Day of the Spiders

by Brian O'Gorman

  Braden looked behind him and then back at Mary “Oh, you mean me,” he said.

  “You really are a pain in the arse,” said Mary, a little smile breaking on her lips. Braden stepped forwards and slipped his arms around her waist. He kissed her gently on her lips and pulled her in close for a hug.

  “So, what have you got planned today?” she said in his ear. The feel of her warm breath on his lobe got that motor cranking up. He slid a hand down across a cotton-covered buttock and gave a little squeeze.

  “Well, I might just take you back to bed for a start,” he said.

  “Ooh, sounds pretty good to me,” said Mary.

  Braden was about to go for the other buttock when Jax came into the kitchen. She saw them hugging and started to work her way between them. Braden looked down at her and she offered him a big toothy smile. It was just impossible to be mad at the girl, ever.

  “So, now that our plan has been killed stone dead, what shall we really do today?” said Mary.

  Braden’s motor had gone into a full-on stall. It was true what he had heard from parents of young children when he had still been a bachelor, that the best form of contraception was children. He laid out his big plan for bowling, food and cinema to his girls. Mary smiled and clasped her hands together and Jax jumped up and down whilst pumping her fists in the air.

  “Where are we going to go?” said Mary.

  “Well, I thought we could go over to Hemmington, their cinema is much better than the one near Layton Valley, and there is more choice of eating venues,” said Braden.

  “Burgers, burgers, burrrrrrrgers,” shouted Jax.

  “Yeah, let’s go and have great big burgers,” said Braden, making Jax jump up and down even more.

  “What time shall we go?” said Mary.

  “No time like the present. Let’s go and get ourselves ready, shall we?” said Braden. Jax took off up the stairs so fast that she stumbled over the first three of them. Mary planted a big kiss on Braden’s lips. “Don’t forget our original plan, I’m going to hold you to it later, I promise,” she said and headed out of the kitchen to go upstairs.

  I’ve been spending far too much time away from home, he thought to himself as he watched her rear end work underneath the cotton. Mary blew him a kiss at the foot of the stairs and then headed up. He took his mug of coffee and dumped it down the sink. He went towards the stairs and caught sight of the laptop sitting on the table. He couldn’t possibly get away with it, not for a moment. Then a thought blossomed in his head.

  You could have a sneaky little look on your phone.

  Now, that would be the ideal solution, wouldn’t it? Mary wouldn’t even know what he was up to. He could have the best of both worlds right there. He closed his eyes for a moment feeling a little nauseous. Did he really have this much of a problem letting it all go? Could he really not just give this shit up and do something good with his life instead?

  But, if he really was going to stop, if he really was going to go from workaholic to doting father and perfect husband then surely he should give it up slowly. Perhaps if he did things this way then he wouldn’t be going cold turkey and he would have a better chance of success.

  If Mary catches you, then it will all be ruined. She will never believe you ever again. You know what happens if you beat a timid dog one time too many, it turns around and tears out your throat. Are you prepared to risk it? Are you really going to take that chance?

  Closely followed by;

  I’m an addict.

  He made his way slowly up the stairs where his wife and daughter were getting themselves dressed. Mary was already in the bathroom cleaning her teeth and Jax was playing some bloody awful dance music on her mp3 player in her room. Braden made his way into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He picked out a long-sleeved shirt and some dark jeans to wear. He also made sure that his mobile phone was tucked into his pocket ready for his research.

  She’ll never know. She’ll never find out…..

  7.

  Katie Underwood had only been awake an hour before the police vans and reporters had begun turning up at the end of the road. She had heard a fuss going on outside whilst she was lying in bed, trying to decide if she was actually going to go to work today. She was having one of those internal monologues that usually went on in her head first thing in the morning. It was no secret that Katie hated her job with a deep and resounding passion and she complained relentlessly to anyone who would listen. She could never find the vocabulary to explain just how utterly shitty it really was. In her mind, working in a call centre trying to sell insurance to people that really didn’t want it was just about the worst job in the world. Of course, the plus side to it was that when she did take a sick day she felt absolutely no guilt about it whatsoever. The amount of sick days that she had already taken was getting to the point where she was losing count of them, and she had already suffered the indignity of having to listen to a stern telling off from her line manager Chris Poynton about her ‘negative attitude to her performance and punctuality.’

  Poynton was a wanker. He was a wanker in every way possible. From his stupid, wanker haircut (which had a left side parting actually shaved into it,) to his ridiculously tight-fitting wanker suits, and his constant wanker catchphrases (There’s no ‘I’ in team, bucko,) which grated on her nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. Yes, he was a wanker. A top-class wanker. An uber-wanker. A wanker for the ages. When it came to wankers, Poynton set the bar, and he set it high.

  She had managed to turn up every day since, but today was beginning to feel like the day that she was going to finally fall from grace again. However, at the last moment, just before she turned over and went back to sleep, she managed to motivate herself to put up with it for just one more day, perhaps even two. She wanted to have just long enough to try and think what she would do if she decided to up sticks and walk out. She was thinking along the lines of perhaps going back to college and getting back into the education that she had largely given up on when she was sixteen. All she knew was that there had to be something more to her life than just this. She knew that it was out there, she just had to find the guts to go and get it. Change was pretty scary to her, but not as scary as the prospect of living the life that she was living right now for the next fifty years.

  She swung her legs out of bed and got up with a sigh of indignation. She went and picked some acceptable work wear out of her pile of discarded clothes on the drawers. Her boyfriend Perry kept on getting on her case about keeping the clothes pile to a minimum, and she always promised to sort it out, but she never did. It was an old habit that she just couldn’t break. Besides she didn’t want to spend all of her free time washing and ironing, it just wasn’t her style. Perry was generally a good guy, but he didn’t half fuss over trivial nonsense. The moment he started going on with himself, she would switch right off, nodding and ‘uh-huh’ing in all the right places. Most of the time he was good natured and well-mannered, the kind of man that you could take home to meet your parents. Sometimes it wasn’t very exciting, but it was as steady as a rock…..and given that the early years of her life had been anything but, she needed to be with someone that she could rely on and Perry was the man that fitted the bill.

  She pondered on whether or not she should have a shower, but if she opted not to then she would have more time to lounge around and have a second cup of coffee before she set off for the call centre. Plus, Perry would be home from his night shift soon and she could spend half-an-hour with him before she left the house. It was the curse of being on opposing shifts, but Perry’s money was exceptionally good and he worked a four-on four-off pattern which gave them enough time to spend together. Everything seemed to work well for them in the basic sense. She would have ideally liked to have a little more spontaneous excitement thrown into the mix, but that was probably just being a little petty.

  She decided to go for the shower after all, just a quick wash-rinse and repeat, just so she could at the very l
east look like she was putting in a little effort. She went into the bathroom, pulled the power cord and then hit the button to switch the thing on. There was a momentary gurgle from the pipes and then the water began to roar out of the shower head and into the bath tub below. She stripped off her night clothes, checked that there were enough towels for her and then she stepped into the running water. She always washed her hair first, just so she could coat it with conditioner and let it soak. She wet her hair through, until it was hanging down just above the swell of her breasts and then she lathered it up with the shampoo. She put the bottle back down on the small shelf just above the shower head when she felt something nip at her hand. It wasn’t a terribly big pain, but it was enough for her to draw her hand away and hiss in a breath over her teeth. She tried to see what had caused the pain, but the soap was beginning to run into her eyes and they began to sting. She ran her hair under the water, washing off the shampoo as quickly as she could. There was an uncomfortable throbbing in her right forefinger where the stabbing had occurred. The soap from her hair felt like it was getting inside the injury and making it more painful. She gritted her teeth as best she could and got rid of the last of the shampoo from her hair and face. She rinsed her eyes one more time and then inspected her finger. There was a single needle prick right on the top of the finger. It was an angry red colour and had a large white swelling all around it. Curious, she pressed her thumb and forefinger on it and applied a little pressure. To her utter disgust, a jet of almost solid green pus burst from the tiny wound and sprayed the tiles in front of her. She screwed up her face in disgust and then squeezed her finger again. More green pus came out, this time without the same ferocity. It oozed out of the hole and splattered at her feet. The water from the shower began to disperse the green shit around her toes. She grabbed for the shower head so that she could wash the nauseating gunk that was slowly sliding down the tiles in front of her. She gripped the shower head and pulled it free, turning it over in her hand so she could aim the jet of water towards the soiled tiles. Something caught her eye and she let out an ear-piercing scream and dropped the shower head, sending it clattering to the floor of the bath. There was a large black spider sitting right there on top of the shower head. She didn’t know if it was just her imagination but it seemed like the creature had started to run up the shower head towards her hand. She took several precautionary steps backwards until her calves were touching the edge of the bath. The shower head was turning over slowly spraying the shower curtain and parts of the ceiling with water. She couldn’t see any sign of the spider anywhere. Perhaps she imagined it. Perhaps it had just been a piece of dust or a cobweb that had accumulated on top of the shower head. It must have been, it must…

  The spider pulled itself out from underneath the shower head and began to scramble up the side of the bath. Katie screamed again and instinctively tried to step away from it again. She fell backwards out of the bath and landed hard on her backside. All of the wind in her body was knocked right out of her. Her teeth had clicked together, catching the edge of her tongue between them. The coppery taste of her own blood began to fill her mouth, making her instinctively want to spit. She took a huge whooping gasp of air into her bruised lungs and began to cough. Small tendrils of bloody spit flew out of her mouth and landed on her bare legs. The pain from her fall from the bathtub was put to one side quickly by the realisation that there was still a hell of a spider in there. She scrambled away from the tub and then tried her best to get to her feet as quickly as she could. Every movement brought a fresh stab of pain across her chest and her lower back which had taken the brunt of her fall. She got herself into a half-standing, half-stooping position using the closed toilet seat for leverage. She stayed there for a moment, taking in a few more breaths until the worst of the pain began to ebb away.

  She decided that the first thing she needed to do was to get rid of that spider, flush it down the plughole just like she had done with many of them before. That bastard thing could drown down there in the sewers for giving her such a scare. She grabbed a towel from the rail that was hanging over the radiator. She didn’t want to battle the spider naked, there were too many areas of bare skin that it could get to for her liking. She wrapped the towel around herself and tucked it in to prevent it from falling open. Then she grabbed the toilet brush from down the side of the bowl to use as a weapon against the offending creature. The pain in her finger flashed again as she tried to pick the brush up. It throbbed like a broken tooth. She inspected it for a moment, wondering just what the hell could have caused it. She started to suspect that it could have come from that spider. Well, the little eight-legged shit was going to pay whether it was guilty or not. Judge, jury and executioner right here, baby.

  She was snapped out of her thoughts by movement out of the corner of her eye. The spider had managed to get itself onto the shower curtain and was trying to scramble its way onto the edge of the bath tub. The water from the shower was still spraying upwards in an almost perfect upward fountain. The damp on the shower curtain was slowing the spider’s progress, but it still managed to manoeuvre itself from the curtain onto the edge of the bath. Katie thought that she was probably imagining things, but she could have sworn on a stack of holy books that the ugly little fucker was looking right at her. It stayed there for a moment, one of its legs still twitching as it slipped on the porcelain edge of the bath. To Katie it felt like a stand-off at high noon, both of them ready to draw their guns when the clock-tower bell tolled its twelfth chime. The heat in the room, coupled with the pains in her lower back, chest and her finger were putting a generous sweat upon Katie’s head and face. She was breathing hard and gripping the toilet brush tight, ready to take two big running steps forwards and knock that eight-legged shithouse into the middle of next week. She had almost plucked up the courage to do it, her lips pulled back in a snarl to show her bloody teeth, when the spider suddenly started to run forwards towards her. She let out a reflexive scream and took a step forwards, swinging the toilet brush wildly as she did so. Her foot slid from under her, having stood in the wet patch that had been put there from her fall from the bath tub. The excess soapy water from her body and more predominantly her hair, had turned the bathroom floor into an ice rink. The toilet brush flew from her hand and clattered harmlessly into the bath. Her right leg went sideways and socked against the edge of the bath. She felt something splinter, something deep inside the flesh of her thigh. A raging fire of agony shot up from leg that made the previous pain that she had been feeling seem like a massage session in comparison. The pain was white hot, burning, torturous, utterly sickening in every way she could think of. She went down to the floor, screaming so hard that her vocal chords felt like they were being sand-blasted out of her throat. She took some fast breaths, trying to get herself back under some sort of control. She knew she was hurt and she was hurt bad.

  The pain subsided a little, just enough to stop her from tearing out another scream from her ruined throat. She managed to half-turn herself onto her right elbow and the pain flared again. She gritted her teeth together and squeezed her eyes shut until the flare passed. She opened her eyes again and as tears rolled down her flushed cheeks and mingled with the sweat, she saw that the top part of her right leg had been clearly broken in half. There was a huge dent in the skin that was beginning to swell up and turn black right in front of her eyes. She was going to have to do something about it, get help somehow. She needed to get to the hospital she needed to….

  The spider was sitting on the edge of the bath right above where she had fallen. Again, it seemed to her highly strung out mind that it was looking at her, as if it was revelling in the fact that she was now lying on the floor with her leg all fucked up. She suddenly felt furious at the little bastard. This was all that damn spiders’ fault. She had chosen to do the right thing and get herself up and out to work today and now look at her, just because of that horrible little creature.

  “Just fuck right off,” she brayed at it, the
last remnants of her voice crackling and breaking as she shouted. The spider didn’t move. It stayed exactly where it was. She was sure that it was going to run away and hide somewhere where it could come out of hiding again and torment her another day, another day long in the future after her leg had been fixed. There would be a big old cast put on it, that was for sure. Perhaps she could choose the colour of the plaster. Perhaps she could get all her friends at work to sign it with a big black marker pen. Perhaps Diane, her closest confidant, would draw a big ol’ cock and bollocks on it just to annoy her and give them both a cheap laugh, perhaps….

  The spider jumped. It actually jumped off the edge of the bath. Katie saw it happen. For a split second the spider was in mid-air with its legs spread out like a grotesque skydiver and then it was sitting on the upper thigh of her good leg. Despite the pain, despite everything that she was going through, she felt its tiny body make impact with her skin. She let out another horse shriek and reflexively jerked her body, trying to get the spider off her skin. But the pain flared again, worse this time. She felt a crunch from underneath the swollen and discoloured skin and then she felt as if a knife had been driven into the flesh on the inside of her right thigh. The world began to spin in front of her eyes. She was going to faint, she knew she was going to faint, but she didn’t want to until she had pounded that spider into oblivion. She could feel something wet and sticky pooling underneath her. She wondered if she was losing control of her bladder as a parting gift before she went into a shock induced sleep. Her eyes caught sight of the inside of her right thigh where the latest flash of pain had come from. There was a piece of bone, splintered and shockingly white sticking out of the bloated skin of her leg. A steady trail of crimson red blood was running from the wound onto the floor and pooling all around her. She wanted to shout for help, try and get someone from next door perhaps, or anyone that might be nearby. The final bolt of shock at seeing the open fracture rushed through her body and the world as she knew it spun away. The back of her head thudded against the tiled floor and she began to hitch in one snoring breath after another.