I wrote this over the course of a feverish six hours one mid-December night, then two hours the next day, then spent the next week editing it down from 10,000 words to 6,000 words. It's much cleaner now, and I'd intended to send it somewhere for submission, but I can't get past the feeling that I'd need to edit it even more for length.
As a writing exercise, it was great. I did learn that I need to bone up on my vocabulary, so I can make vivid descriptions without resorting to similes and metaphors in every paragraph.
The only thing I'll preface this with is that it's written in blog format, and I'd call it an exercise in Modern Lovecraftian Horror. Which is in no way my genre of choice, but I'll give any idea its fair due. I only wish, in glancing back over it, that I'd sounded a little less pretentious; then again, the narrator is a middle-aged manager, so maybe that's authentic. Also, I'd obviously need to shore up the uninformed rambling about anti-depressants. I was just throwing names out there.
*****
Okay, here goes nothing. Dr. Leroy told me to start writing in a blog before bed every night, to unpack my thoughts from the day. As therapy. I don’t know that I think much of that, but I’ll try anything to help unwind all this tension. Get up in the morning, fight traffic, sit in meetings all morning, send Nancy out for some fast food, return all the voicemails I got while I was in meetings, stress attack, work late, kiss Cheryl hello, scarf down some dinner, and zone out in front of the TV before bed.
Shit, I just read that. Yeah, that’s what I do all day. I’m 45 years old, sales supervisor at an insurance provider, happily married, and all I can think to do is bitch about work. This is what it’s all been led up to: a reheated chicken pot pie, resting on my pot belly while I slouch in the easy chair.
Well, now that I think about it, here’s something interesting. I was in the study bathroom just now, changing a bulb. My hand brushed against something stiff and spindly, like I’d left a wire brush up there or something. I grabbed after it, and the damned thing scurried away!
You know how when there’s a storm, and the power blinks so fast you’re not sure it really happened? That’s what I felt in that brief contact. Like all the lights flickered for an instant. I probably imagined it.
I got up on the toilet to look, and it was one of those tiny spiders, a daddy long legs. This was a young fella, too – it was hiding under the light. We used to catch the little guys out at Grand-dad’s cabin in the woods when I was a young boy. They say they’ve got the deadliest poison in the world, but no fangs to deliver it. This one’s white – it has those long, thin legs, like tensile hairs sprouting out of a tiny pill, but its body was a shiny, stark white. I left it alone for the time being – Cheryl would have my hide if she knew I was letting some critter run loose in the house, but it’s harmless. And kinda cute.
Still, that was weird when I brushed my hand against it. The thing looks about as durable as an origami flower, but you’d have thought I touched a strand of live barb wire there.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Well, work is still winding me up in knots these days, with the quarter ending soon and all, but that anti-depressant Doc Leroy’s got me on should be kicking in sometime soon. Here’s hoping, anyway.
My little buddy in the bathroom is still there, at least! Looks like he’s growing, too. I guess he’s figured out that I’m friendly, because after my evening shower, he perches on the edge of the bathroom cabinet to watch me shave. It felt weird seeing him peeking over the edge, like an incompetent spy or something, but I got over it. It’s just adorable.
No harm there, right? I mean, it’s not like he’s reading my blog! LOL
* * * * * * * * * * *
Okay, things were a little rough at the office today. Still waiting for that anti-depressant to kick in; we had a four-hour meeting this morning, and my stomach was tied up like a bent Celtic knot by the end of it. I’ve been in this funk for days now, can’t seem to focus on anything. I’ve started taking these long, boiling-hot showers at night, just letting the water run over my head.
When I finished up tonight, the bathroom was steamed up like a Brazilian jungle. When I opened the door to air it out, my little arachnid friend was sitting up above the mirror. I gave him a closer look while the steam cleared out of the room. He’s like a tiny white button with legs. I zoned out for a few minutes like that, just gazing up there, and there was this low, gentle humming in my head. When I snapped out of it, I’d been standing there dripping for minutes, and the little guy was gone. Guess he got bored.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Well, the good news is, things are brightening up around the office. Armbruster finally canned this other jackass who was trying for my job. Turns out he stepped on more than a few toes in doing so– Nancy and I shared a giggle about it when we heard. She’s really warmed up, now that I put in to hire her full-time. Lord knows she brightens up the place, and we’re getting a natural rapport.
Oh, and I finally figured out what my little spider friend’s been eating! I was in the bathroom tonight, and climbed up on the sink to look at his little domain, to look for a web or something. No spiderwebs, but there were these little desiccated fly carcasses scattered about. I guess he’s a hunter; he was digging into one just then, and stopped cold when he saw me. I thought about cleaning mess off, but left him alone - I know I hate getting disturbed when I’m at dinner!
No wonder he likes it under the lights – those flies are drawn in like moths to a flame. He’s a growing boy, that’s for sure. I don’t think he’s a daddy long legs anymore, but some juvenile version of a larger albino species. His legs are starting to fill out, and now they look more like ivory toothpicks than needles. His body’s still the same ghostly white, though.
Hope he doesn’t get too big. Hate to have to take a can of raid to him, but I can’t have dangerous bugs in the house.
* * * * * * * * * * *
So here’s something interesting for this blog. I didn’t tell Cheryl, but I need to at least write it down, it creeped me out so much.
I was shaving this morning, and watching the little spider hunt. It’s really ingenious – when a fly starts circling one of the light bulbs, he hunkers down, spreading himself flat so he’s almost invisible under the light, against the white paint. The fly starts buzzing around the light bulb faster and faster, circling in that erratic orbit, and the spider slowly, tentatively reaches up with his forelegs. Then, when they’re all but crazed with dizziness, he springs up like a steel trap, snatching them out of the air. He tumbles over onto his back, curling those white legs inward like a skeleton’s fist. They buzz and struggle, but it’s useless. Pretty soon they can’t even buzz.
Yeah, he’s definitely got jaws. This morning I was watching him hunt while I shaved, squinting to keep from going sunblind. Soon enough, he bolted up to nab this big, boisterous horsefly. My hand jerked in excitement, and I cut the hell out of my chin.
Lord, I cussed up a storm. I checked my watch, trying to make the numbers out through the green and purple halos swimming in my vision, and I was running late. I dabbed at the cut on my chin, holding toilet paper to it while I finished the other side. There were little spots of blood dotting the sink. I’d clean those tonight, I thought, and I raced out the door.
Well, I went up there before dinner, and it looked like a miniature crime scene. There were little blood spatters everywhere. I must have cut more deeply than I thought. But the bad part was, it looked like the spider had… been down in it. In the blood. There were feathery little track marks in the blood, and some had been partially soaked up, just little red rings left behind. Like the spider had played some infernal hopscotch through it. Or, I guess this is what I’m reluctant to say, like he’d been down there drinking it.
Eugh. Just writing that turns my stomach.
I don’t know how much longer I can let that little thing stay up there. It’s no longer a cute little button with legs; this is a bona fide poisonous insect. It’s the size of a banana spider now, and still growing. Still hungry. I need to get some bug spray one of these days, before it gets out of hand. Before he decides to roam, for larger prey.
Things are good at the office. Except for Nancy asking if I’d stabbed myself eating. :)
* * * * * * * * * * *
Okay, I’m really glad no one reads this blog now, or I’d be getting fitted for a straitjacket. I’d been planning to get rid of the little white spider, right? It’s getting more aggressive, and big enough now that I can hear a tiny clicking when it moves around up there, like fingernails on a coffin lid. I kept looking over my shoulder in the bathroom, expecting to feel it jump and latch onto me or something.
Anyway, I figured I’d just swat it out with a rolled up copy of the Times. Just be done with it, right? I hated to kill something that was almost a pet, but it was time to man up.
At least, that was the plan. I planted a stool in front of the medicine cabinet, climbed up, and cast about for him. He must have known what I was up to. He was curled up, underneath the farthest light bulb, gleaming and smooth under its incandescence. Piled up everywhere were these gray, desiccated carcasses: flies, beetles, dragonflies, wood roaches. There were other bugs I’d never seen in the house, too – cicadas, grasshoppers, I think even a scorpion? It was a killing field. I breathed out in disgust, and a few spent flies drifted to the floor.
I couldn’t swat him out from under the bulb with the magazine. The space was too tight, I might shatter the bulb. I reached over to flick him out with my forefinger, hoping to knock him down and then jump on him. The first few times I swatted at him, I missed. Probably on purpose. Hell, I didn’t want to get bit, either!
I started getting frustrated. By now it was reaching out with its forelegs, mocking me, like I was one of those flies. Then my finger brushed against one of its legs, and mine went out from under me. It was like that power blink when I’d first blindly touched it, only much stronger. I felt suspended in a vast blackness, with a deep rushing in my ears, like I was hung over a vast abyss. I was hooked on some kind of invisible line, some cable I felt snapping back and forth, whipping me about in the wind. It undulated over a thousand miles, connecting me to some distant source. I was flung in every direction as the line swept about, lifting and tossing me like a tethered dingy in a monsoon. I might have been more horrified if it hadn’t been for the stark, absolute disbelief. I remember thinking, “This isn’t right. This isn’t right at all. I don’t even like to fish!”
I spun like that for a few, disbelieving seconds, finally landing back in the real world, on my real sore ass. I lay there for a spell, catching my breath. What… the hell… was that? Eventually I looked up at the medicine cabinet, to see the resilient little bugger gazing sheepishly down at me.
“Hell of a magical judo throw you got there, ya little bastard!”
I grabbed up the broken stool, mashed the light switch off, and sulked away. Deal with it later. I wrote it down, at least, for whatever therapy that might serve as. I’m going to bed.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Man, I was right when I said that anyone reading this would want me fitted for a straitjacket. I just read the other night’s entry, and hoo boy. If mother read that, she’d ask me if I was “on the high.”
I’m leaving the spider alone for now. She’s obviously getting rid of all those pests, and oddly enough, I’m just not that worried about her being dangerous.
Oh, you noticed I’m referring to it as “her” now, eh? Well, I figured only a dame can get a guy to make a fool of himself like that. Ha!
Feel like I’m in a fog all day. It’s getting intolerable. I don’t know if it’s because of the antidepressants, or in spite of the antidepressants, or I’m the victim of some voodoo curse. I can barely think straight. Nancy is starting to notice, too. This afternoon, she asked me for something three separate times, and each time I forgot as soon as she turned around and walked away. I mean, she’s got a nice ass, but not that nice.
Note: schedule check-up with Dr. Henson. Maybe it’s something with my metabolism?
I find myself worrying about the spider more and more. But not like before. I keep having dreams about Cheryl finding it and killing it. About it going hungry, or freezing in the night. I’ve started leaving the bathroom light on, and that seems to lure more bugs in. The cast-offs are getting bigger, too; she considerately moves out of the way when I sweep them off the top of the medicine cabinet every few days. I even found a mouse up there last night – clever girl!
She’s part of my evening routine now. I’ll talk to her while I shave, while she perches like a parrot above the mirror. Her smooth husk has these pale blue spots across it now, giving her an almost ghostly look. I’ve never found spiders anything but vaguely repulsive, but this one has a strange beauty. She’s still growing, and those legs are looking more and more like tiny pale fingers. Like a drowned model’s legs, demurely draped over the mirror. I’m almost tempted to pet her.
Sometimes, when I gaze up there for a while, I feel that same lifting sensation from when I tried to kick her out. But this is more pleasant, like riding a giant wave. I feel that same line lift me up, and with it a mild euphoria. It’s like meditation, but I’m attuning myself to some other, greater presence out there, and it’s hung me on a line through the blackness of space. My physical body just sways a little, but another part of me is buoyed up, carried on a twisting beam of light across the gulf between worlds.
That’s some comfort from this weird mental haze, at least. I don’t see the need to tell anyone about this.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Okay, so I hear writing your dreams down helps you better understand them, right? Well, I’ve been having some really weird ones, lately. Disturbing dreams, where I wake up drained and guilty-feeling, like some psychic hangover. That weird mental funk’s been with me for days now, by the way. But I could never remember the dreams until today.
I was in bed in the dream, just laying next to Nancy and watching the shadows from the trees outside crawl across the ceiling in the predawn hours. I started to feel that same lifting sensation I get when I’m with the spider, and just relaxed into it. And that’s when Nancy walked in, stark naked.
Oh, you were waiting for this, weren’t you. The dirty old man sex dream. Well, careful what you wish for, kids. Because this was Nancy, but it was… SO Not Nancy. Same figure, same face; the same long, dark hair I know cascading over perky breasts. But her skin was corpse-white, unlike Nancy’s deep tan. And her eyes were bugging out at me, like she was straining to open her eyelids as wide as possible, with this predatory gleam in them. She walked in this gliding crouch, every joint bent, and clambered up onto the bed. Bug-eyed, she pressed a finger to grinning, parted lips for silence. It was ghoulish.
Of course, I felt like I was pinned down by some unseen force. Dream physics, right? I was turned on, I was even more creeped out by this spectral thing looming on all fours in front of me. I tried to struggle, but only succeeded in kicking the sheets off of my stupid fucking erection. Not-Nancy positioned herself over my hips and lowered down, her cleft hungrily pulling my hard-on inside. I hissed involuntarily at the moist penetration, and she looked up at me, chuckling deeply with the sound of chains falling down a well. She started humping down at me from this contorted, all-fours position. Her abdomen had elongated and her hips swelled, curving downward. She painfully screwed her hips down onto me, and I tried to cry out. The pleasure and pain were intermingling and rising, becoming unbearable.
I panicked and wrenched my hands free and grabbed her waist, thinking to throw her off, but my dumb arms only pulled her back down onto me. Shame and disgust mingled with that primal sexual urge still welling forth. Then I saw the light coming out behind her. It traced and undulated in a stream behind her, like she was the end of a miles-long projection from beyond the ceiling. Like she was the tail end of a corded aurora.
That’s when I started feeling something draining out of me. I wasn’t coming; nothing so mundane. She was teasing some stream of energy out of me, and I saw it climb the stream of light up behind her, a thin blue current flowing up a thick stream of light. I tried to struggle. She just laughed, and hooked her fingernails into my paunch, past skin and into flesh. I felt her talons latch on between muscles. The tossing feeling came back, and I was thrown violently, a kite in a vast thunderstorm. I felt a definite presence at the other end of the line, turning its gaze my way, an unspeakable hunger and intent beckoning. I cringed and whimpered. Not-Nancy bowed her back, breathing heavily, and opened her mouth with a jaw-splitting, sickening grin. Saliva ran out between her thin, shining teeth and pooled on my stomach, burning like acid. I felt the massive presence moving toward me, setting a course, and my guts were on fire.
I woke up, sluggish and itching like a bastard. I was so slow to get moving I didn’t even notice the spider bites below my navel until I was getting dressed. Red and suppurating.
This is fucked up. This isn’t some torrid sex fantasy with my secretary. I LOVE MY WIFE. This is something else, some creeping evil that I’ve awoken inside me, and I need to shake it off somehow. Drugs, therapy, whatever it takes.
At work, I was blankly staring at the computer screen when Nancy walked in. Actual Nancy. She must have been standing there for minutes before I saw her, and I jumped violently when I glanced up. She gave a little shriek herself, and I felt a vicious anger welling up in me over the fear. I was furious, barking and lashing out at her for sneaking up on me. I wanted to stab at her, to see those deep, brown eyes well up with tears. I’ve never talked to an employee like that. I jabbed my finger at the door, saying that if she didn’t have enough work to do, she should find some other reason for us to keep her skinny ass around. Or she could get back to the street where she belonged. It was awful. Nancy looked beyond hurt – she looked terrified, like I was about to assault her. She muttered a faint apology, eyes downcast, then turned and left as fast as she could. She didn’t come back after lunch.
The worst part is this. I’d acted like the worst kind of vile, abusive boss, but I couldn’t help giggling. I’m still ashamed. But even now, I’m stifling these twisted giggles, thinking of the look on her face. It was just so priceless!
What the hell’s happening to me?
* * * * * * * * * * *
The white spider’s roaming the house freely now, although Cheryl never sees her. Or she just hasn’t said anything. I see her around the house sometimes, always at the periphery. Still, I only get a good look at her when I’m in the bathroom. It’s like her home base. Something really freaky happened there last night, though.
I’d had a few drinks after dinner, just to take the edge off. Maybe more than a few. I watched the tube for a while, then went upstairs to shave, feeling a little tipsy. She was patiently waiting, legs folded expectantly over the mirror. Welcoming. I perfunctorily swept the dried-up corpses from her perch; a dried field mouse curled up into a fetal position, and a few big dragonflies, their wings askew like downed biplanes. She watched from her vantage until I was done.
I ran hot water and lathered up. She seemed restless, shifting her mottled-ivory legs back and forth. I started to feel that same lifting in my heels, and almost lost my balance. Annoyed, I glared up. “What the fuck is it with you anyway? When’s it gonna be enough, when you polish off some kittens? A sacrificial lamb, some rare Angus beef?” She bobbed up and down, laughing at me. “Jesus, show some restraint, girl. Gonna lose that figure, you keep it up.” I scraped the razor down, and she edged forward expectantly. “Oh, is this what you want? You want a little piece of me, you little succubus? Fuck, let’s see,” I quipped. Senseless as a petulant child, I nicked the edge of my jaw, slashing open a thin red line that bloomed down my face to collect on my chin. I chuckled drunkenly as it dripped on the sink. Impressed with my joke. When a dark cluster had dotted the porcelain, I clapped my hand to the cut, stepping back and gesturing like a maitre d’.
She crouched, surveying the dark red blood below, then sprang to my shoulder.
It was like getting buffeted by a massive wave. I uttered a shocked, strangled bellow and shot back, crashing into the wall, as the spectral tow cable surged within me, cresting and tossing me back and forth. I reeled and gibbered, swatting frantically as she deftly scrambled up my neck. I kept losing my balance, half in the bathroom and half wind-flung in the void, and clutched the counter to keep from bashing my head open. I began shaking my head vigorously, and that’s when I felt her barbed legs hooked across my jaw and ear, one fang swiftly pulling my lower eyelid down and the other prodding the pink flesh. The line I was suspended on stretched unbearably taut, waiting to rip me apart.
The warning came across loud and clear. I looked in the mirror at the ghastly white shape stretched across the right side of my face, and goggled in horror. I stood there for tense, interminable seconds. The line eventually relaxed, imperceptibly rocking back and forth. What now?
Satisfied that I was done flailing, she slowly backed down, my cheek tugging with the bulk of her. She was the size of a small bird now, no longer weightless as a paperclip. She reproachfully glanced at me in the mirror, and I fought the reflexive urge to slap her away. I watched aghast as she then daintily pressed her mandibles to the open wound at my jaw. There was a faint euphoria, and her feelers and fangs prodded the cut open, lapping and urging more blood forth. A strange calm came up , and idle, nonsensical daydreams filled my vision.
I awoke a short while later, crumpled against the wall. Curled up just like that field mouse. I blindly washed my face, averting my eyes from the red calligraphy of tracks smeared down my cheek. Shuffling to bed, I felt that same familiar tug steadying my steps, like the hand of a watchful nurse whose patient’s time has not yet come.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Just read the other night’s entry. I’m writing that whole shebang off as a drunken hallucination – I’m not supposed to drink on the Lexapro, and I paid the price there. Cut myself shaving and passed out, dreaming that a spider forced me into offering up my blood. That’s some Grade A horror movie bullshit right there, pal.
As for the actual spider, I’ve accepted her as a member of the household. She’s earned it. I need to tell Cheryl about her soon. Time to introduce the two women in my life.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Too tired to think straight. I’m still in this fog, and it’s getting thicker and thicker. Everything looks gray, has the volume turned down. It’s like I’m covered in some kind of impermeable blanket, except I can’t ever get warm. Something’s happening to me.
Cheryl and I have been fighting a lot lately. Mostly her launching into a tirade, asking me what’s wrong with me, don’t I love her anymore, don’t I feel anything. I just stare back until she burns herself out. Sometimes I’ll throw something back, just to tweak her a bit. What the fuck does she expect?
My only real joy now is with the spider. I’ve started bringing her frogs or lizards I find out in the back yard after dark. That way she won’t have to roam where You-Know-Who might find her. The pretty girl jumps to my wrist, skewering them right in my grasp. I feel that great, ecstatic lifting feeling when she jumps on, sending me up on a line as they struggle and writhe. It’s like a drug. Her poison winds paralysis into their veins and I close my eyes, adrift in a great sea of nothingness. Something’s out there, and it’s coming. There’s a long way to go, but I can feel it approaching. Her legs intertwine between my fingers like a lover’s cold hands, and I breathe deeply as she gorges.
I may visit the pet store, get a rat or something. She needs something bigger. She hasn’t nipped at me again, but if I can’t find bigger prey, she may need to. Just to tide her over until it arrives.
Dark or light, I hope it gets here soon.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Christ. Okay. Reset.
Here’s what happened the other night. I’m still shaking just thinking about it, but I need to record it. It’s already starting to fade into the vagueness of memory.
I was laying awake in bed, drifting in and out of sleep to the sound of Cheryl’s gentle breathing. The bed felt like it was pitching and rolling, that same familiar lifting feeling I get from my spider. I’d been trying to think of a name for her – Charlotte? Lilith? Naga?... and started to feel that comforting cord of force lift me up, tossing and whipping me back and forth. But this time, it was more violent than ever. I pressed my head back in the pillow, determined to ride it out. But it grew even sharper, snapping back and forth like a downed electrical wire. But where was the spider?
Of course. There was a distinct bump at the foot of the bed. A little leaf of thought rose from the black humus in my mind, whispering that it would be different this time. The pitching and rolling flung me back and forth. I clutched the mattress, and Cheryl idly stirred, still deep asleep. I was helpless, swung on a tether hooked into my core, attached even more soundly than, well yes, than a fly caught in a web. I felt the spider move.
I could barely see her, a ghost of white against the pale sheets, but she started winding her way up my leg. Each step sent another whip through the line. In my mind’s eye, in the blackness, I could see a distant vastness groaning into view, not coming closer so much as passing some threshold of visibility, immediately filling my vision. It was a vast, planetary mass, too gigantic to get perspective on. Illumined by a pale, flickering fire darting over the surface, the striations and folds of a mass of corded muscle, pulsing and flexing in myriad directions and rhythms. Implacably paralyzed, I saw the spider before me, both in my spectral and tangible vision, a bright streamer of light stretching up behind her. She hopped over Cheryl’s arm, draped across my stomach, and I felt the line surge up, sending a ripple back to the mass, a puny sine wave along a ribbon of light. What I had beheld as a pale, ghostly fire was actually swarms of translucent, glowing spiders, just like the one sitting comfortably on my chest. They surged and traveled across the body, and up and down other streamers of light sent off into the darkness.
The white spider, my little buddy, was at the end of her own streamer, and my own essence was interwoven into it. She was coming not on a leash, as I first thought, but leash in hand. She approached at the vanguard of this horror, like an owner advancing on a wary pet when it’s time for their medicine. She had stoked her strength on my pests, my blood, my pliable, hapless will; and now the preliminaries were over. I pressed my head back farther into the pillow, almost crossing my eyes as she stepped onto my throat. The vessel behind her groaned deeply, like a planet sitting down to dinner. She gingerly, almost lovingly stepped up onto my chin, placing a leg on my lower lip. My jaw dragged open against my will, as if it were chained to the tide, and my face opened into a ghoulish yawn. She placed a leg inside, planting for purchase on my gums, and I realized that the vessel she had led here, fed on a shining issue of blood and essence and humanity, didn’t want to consume me. Oh no, I realized with a faint, gagging gasp of a scream. It wanted to come inside me, to move in. Step over the threshold and pack me to bursting with its spectral malevolence. Use me to bring more into the world. My arms and legs kicked in puny seizure against the paralysis – I couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe back in, how the hell couldn’t Cheryl feel me shaking like this? The spider had a few forelegs inside now, inspecting the interior of my mouth like some demonic landlady. Her mottled, ghostly flesh disappeared from sight as she greedily moved her bulk up my chin, forelegs scratching at the roof of my mouth, and my eyes rolled back in horror at the looming vessel cramming into my mind, stretching it and pushing everything else out to make room, every thought and memory and habit, until my mind would break and fall asunder, then cramming my very soul with that vile, black hunger, and I heard a chorus of voices made of knives on glass exult as one, “You might feel a little stiiii-iiing….”
Cheryl rolled over in bed then, clocking me in the jaw with her forearm. My jaw slammed closed, and I felt a hideous scream from the spider, my teeth clamped at the juncture between thorax and pulsating, fat abdomen. The offended cry of coitus interruptus, joined by a bellow of outrage from the vessel filling my mind, became a scream of anguish as I ground my teeth together, severing the bug in two. Claws and fangs scrabbled ineffectually as I ground my teeth together, feeling the tumorous presence fading. I crunched my jaws shut again, mashing my tongue around the roof of my mouth and grinding my teeth so fiercely I chipped an incisor. There was the sound of wrenching fabric, of a thousand ropes snapping in succession, and a massive door slamming shut.
“GYEEEEUUGGHHHH!!!”
Cheryl bolted awake, frantic. “What is it, what is it, what’s wrong?!” I kicked and thrashed, rolling out of the bed onto my elbows, my feet still entangled in the sheets. I gagged and spit, clawing the twitching remnants out of my mouth, vomiting on the carpet. I mashed the vile, loathsome bug parts in my fists until gore ran in black gouts over my fingers.
Cheryl was at my side seconds later, fretting and rubbing my shoulders. “A bug,” I managed to spit out, dry heaving with tears running down my face. “A bug… tried to… to get in my mouth.” She yelped in disgust, and ran for antiseptic and towels.
My body shook with relief. The swaying was gone, the fog lifted; the web torn apart to vanished shreds. I could feel the floor, solid beneath me for the first time in weeks.
The ship had sailed. Here's hoping that hellboat drifts forever in the far blackness.
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