installment and future writing news from yours truly!
Without further adieu, here’s the first chapter of Zemblanity.
***
Chapter One
She would ask. She was ready to move those little lips, too plump for her hollow face, in rhythm with buzzing vocal chords. She could visualize each and every word down to the font. But she could smell the whiskey from the other side of the room, and her question died on the exhale. Bothering him over something as stupid as a question about homework was akin to digging her own grave. When it came to her father, if the booze was out, most things were better left unsaid.
She turned to go back to her room, and her heel snagged a splinter from the unfinished hardwood.
Crack!
Her foot, blissfully unaware of what two inches of wood lodged between skin cells felt like moments before, now felt full to the brim. Her moan was hushed, almost muted by the echo of neglected wood separating. It rippled the silence of the house, a drop in an ocean of quiet. Tears burned and spilled over, eyelashes catching the ones they could, hugging them tight.
And then, a rustling from the darkened living room, a sound of papers and old food wrappers being crumpled and stomped. She could feel the bruises forming without him even laying a finger on her. The skin had a way of remembering.
Before the inevitable blow, her eyes squeezed shut, almost as if not looking took the power out of the sting of pain or the bitter taste of blood.
If I can’t see you, you can’t see me. If I can’t see you, you can’t touch me.
She stumbled under the initial strike. Her legs struggled to regain their footing enough to keep her upright. Allyson knew better than to fall. If her legs gave, there would be no escape from whatever heavy steps and kicks that were sure to follow.
He thrust his fist into the mess of black hair at the base of a poorly woven braid, forcing her to face him. Fingers spread, his hand was easily as big—if not bigger—than her twelve-year-old face. Even after years of priming, she could not stop herself from flinching, wincing, and, ultimately betraying her better judgment, crying out. Against her better judgment, she screamed.
Allyson did not hate her father. Far from it. Roger Alexander was all she knew. He was more than hurt to her. Hugs and kisses and bedtime stories were not a foreign concept to her. They’d watch television together on the couch while eating overcooked frozen dinners. Sometimes there was a comedy, and they’d laugh, both of them, just like what she supposed normal families did. Other times there would be a show where people got hurt and it was supposed to be funny. He would laugh, and she would smile and pretend it tickled her in the same way, it she didn’t like the joke.
Most of the time when she heard the glass bottles and aluminum cans echo through the empty hall, she stayed in her room. It was easier that way. Out of sight, out of mind. An unspoken rule of the house.
No, she did not hate her father. In her own way, she supposed she loved him, just as she supposed he loved her.
It was funny, she thought. Funny in a twisted, fucked up way. The situation was not new. If she was being honest with herself, she should be used to the whole thing by now. The pain always numbed after the white-hot stinging, and occasionally, she could find bliss in the sparse moments of feigned unconsciousness. It was funny because she knew she should just lay there unmoving and he’d stop, but she couldn’t bring herself to let down her guard just yet.
Sometimes she thought she might be a masochist. Or was it a sadist? She could never remember the difference.
Sometimes he’d make her waffles with extra syrup after he slept off the whiskey. Never was there talk at the wobbly kitchen table about the beatings, and for that, Allyson was thankful. It made it easier to believe that nothing happened when neither of them acknowledged why her lip was split and her eye was swollen. She never dwelled on whether or not he remembered hitting her. The pain was bad enough, but the shame was somehow worse.
Roger struck once, twice, thrice, altering between the side of her face near her eye and her mouth. Each time his hand was open. In terms of beatings, she would have preferred his fist kiss her mouth with its dull, splintering ache than the sharp, screaming pain of those spread fingers.
Her tears fell, hot and thick, heavy thuds to the floor. Through squinted eyes she watched as they burned small holes in the floor as if they were not tears at all, but acid. The smoky wisps that remained in the air were satisfying.
Take that, floor!
If anything deserved to be damaged, it was it in all its unfinished glory.
Allyson didn’t notice the flesh falling from her cheeks in small flakes at first, or the way her tears tore into her skin to create river beds under her eyes. If there was pain, it didn’t register over the feel of her cheeks swelling from the contact of flesh against flesh. She did not notice the way the holes in the floorboards grew outward in web-like tendrils.
The room grew unbearably loud with screams that were not her own. Her father took a step back and held the palm of the previously offending hand, moaning through gritted, crooked teeth. She watched wide-eyed, not comprehending, face hot and throbbing.
“You bitch you little bitch what did you do to Daddy what did you do to me what did you—“
And then silence.
Allyson learned several things that night. For one, there was such a thing as overloading the senses. The nerve endings under her broken skin shut down from the force of his anger. She was deaf from the screams of both her and her father. Or maybe it wasn’t any sort of audio stimuli that stole her hearing away. Perhaps it was her eyes getting overwhelmed causing time and space to collide and morph into something that couldn’t be. Perhaps it all stemmed from the hooked blade emerging from her father’s unshaven throat.
She really couldn’t be certain.
It was as if she were watching a movie in slow motion. Her father’s fingers twitched one by one as he tried to grasp the hook in his burned, bloodied hands. His mouth opened and closed uselessly, reminding her of her classroom’s pet fish. Allyson didn’t think any air was getting through. She opened her own mouth to say something, but her voice wouldn’t work. They mirrored each other for what seemed like an eternity.
The hall swallowed what little light normally pierced through the blinds in the adjoining rooms. Was it so late already? Staring into that darkness made her mouth dry, her throat tight. She thought she saw something behind him.
This is it, she thought. This is when the hero runs to a different part of the house and grabs a weapon to defend themselves.
But her legs were rooted to the spot. Her body felt like cement. Her appendages were nothing but for show.
There was a light switch within reach, but something—be it intuition, if you believed in that sort of thing, or otherwise—told her it was a bad idea, as if whispered from the cracked walls. It was foreign; a different language altogether. She did not know the words, but she did understand the intent. In the darkness, it’s less dangerous.
Here we are now, but that’s enough entertainment for one night, thank you very much.
Her eyes had trouble adjusting to the empty black, but little by little, shapes came into play. Toxic, neon green eyes peered at her from behind a veil of thick black hair that was parted strategically as if not to obstruct its vision. Its wide, smiling mouth, while predatory, did not feel threatening. It would not attack her. If it wanted, she would be dead already.
Anxiety wavered to disassociation. She smiled back at the creature. It, in turn, smiled wider than before, the skin stretched around its mouth like it wasn’t skin at all, but instead made from black powdered latex gloves. It formed around the bone structure too tight, too thin.
Allyson felt nothing. Her father’s thrashings subsided little by little, until his body hung limp from the throat down. His eyes didn’t see her anymore. The hook retreated back into his throat and disappeared, leaving nothing but a large bleeding cavern in its place. Roger’s feet held him for a fraction of a second before his dead knees gave way to the full weight of his corpse. He fell forward with a dull thud, and Allyson kept standing.
She wondered if he got a splinter on the way down.
The creature crouched before her. Its nine eyes were missing the pupils, and no pupils meant she couldn’t tell which direction it was looking. Maybe nowhere. Maybe everywhere. All seeing. All knowing. It reminded her of a spider. Her father’s murderer stood unmoving, then turned its attentions back to its prey.
The knife-like appendages complimented the sword-hook that had previously been in her father’s throat to create a gross interpretation of a human hand. From the hole in his neck, the hooked thumb cut with ease to the groin, blood spilling on the unfinished flooring, the wood soaking it in greedily.
Allyson did not lose her footing, even when her father’s insides slopped to the side. The creature’s jaw unhinged, displaying impossibly long teeth proudly before diving in, claiming only organs and leaving skin and bone relatively untouched.
This is fine, she thought. Everything would be alright enough, okay enough, because nothing was as bad as living with an alcoholic father for the rest of her life.
No more bruises to explain to teachers or classmates or Zaque. No more picking up a twelve-pack for Daddy after school. No, this is fine, for the best, really, a jolly good opportunity.
Allyson almost had herself convinced of all this and more when the creature gazed at her once again with its bloodied grin. And like that, the spell was broken. She screamed, as loud and as hard as any normal child would, with no idea that it would be the last bit of normalcy she would ever experience.
The creature crawled back to the hole from whence it came. The flooring closed up as if nothing ever happened, leaving only a few tiny holes from her acidic tears to remind her.
***
Like it? Hate it? Leave a comment and let me know what you think! Check back here on October 25 for chapter two. Or, if you would like, you can subscribe to get notifications right in your inbox every time a new post is ready. I have new content every other Sunday at 8:00 am sharp!
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Something’s coming. Something that’s been in the works for several months. Oh, void, do I have something for you.
It’s a little love project called Itsy Bitsy. The idea was given to me one day from my dad while we were walking around the mall with my mom. All I did was fill in the empty spaces in between. It was meant to be a short story, but it turned out that the spider had a little bit more to say than a few thousand words, so the short story became a small novella.
This week, instead of a book review, I’m giving you a sneak peek not only of the first several pages, but of the cover. It would mean the world to me if you dropped a line to tell me what you thought. Full disclosure: I’m typing the draft up up on an iPad, and it likes to autocorrect my typos into words that are not even close to what I was going for. I think I got them all, but if I missed any, let me know!
The story is about a man who has a weird connection with a spider. It’s lighthearted in the most unsettling of ways, with ridiculous overreactions on the man’s part and a frigid demeanor on the spider’s part. I really hope you enjoy it.
So, without further word vomit, here is the beginning of Itsy Bitsy:::
There wasn’t a bump yet, but the area all around was warm to the touch. For a week he let his perfectly manicured fingernails grow out just long enough to graze the skin; it was easier to hide than when he snuck his fork under the table to dig into his arm. He wanted to believe it was an allergic reaction to laundry detergent or fabric softener, just a rash, but deep down he knew better. It was a bug bite. A bug bite, and it probably happened while he was asleep in the safety of his own bed. He used the term “probably” loosely; he knew it was from the middle of the night because it wasn’t there before he went to bed but it sure as hell was the next morning.
The idea of an insect in his bed, though… He shuddered at the very thought. Bugs were dirty, nasty little bastards, and he would just die before he admitted one had infiltrated his domain, despite all the safeguards in place. Bugs thrived in dirty, nasty places, like the garbage dumpsters in the alley or the slummy apartments on the north side of the city. They didn’t belong in nice, clean neighborhoods with nice, clean people.
But there wasn’t a bump yet, so he could keep telling himself it was a rash or the beginnings of some disease.
Frederick would rather believe it was cancer than a bug bite.
He tried everything he could to get his mind off it. If he stopped thinking about it, he would stop scratching it, and it would heal faster. So he kept to his routine, even though his forearm screamed in protest. He went to the gym and did two rounds on the machines, keeping his hoodie on over his Under Armor, even though he was smoldering underneath the heavy cotton, all to hide the scratch marks that were getting worse and worse every passing day. There wasn’t a bump yet on his skin, but the marks made him look unstable, uncontrolled. People would think he had a nervous tic. Or worse, he had crank bugs. He wasn’t sure on the specifics of that, but knowledge of such things was beneath him.
Frederick went to his white collar job where he sat happily in his cubicle and made phone call after phone call to maintain second place on the boards. He wouldn’t dream of taking the lead, and that wasn’t to say that he wasn’t capable. As a matter of fact, he considered himself to be the most capable out of anyone there. But, as it was, first place just so happened to belong to someone special. They hadn’t come out officially yet. But they had gotten coffee a couple of times in the past week, and the last office Christmas party found them both in the janitors closet for a thrill. He thought the chase would end there, that he’d get bored or she’d regret the drunken escapade, but a week later they exchanged numbers.
He wore a light colored polyester blend with buttons on the cuffs, even though the humidity alone had him swimming through the air. The material should have felt soft to the touch, but instead it was like sandpaper made with ground up razor blades against his skin. He was more than ready to peel the shirt away from his body and throw it in disgust to the floor after work in the safety of his own home. The patch that might be a raging disease (but was probably just a weird bug bite) was all his sin, and the cool, naked air was salvation.
When he stripped the fabric away, his quest to dig into his forearm took pause. He normally sported a nice, bronze tan; not too light to look pasty, and not too dark to cause those deep wrinkles he dreaded with every passing year. Now, his arm was a deep, dark reddish purple. Somewhere between burgundy and mauve, a color he recognized but couldn’t name off hand. Given time, he was sure he could come up with it.
It looked infected, but he ignored it. He wouldn’t go to the doctor because they would talk amongst their doctor friends and nurses and HIPPA or no, word would get around that Frederick’s arm was full of puss, and he would be a laughingstock around town. It itched, though, so he dug in, then pulled the offending hand back and moan, hushed behind his tight lips, and knelt to the nice, plush carpeting of his luxury apartment. It cushioned his knees, then cushioned his side when he toppled over. Like a blanket of cotton. Like a hug from a cloud.
Pain begged him to scream, but he clenched his teeth against it. What would the neighbors think if they heard him? What would they think if they came in to help and saw him doubled over on the floor?
Drugs. They’d tell their friends, and those friends would tell their friends, et cetra et cetra, until the whole neighborhood knew, the whole city, the whole state.
He’d rather die from pain than live with the shame of a blatant lie.
“Oh, but you’re being ridiculous, don’t you think?”
No, he didn’t think that at all. The world got by on slander. Anything to get ahead. One negative opinion could wreck his entire life, drive him to the ground.
“Dramatic. I knew you would be dramatic the first time I laid eyes on you.”
Frederick opened his eyes without realizing they were closed or remembering when exactly he closed them. He lived alone in his apartment, and yet he could have sworn he heard a voice.
The pain in his arm lessened and lessened to a mere whisper of what it once was. He took a breath, held it in, and released, again and again, until he found the willpower to stand. He tiptoed through the apartment, inspecting the off-white carpet and deep blue walls, searching for signs of life or a break-in. Living room. Kitchen. Bedroom. Bathroom. Balcony. Honestly it took almost no time at all, seeing as the only door between him and an intruder in the studio was the one to the bathroom, but he checked it all out anyway. But nothing. No one there sharing his space with him. No sign of anyone but himself.
Still, he could not shake the feeling of being watched.
As the night wore on, the nervousness wore off, and the pain in his arm turned up. He wasn’t about to scratch it again. He learned his lesson well enough. Instead, when the pain created a fine bead of sweat on his skin, he got up from his place on the crème colored suede couch and went straight to the kitchen, to the fridge, to the top door that was the freezer, and pulled out a small handful of ice. It clattered on the marble countertop, and he picked a piece back up. Using the corner of the ice block, he tested it against his arm, then pulled away faster than the rash had a chance to register. In less than a second, he felt the repercussions, and was glad he didn’t wait for his nerves to catch up. While his arm throbbed, he grabbed a dish towel and piled the ice in the center before wrapping it up and placing the makeshift pack on his arm, shielding himself from direct touch. It still hurt, but not nearly as bad, and it was better than the burning sensation he felt otherwise.
He held it tight in that same spot, staring blankly into the kitchen sink. It was clean; free of hard water stains or rust or lime that plagued other’s sinks. It didn’t emit any odd smells that were off putting. If anything, it smelled like freshly squeezed lemons. Delicious.
He stayed there for a while. He wouldn’t say that he blacked out per say, but he definitely wasn’t aware. When he came to, his knees were buckled and he held onto the countertop with his elbows to keep him upright. He bent his legs and the numb feeling became prickly all at once. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to flex his toes until the blood worked its way through again.
The towel was wet and warm, and the ice was nonexistent. The ache in his arm was both sharp and muted, like a mother disciplining her child while she took an important phone call. He just needed some rest, he was sure of it. Exhaustion got the better of him; that was all. Come morning, his tired nerves would realize the pain he thought he felt wasn’t all bad, and in fact, it was getting better. Come morning, the heated bruising would have yellowed and the pain would have died off almost completely. Not all the way, because he needed a reminder it happened. If it was completely gone, he’d be crazy for sure. Never mind all that, though. He could go back to his everyday life like nothing happened at all.
“Keep telling yourself that, pal.”
Frederick ignored the voice and went straight to his bedroom, side stepping the privacy divider directly in front of his king sized bed. As much as he loved his studio apartment, he liked having the illusion of separate rooms.
Sleep came and went, and come morning, he felt groggy. His sheets felt wet. For a brief moment, his heart dropped. Not to his stomach, for he was still lying down, but dropped directly on top of his spine. He felt heavy, ashamed even, for that brief moment, he truly believed that he, Frederick Messerschmidt, wet the bed. People could say all the wanted about the matter, everyone could claim that everyone does it every once in a while, that they’ll have a dream that they are awake and they are in the bathroom, but their body doesn’t know the difference, and then it happens. People could say that, but it didn’t make it correct. It didn’t happen to people like himself. That was simply unacceptable.
A quick feel around revealed that it was not pee, but sweat that coated his body and sheets. Just as vile, but not as bad. He must have had a fever from that weird rash, but now he sweat the sickness out and it was all up from here.
“Me, me, me. That’s all I’m hearing right now.”
Or perhaps he was still sick after all. He should call in to work and get the day off. As much as he didn’t want it, a doctor’s visit was probably necessary. He supposed he would rather them talk about his arm than be toted away to the loony bin for schizophrenia.
“Sick. Yeah, you’re sick, alright. Just not how you think.”
That feeling of being watched again…
“Hoo-boy. Look down, buddy.”
Frederick’s head sung to the side, staring at the floor. He crawled on his elbows to the edge, peeking little by little, not sure of what he would find but definitely sure he wasn’t going to like it.
“Hey. Hey! Did I say look at the floor? Behind you.”
Goose flesh raised on the back of his neck. Who was in bed with him? Why hadn’t he noticed them before? He turned, his insides feeling like pudding sloshing from one side to the other with a gelatinous thud. He turned, expecting some undead thing to stare back at him. Not a real undead thing, of course, but someone in a mask, intent on scaring him. Or maybe someone wearing a different sort of mask intent on robbing him. He prided himself on being realistic in all situations. They couldn’t rob him of that!
Frederick turned and saw nothing there, nothing at all. Nothing but a black mark on the other pillow. His eyes scanned back and forth, looking at the bed, the wall, the window, and nothing was there. He needed to get to the doctor, and soon. Auditory hallucinations were no laughing matter, and damn if other people knew about it.
His eyes fell on the black mark. Every time he started to look away, they would stray right back, as if his pupils were being pulled by magnets. It seemed to be moving, but he could be imagining it, he supposed. He was hearing voices, so why not see things move? Again and again it shook, first on one side, and then again on the other, almost as if it were waving at him. Waving one spindly leg after another after another.
Wait.
No.
Frederick opened his mouth to scream, but his voice was lost in a wave of panic. He jumped out of the bed, moving to grab the poison from under the kitchen sink. He’d be damned if he was going to squish it. He heard once that other ones could smell if their brother or sister was squished, and would come to its aid. There was no way in hell he was going to chance it just being an old wives tale.
Just as soon as he made it past his divider, however, the pain in his arm came back to life tenfold, a hundredfold, more, until he was writhing on the floor in complete and utter agony.
“Don’t be rash, buddy. We wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt, would we?”
The stinging sensation eased, but Frederick stayed still on the carpet all the same. That hug from a cloud felt a little bit much right now. Suffocating, even. He needed air.
“Relax. It’s a lot to take in, I know. Get yourself a drink, friend. Have a seat on the couch. Relax. Gather yourself.”
Hallucination or not—
“And stop calling me a hallucination. It’s insulting to both of us at this point. Do it again and I’ll make sure you don’t make it to the kitchen. Now. Get up. Before I have to do it for you.”
Frederick rolled to his side and up to his knees, crawling to the kitchen tile, finding relief in the cool way it shocked his skin. He didn’t notice how thirsty he was before, but touching the tile really drove it home. His tongue was dry. He was half tempted to press it against the floor to ease the hurt, but he still had his dignity.
Little by little, he got up to his knees, then in slow, exaggerated movements, he put one foot under him, then the other, slowly rising to his full height. He grabbed a glass from the cabinet and filled it to the brim with tap water. His throat moved in the same slow motion to swallow the tepid drink until it was gone, then went back for more. When he was done, he felt sick from all the water in his belly.
Now, to deal with the thing in the bedroom.
Frederick didn’t so much walk as creep from the kitchen to the bed, straining his neck, willing it to elongate as if he weren’t a human at all, but a turtle. He knew deep down he wasn’t dreaming or hallucination or crazy, and that made the entire situation worse if anything. Either this was the most elaborate prank ever pulled off, and any minute now a full crew of cameramen and directors would materialize from the walls to congratulate him on being a good sport; or this was real.
“Hey, buddy. Feeling better?”
Frederick nodded at the spot on the pillow, mouth gaping dumbly. This couldn’t be real, and yet, it was. As much as he hated to admit it, he was listening and responding to a spider the size of a pea.
“Glad to hear it. Really, I am.”
He nodded again, not knowing what else to do or say.
“Why don’t you have a seat, friend.”
It didn’t sound like a request at all.
“Let’s have ourselves a little interview, eh? Some Q and A. Get to know each other before getting down to business.”
Frederick nodded again and hesitated, closing and opening his mouth a couple times before making slow and deliberate movements toward the bed. He sat at the far corner of it, as far away as possible from the arachnid.
“Before we start, how about you close that goddamn mouth before I send a couple of my buddies to crawl around in it.”
Obediently, he clenched his jaw and pursed his lips tight.
“Listen, I get it. The situation is a little, well, it’s weird, right? You’re not supposed to be able to hear me speak. You’re supposed to be so caught up in that mammoth of a head of yours with empty thoughts and all that nonsense. That’s what you’re thinking, right?”
He nodded again, eyes wide, not daring to blink.
“And that’s how things usually work with you people. So caught up with yourselves that it’s impossible for the rest of the world to get through to you.”
At this point, Frederick felt like a bobble head.
“Okay, so what happened is, well, you see…”
The spider trailed off, and Frederick watched with revulsion while it waved its legs in the air, as if it could grasp what it was trying to say.
“Huh. How do I put this? Let me first off say that your home is immaculate. It’s clean and cozy and warm. Everything a guy like me wants and needs in a permanent residence. So I’ve been living here with you for a little while, and when I say a little while, I mean a few months, right? And while I’m living here, I notice some things about my roommate. Some things about you, pal.”
Frederick swallowed the saliva bubbling in his mouth, trying his hardest not to vomit the water he just drank. A few months? Months?!
“First off, you live alone. I like that. You don’t bring other people over, you don’t have pets, nothing to disturb my beauty sleep. Next off, you’re a bit of what my friends like to call a clean freak. Yeah, sure, less hiding places, but also virtually no competition. I’m the king of this mountain, ya see? That, and this whole minimalistic hippie lifestyle you got going on makes it great for me, because I can see where you are no matter where I am.”
Hippie?! Frederick was refined. His decor practically oozed class. He had dinnerware that was worth more than the cost of the apartment. If there was one thing he wasn’t, it was a dirty hippie.
“And hell, you’re a working man. I can respect that. Long days at the office means more time to myself to run my own little business without having to worry about your sorry ass coming to fuck up my day. All good things! It’s all gold, buddy!”
Despite everything, Frederick’s lips trembled to a smile, keeping his mouth closed tight all the while.
“All good. Almost. Because I gotta say, I watch you a lot. I mean, a lot. And there’s a few things I see, and I says to myself, I says ‘Ooo, buddy, that’s not so good.’ Because, you see, for every point that I like, there’s about ten more that I don’t like. And that’s what brings us here.”
Frederick kept his nervous smile, widened it even. It felt fake and plastic but it hurt his cheeks so it felt real. His mind was whirling enough as it was.
“I bit you, and that comes with some pros for me and some cons for you, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. It took a minute for it to set in but I think we can both agree that the test was a success.”
Did he mean the sudden bout of pain earlier?
“You know it. So we have a situation. Nothing we can’t work out as long as we at real civil-like. The ways I sees it, this can go one of two ways. On one hand,” he held out one spindly leg to his side,” we can help each other out a little bit. Have ourselves a little business partnership. And on the other hand, well,” another leg spread out, noticeably shorter than the other seven, “we can sever our ties for good. You’ll never see me again, or speak of me for that matter. You’ll never see or speak of anyone else, either, because you, my metrosexual friend, will be food for the worms. So to speak.”
Just like that, his plastic smile fell, his jaw went slack, and his lips parted for a split second before he realized his mouth was susceptible to infiltration.
“It’s a simple choice, really. You wanna live or you wanna die? I can go either way, really. I barely know you yet. Not too attached. If not you, then there’s always someone else. Everyone’s replaceable in the end.”
Frederick couldn’t remember how to speak. He couldn’t remember how to do anything but twitch and gesture wildly with his hands in pure bewilderment, and the latter didn’t seem like the best idea at the moment.
“Come on, pal. I ain’t got all day. You got me in a good mood, but my patience is runnin’ a little bit thin. This here is an exclusive offer. I don’t give anyone the option of their fate on a normal basis. I usually decide these here things myself.”
The spider tapped its legs like one would drum their finger on a table. One little tick after another they went in succession, an air of annoyance mixed with the self satisfaction that only comes with showing off.
“Tick tock, my friend.”
“I, I-I-I want to, to, uh, to live,” Frederick stuttered. He’d never stumbled over his words in his life, but given the circumstances, he wasn’t too hard on himself. “I would choose life. Please. Mister, um, m-m-mister..?” Had the spider told him a name? He couldn’t remember, but he didn’t want to admit to it either way, lest he make the creature angry enough to call his friends and do lord knows what to him before ultimately making him bite the big one.
The silence between them was thick with humidity and ill-intent, too thick to cut with the proverbial knife. Frederick tried to swallow, but his throat kept locking up halfway through and he silently choked on his own saliva.
A voice, booming from all directions, a deep bass sound that reverberated against his internal organs, surrounding him. Laughter, deep and menacing, filled the room. He didn’t realize where it originated from until he spotted the spider wiping at its many eyes. The tone didn’t match the easy going, yet vaguely threatening, Jersey accent he had used before, but sure enough, the sound came from the many-legged fiend.
“Hooboy, buddy,” he sighed, slapping a leg or two against the bedding below him. “You are a treat. Keep that up, and we will get along fine. You can call me Jethro, by the way.”
“Jethro?”
It sounded so normal, so human.
“D-di-did I s-s-st-stutter?” The spider looked up at him for what seemed like an eternity before rolling on his back and howling with that same eerie laughter. “I’m just playin’ with you. Oh, man. You are just too much fun.” It took several moments for him to regain control of himself to speak once more. “Alright, so you choose to live. I was hoping you would. Not that I couldn’t get another one just like you, but, ya know, the whole thing would be a bit of an inconvenience for me. If I killed you, I’d have to find myself a new place to call home, and I just finished unpacking as is. If you play nice by the rules, this operation could be permanent. That wouldn’t just help me, either. It’d help you, too. Help you to keep on living like nothing ever happened. I mean, for the most part.
Frederick nodded vigorously in response.
“Good boy. Now, listen close, because these are the important things. The rules. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not a stiff. I hate rules as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day, if there were no rules, there’d be nothing to break. What’s the fun in that?”
There was a beat of silence, and for a panicked moment, Frederick thought he was meant to answer what he assumed was rhetorical. Before he could make a noise, however, the spider continued.
“So, these rules act as a guide to, hmm, let’s call it friendly cohabitation. Here’s how this works. We keep dong like we’ve been doing. You’ll still go to work and the grocery store and wherever else you go on a normal day, and I’ll keep post here. Make sure nothing funny comes along. You follow so far?”
Frederick swallowed the frothy saliva gathering in his mouth and nodded.
“Good. Now, this should be obvious, but if you try to pull a fast one on me, I’ll make sure you regret it. No poison. No shoe. No ass wipe over your nasty meaty hand. You’ll get rid of the poison under your sink. You’ll get rid of it by the end of the day. And if you try to use it between now and then, I’ll pump so much pain into you you’ll be begging to die. Besides, that stuff doesn’t work anyway. All that will happen is I’ll get pissed off. I think I’m being fair.
“Respect. Respect is a big thing. You show me the respect I deserve, I won’t make it painful for you. Any backtalk will lead to you getting on first name basis with the floor. Don’t rub me the wrong way, and we’ll get along fine.
“Now, on good days, nothing changes. On good days, we don’t even gotta see each other. That sounds nice, right?”
He nodded again. That did sound nice.
“Every once in a while, there’s gunna be bad days. I don’t want them. You definitely don’t want them. But it is what it is. On bad days, you’re gunna see me. And you’re gunna do me a favor.”
There was a silence that Frederick thought would drag out forever, and it begged to be filled.
“What’s the, uh, the favor?”
More silence followed, save for the potter patter of the little spider legs tapping on the sheets.
“Ya know, I don’t think I wanna spoil the surprise. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. How’s that sound, buddy?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”
The spider, Jethro, considered him closely, and leaned his tiny body into the bedding. For one terrifying moment, Frederick thought he would spring on him, but he instead relaxed his legs flat, one spindly extension by one.
“Good boy. I thought you’d agree with me. Now, let’s say you get up and get yourself cleaned up. I know you don’t have work today, but I’m gunna have myself a little business meeting and would rather you get lost. How about you go out and get yourself something pretty.”
Frederick didn’t need to be told twice. The last thing he wanted was to stick around while nasty eight-legged things crawled around his belongings. He changed clothes, his hand still shaking, and pulled his hair, still greasy with sweat, into an elastic, not bothering to style the bangs that hung in his eyes. He was already out the door when he realized he forgot to brush his teeth or put on deodorant, but he wasn’t about to walk back the way he came. Right now he needed distance, and he knew the perfect place to do that.
And that’s it, void! I hope you enjoyed the story so far, and I would love if you gave the whole thing some love when it’s ready for the world. I’m planning on having it ready for Kindle by the end of the month, and am even going to look into a paperback version on Amazon.
I’ll leave you here to think about what you’ve done, and remember, feedback helps feed authors.
:::UPDATE::: Itsy Bitsy is now live! You can find it here. 🙂
Hi Hi Hello! So, this time around, it’s a quick itty bitty
update to let you know that a while back I submitted the first chapter of my novel
to a contest on Booksie. Submissions are
closed, and in approximately three weeks or so from the time this post goes
live, I’ll find out if it went to the next round of twenty (don’t quote me on
that number because I don’t remember for sure but it’s close to that)
finalists.
I won’t lie. I don’t expect to go to the next round; mostly because my mindset is always to expect the worst. That being said, while I don’t expect it to go to the next round (any genre is accepted and horror is never first on anyone’s list, yo), I know for a fact that it’s not the worst to be submitted. I think it’s better than average, and I think the story as a whole has potential.
Okay so this is your face right now but come on dude just lemme have this one – Photo by Alexander Dummer on Pexels.com
I’d say I’m biased, but I’m
really not (says every writer or every person ever). If anything, I am my worst critic. I am a perfectionist. Nothing I write is ever good enough to live
up to my own standards. It’s a vicious
cycle. Maybe a tinge unhealthy? Eh, whatever.
The point is, I am hard on myself, and I think this book is going to go
somewhere, and the first chapter is one of my favorites.
BUT
Like I said, I might be a
little biased (contradictions contradictions jesus lady). It would mean the world to me if you read the
first chapter for yourself. I don’t know
if you would be able to comment on Booksie without setting up an account, but
if you’re able to, I’d love to see what you think. If you’re not able to, and you want to float
me a line in the comment section here, it would also mean the world to me.
Even if I don’t make it to
the next round in the contest, it’s okay by me, because this baby is eventually
going to go out into the world. And
maybe some people will love it, and maybe other people will hate it, and that’s
okay, too. As it has been made
abundantly clear to me from reading authors whom I’ve never heard of before and
looking at reviews afterward, not everything is for everyone. There’s books that I hated and other people
loved, and there’s books that opened my eyes and I related to that other people
would rather gouge out their own eyes than read again (maybe I’m
exaggerating).
I just finished editing the
third draft of my novel! Now, I got this
blog on queue, so this magic actually happened last month. When you read this, I’ll be working on typing
out the fourth (and hopefully final) draft before sending this baby out and
praying for something cool to happen.
Weird little tidbit: I had
no idea what was going to happen. By
that, I mean with the ending, and by that, I mean that I had a general idea of
how it would close out, but not so clear on how it would get there. It’s taken three drafts to get the beginnings
of an idea, and it took editing that third draft to finally get that little
light bulb in my head to spark up.
Do some more research on what happens when you go
blind in one eye (and really I should just be able to ask my doctor at work
about that) (perks of being an optician)
Set up a timeline (don’t give me shit I don’t do
plot for the most part when I do these things)
Make a map (physical map) (should’ve done that to
begin with) (didn’t seem important at the time) (sue me)
Read up on some voodoo hoodoo
I have my work cut out for me. But I’m one step closer.
And now, to celebrate. Probably with some San Pedro and a margarita the
size of my face. What do you do for
yourself when you meet a goal?
Manda Kay Writes 