Curse of Arachnaman

by Hayden Thorne

  She continued to stare at the pen set. “Eric Steven Plath, how much was this pen set?"

  "Oh.” I paused and felt around my pockets for the receipts, which I fished out in a crumpled pile. I handed them over, while yakking away about my shopping adventures that day, as well as a regular update on my progress in “school."

  "Dr. Dibbs said that I'm doing pretty good, but that maybe I'm just plain hopeless when it comes to Chemistry and Geometry, so not much loss there, I say. I mean, I'm passing, but not with As or Bs, which is better than plain failing. I guess it's best to just focus on what I'm good in and help me ‘bloom’ that way, right? I'll be back at Renaissance High after the summer, he also told me, which doesn't really sound very appealing right now, so I was wondering if I could talk to you and Dad about being home-schooled for the rest of my high school life.” Mom looked like she'd just gotten zombified as she continued to stare at my pen set with her jaw hanging a little slack, so I decided to lay off for now. “Well, maybe another day, we can talk about it. But, seriously, Mom, it's something to think about."

  "Eric..."

  "Yeah?” I took back the pen set and put the lid back on, lovingly setting it down next to my brand spankin’ new journal from India.

  "Why do you have an oil lamp?"

  "Oh, this?” I pointed at my third acquisition, which sat in all its gothic, atmospheric glory nearby. “Yeah, I figured that if I wrote long, private, and emo-type entries in my journal, I'd be best served using an oil lamp instead of boring electric lights. Remember all those horror films we used to watch when I was a kid? The ones with Christopher Lee as Dracula back in, like, ancient times?"

  "Those ancient times were the 1960s, Eric,” Mom said.

  I shrugged. “Forty years ago? That's almost like a century, Mom. Anyway, I thought that—"

  "I think that you need to take your stuff upstairs, mister, and get ready for dinner before I make you take these all back and get refunds for every one of them,” Mom cut in, her eyes narrowing at me. She glanced at the receipts. “I'm not kidding."

  "But what do you think of my lamp?"

  "In addition to the fact that you squandered my money on something pointless? Using that lamp instead of electric light is bad for your eyesight."

  I rolled my eyes. “Mom, it's not like my eyesight's peachy-keen. I mean, when was the last time I had 20/20 vision, anyway? Not counting my stint with the Trill, of course. Why even bother protecting what's already hopeless?"

  Mom just gave me that look. I really can't describe it. It was like that look you got from Neanderthals like Douchebag Cohen right before they gave you the kind of melvin that'd set your puberty back by half a dozen years. And I knew that my mom was more than capable of doing that, too. I mean, she changed my diapers. It goes without saying that she could do an uber-melvin if she was pushed into it.

  It was awesome that Mom let me go squander some of her money on a really cool blank journal from India with a special decorative window on the front cover, a pen set, and a real, honest-to-goodness oil lamp that I found on sale at a lamp store that I checked out on my way home from my tutorials. It was seriously bitching, but what kerosene oil lamp isn't? I got myself a brass mug lamp, so I could carry it by its handle anywhere I went.

  I wanted to test it out, too, in the dead of night, when everyone was in bed and the lights were all out. I'd wander from room to room with my lamp and make like some kind of gothic hero out on an adventure of some kind. Maybe even stand in a dark, dark corner really quietly and then scare the crap out of Liz when she stepped out of her room for her midnight snack. Hopefully it'd be raining hard, too.

  Weird, what owning an oil lamp could do to one's brain. Later that evening, when I wrote my first entry, I realized that I wasn't writing in haiku. I thought that writing haiku was a study in discipline or something like that. Now that I stopped doing it, it was as though I were on a writing rampage. If anyone were to look at my first entry, which I'd never allow to happen, they'd see just how far I'd come in my artistry.

  I don't know what Liz sees in Scanlon Dorsey, but she really should take him out more often before he opens a rift in time, sucks all of Vintage City into another century, and traps everyone there, just by showing up at our doorstep. I don't want to wake up one day and find myself looking like Frankie Avalon, half-naked and cavorting up and down a beach with squeaky-clean surfers around me. Okay, so I don't mind the half-naked bit, but I'd rather be cavorting up and down an empty beach with a totally naked Peter. Yeah, those were my opening lines. How many words did I write without stopping to rest my wrist? Did that mean that I was progressing in my artistry?

  Incidentally, I found another Althea message in my inbox. I felt my universe get sucked into a black hole when I clicked on it: You don't get served hot dogs when you hustle. I snorted, shaking my head. Okay, this was too easy: Oh, yes, you do—kosher and otherwise. I sniggered the whole time, and clicking “send” felt like I was tap dancing on Althea's grave. Still had no idea where this whole bingo obsession came from, though, but that was Althea for you.

  * * * *

  I really missed Peter's visits. I wished Mom hadn't had to make that “you can't be seen together when he's in superhero mode” rule because it stank. Stank! Now we had to see each other like normal people did, going out on dates and stuff, not sneaking around with him creeping into my room, all mysterious-like, or with me climbing up to the roof to steal some super-schmoopy moments with him during his ten-minute break from crime-fighting. Though I must say that I preferred him stealing into my room—very kinky. Dracula also came to mind, and I didn't mean of the Scanlon Dorsey kind. But Peter was a gazillion times sexier than an undead bloodsucker.

  I wished my pens came with a quill on the side, actually, to go with the ink bottle, but that would have meant killing turkeys or ostriches or whatever big-ass birds they needed to get the right size feather for a real quill pen, wouldn't it? If that were the case, I'd rather not have had the blood of innocent big birds on my hands whenever I wrote in my journal, thank you very much.

  I missed Peter. Good thing I'd just washed my collection of old towels.

  * * * *

  I lay on my bed, sprawled, sweaty, and tired, staring at the ceiling and mentally watching that hot, hot, hot fantasy I'd just enjoyed involving Peter fade away. Once my brain cells got their crap together, I tried to think of what else I needed to do before going to bed. Nothing, apparently. I'd done my homework. Done my chores. Done the nightly boy-meets-towel thing. Oh, yeah. I could always write in my brand spankin’ new...

  Jeebus, my life was so boring, I could gnaw on my ankles. Why the hell did I buy a journal? At least one that didn't talk back to me? Writing longhand had already outgrown its charm. Crap. I even went so far as to wait for the off-chance that Althea might have some time to possess my computer and get all angry-straight-girl-buddy on me after homework and crime-fighting. Nope, nothing. Silence. Life could be so lame.

  Man, I hated my journal.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 4

  * * * *

  Life in Vintage City couldn't be without one or two references to the Bad Guy du Jour. Or Bad Guy du Jour-Jour-esque. Seriously, supervillains lasted for more than a day, so how would one call the Bad Guy of the X Number of Moments in French?

  Via online free translation site: Bad Guy de Beaucoup de Jours. Did I get that right? It's supposed to mean Bad Guy of Many Days or something like that. Anyway...

  Since the attack at the mall, Bad Guy de Beaucoup Many Moments-esque still hadn't resurfaced, and the silence had been kind of creepy. Like we were all waiting for the other shoe to drop, and he was drawing it out for as long as he could. We hadn't gotten a manifesto from him yet. Trust me on this because Dad was totally on top of things when it came to supervillains and whatever narcissistic maneuvers they used to look like they were way bigger than they really were. I think he subscribed to around fifty different newspapers or something, from mornin
g to afternoon to evening editions, and—get this—he even brought home the free indie ones. I liked checking those out because they got all the hot gay ads in the classified section. I was always tempted to cut out the really hunky guys and had been thinking of learning scrapbook-making, so I could have a really smoking gay scrapbook going.

  I wouldn't add Peter's pictures to it, though. That would only tarnish his image. Yeah, even when he was in blood flow-constricting spandex. Besides, why ogle his picture when I could always have him there, in person, with me, and equally horny? Sucked that superhero work had to come first, though, but beggars couldn't be choosers, I guess.

  We'd collected so many newspapers that it was hell taking out the garbage at the end of the day. It sucked that I was stuck with it because Liz said that she was saddled with that chore through her tweens and early to mid-teenage years, and as they say, crap travels downhill. I suppose the good thing was that the downward-traveling pile of poo got caught in rocks, roots, and other obstructions, seeing as how I'd be condemned to dumping garbage for a total of three years, unlike Liz, who'd been sentenced to five. No wonder she always bullied me around. I had a couple more years of this before I'd get to enjoy some real democracy in this household, and we'd all take turns dumping garbage after dinner. That would be adulthood in a nutshell, I guess.

  Anyway, with Dad taking in every newspaper that could be had, I now had to dump the garbage and haul out his recycling pile. Wouldn't this be a blatant violation of child labor laws?

  Dad tried hard to keep up with supervillain shenanigans, and so far, with pile after pile of well-read and discarded papers to his name, he still didn't have a clue as to the new Bad Guy's identity.

  "Well, he's definitely better than the Trill in messing around with people's minds,” Liz said at tonight's dinner. “Then again, that's how it is with these supervillains. They get more and more sophisticated in their methods."

  "Unless you're talking about the Deathtrap Debutantes,” I said, and we both rolled our eyes and giggled. Yeah, that was one of those rare bonding moments I got to enjoy with my sister. Be totally catty and abusive toward other girls. I think there's something in estrogen that makes women behave like that toward other women, and we gay guys get to enjoy the snarky ride all the way.

  "Yeah, no kidding. Dangle some bling from the darkest corner of the sewers, and they'll be there, clawing away at sludge to get to the so-called treasure."

  Mom didn't want to hear about the gritty stuff tonight. She made a face and said, “Okay, that's enough of that. We're eating.” She also didn't spare her maternal energy. “Eric, I know what you're doing with your meatloaf. Stop that, or so help me, I'll make you cook the stuff next time."

  "I wish we had a dog,” I grumbled. I was trying to spirit away chunks of my food when Mom wasn't looking, using my napkin to collect them in a greasy, soggy pile for disposal later. Apparently she was looking, because mothers are born with eyes in the back of their heads. Yeah, a dog would've helped me a lot.

  I hated meatloaf. It was like something that Satan pooped out after an eternity of constipation. So I told Mom because I was honest that way. I sat back, squared my shoulders, and met her eyes, all confident-like.

  "Mom, meatloaf's like something that Satan pooped out after an eternity of constipation. It should be outlawed, frankly, and serving it for dinner is like child abuse and should carry with it some pretty stiff penalties."

  Liz stared at me. She even raised her glass in a toast. “That's a good one. I'm impressed."

  Apparently honesty was a virtue that wasn't really valued highly in the Plath household because Mom made me eat the rest of the stuff right out of the loaf pan as punishment. Thank heaven Dad pretty much scarfed the whole thing down, and I was left with maybe three slices of Satan's poo. No, it didn't make the ordeal any better, but at least it was shorter.

  "Any news on the Puppet or the Debutantes, Dad?” Liz asked.

  "Nothing on the Puppet so far. I have a feeling that he's lying low after getting all his killer dolls blown to bits by the Trill.” Dad sounded so official whenever he updated us on the goings on of Vintage City's more famous residents. I always wondered if he fancied himself a newsman or reporter of some kind, which would really work with my associating Dad with Les Nessman, given his appearance and slightly nervous energy.

  "I wonder where he gets the money for all those things,” I said, after washing down the nastiness of meatloaf with five glasses of water. Mom didn't even bat an eyelash when I looked at her and sulked. “I'm going to run away and then you'll be sorry."

  "Don't be a drama queen, Eric,” she said, blowing at the steam wafting from her coffee mug. Well, it was worth a shot.

  "God knows, son. And as for the Debutantes, I hear that they're still out of commission."

  Liz smirked. Oh, yeah, she loved that bit of news. “They seriously got their butts kicked by the Trill, didn't they? Man, I wish I saw the whole thing. It must've been fantastic."

  Ah, women.

  It was Liz's turn to wash the dishes tonight. I took out the garbage (No! Really?), and in the moonlight next to the recycling tub, I sifted through the indie papers and pulled out the classified sections, rolling them up and stuffing them under my shirt. Who cared if I looked like I'd gotten impregnated by a robot? Without Peter to cuddle and do all kinds of teenage skanky things with, my only backup was to ogle hot gay men in black-and-white print.

  As a measure of my hormonal ingenuity, I'd also stocked up on old towels that I now made use of more regularly in order to spare my bed sheets. No one at home knew about my secret stash...for now, anyway, and as long as I got to wash out my own gene pool, I wouldn't have to worry about the usual tired complaints about teenage male libido and stuff.

  * * * *

  As I still hadn't gotten around to replacing my old, dead bike, I walked to and from “school” everyday. The good thing about that was the fact that if I gave myself enough time to mess around, I could easily get quite a bit of window-shopping under my belt. By the time I got home after my tutorials, I'd have catalogued all kinds of stuff in my brain for future extravagant spending. It also meant that I really needed to go out there and find a job because talking to Mom and Dad about my needs—I desperately had to have four pairs of sneakers: two high tops, two low—was beginning to feel like talking to a couple of marble statues without arms and maybe heads. Actually, more often than not, they'd been more like a couple of marble statues with their ears gone missing because they never listened to a word I'd tell them.

  So, yeah. I needed a job. I'd no idea how that worked, seeing as how I wasn't in school-school, and I understood that the state required permission from Renaissance High and my parents and other heads of state just so I could be allowed to slave away in minimum-wage hell. That was how Liz described her first job, anyway.

  I tried to check out possible leads whenever I could. One of them was this gay and lesbian bookstore that was crammed into this tiny little shop space about five blocks from where my tutorials were held. It was Liz who gave me the heads up on it.

  "If you're job-hunting, try them out,” she suggested, right before she kicked me out of her truck once we reached Brenda's antique shop. “Mom and Dad already know you want to be productive, so why not start with your homies, know what I'm saying?"

  She actually made sense for once. I mulled things over. “Okay, I'll do it. How'd you know about them, anyway? I mean, I'm gay, and I didn't know that my homies had a store of their own."

  "It's called being good buddies with the Thursday morning Jumping Bean barista, dude, who's hot as hell and gay. Now scram. I'm late for work."

  Yeah, it would be a good place to start, seeing as how I'd be working with my peeps. They could take me under their wing and get me all educated on issues and stuff. Then I'd turn into a vigilant, hardcore pro-gay rights activist when I got older and more cynical. Maybe my relationship with the bigger gay community would lead to the first steps toward a pride parade or so
mething. We didn't have a pride thing every year, by the way. Vintage City wasn't called Vintage City for nothing.

  Unfortunately I think the store was owned and managed by one person, and whenever I happened to swing by, he or she would always be out. “Be back in ten minutes” was the sign that I kept seeing taped against the glass door from inside.

  I tried to wait a couple of times, standing outside and peering through the shop window, but the interior was so packed with stuff and so gloomy that I couldn't really get a good idea of how well business was going. Even after ten minutes were up, the store manager or whatever was still missing, so I just had to leave before Dr. Dibbs punished me with more Geometry exercises for being late.

  Anyway, on one of those days, I decided to walk by and see if anyone was there. I was shocked to find the door open and the “be back soon” sign not there, so I eagerly stepped inside and looked around.

  "Wow,” I said, sweeping my gaze across the area. The store was definitely tiny, with all shelves packed with books, and the center space also taken up by big tables piled with discount books and calendars. I didn't even know where to begin with my search for gay titles. I also figured that toward the back part of the shop was the adult section, with the screen and the somewhat obvious sign that said “adult section” hanging on it.

  The lighting wasn't very good, either, and neither was the ventilation. The fluorescent bulbs kept flickering, and the vents above kept rattling, occasionally filling the quiet area with weird metallic scratching sounds.

  "Hi,” I said, walking up to the skinny, balding guy behind the counter. He glanced up from a ledger he was poring over and stared at me, surprised. “Um—nice shop.” Cue big, brilliant, engaging smile.

  "Hi. Thanks."

  "I, uh, was wondering, are you hiring right now?"

  Tall, skinny, balding guy waved a hand in the direction of the main shop area. “If you know how I could sell all these books and magazines by the end of this month, I'll hire you."