Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  “No, goddammit. He grabbed me.”

  “Oh.”

  The man spat out a chunk of something red. “Do you not know what frisk means, you stupid cunt?”

  She tried to go at him again but Jeremy held her back.

  “He was just doing his job.”

  Amy eyed Jeremy like he was next. “Tell me something. When he was rubbing you up and down, did he grab your cock?”

  “What?”

  “Did he grab your cock? Yes or no?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  The man coughed as he stood, hand reaching into his pocket. Jeremy guessed what he was reaching for and didn’t want to wait around to see if he was right or wrong. He rushed the man and tackled him back to the ground.

  The pain in Jeremy’s stomach took a spell to register. He lay on top of the man, paralyzed, as they stared into each other’s souls. Then it hit him. His gut. Something not the way it was meant to be.

  He tried climbing off the man but something heavy kept him anchored. He rolled over on his back, next to the man he’d tackled, and looked down. The short handle of a switchblade stuck out of his bleeding stomach, the blade presumably somewhere inside him.

  Amy stood above him and screamed, hands to her mouth trying to push the sound back down her lungs but it was too much fear for one person to contain.

  Jeremy pulled the knife out of him and examined the blade. It was covered in a thick black ooze. He slammed it down next to him, into the dealer’s stomach, and everybody was screaming now, and he kept lifting the knife up and down into the man’s gut and didn’t stop until the pain from his own stab wound rendered him unconscious.

  He awoke moments later to Amy shaking him, shouting his name.

  “We have to go to a hospital!”

  Jeremy shook his head. He sat up and groaned. Black blood poured out of his stomach. He looked over at the dealer, his hand was practically inside the man’s gut, still holding on to the knife. If he got any deeper he would have punctured the dealer’s back. He left the knife and went through the guy’s pockets. A couple hundred bucks, three cell phones, and a small bag of dope. Not the amount Jeremy had ordered, but it would do for now. Until the next craving came calling, at least.

  He took everything he found and Amy helped him up to his feet.

  “You’re gonna have to drive.”

  She assisted him into the passenger’s seat, then ran around the car and got behind the wheel. Her hands shook so much she could barely insert the key into the ignition. She wouldn’t stop saying “holy shit” and “oh my god.”

  “Don’t even think about going to a hospital.”

  “We have to. You’re fucking dying. Oh my god. Oh my god. He stabbed you. He fucking stabbed you.”

  “It’s not that bad. Listen, turn right up ahead, okay? We’ll go to my place. I’ll stitch myself up. It’s fine.”

  Snot and tears dripped down her face as she sobbed. “Jeremy. I can’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You aren’t seeing what I’m seeing.”

  “Goddammit, Amy. I got all the medicine I need in my pocket. Hospital won’t do shit I can’t do at a cheaper cost. Now will you please just turn right?”

  She turned right.

  His cell phone started ringing.

  “Who is it? Is that your drug dealer?”

  He dug his cell phone from his pocket and examined the screen, struggling to hold it with a bloody hand. “Yeah.”

  “Well don’t fuckin’ answer it.”

  He fumbled his thumb against the green TALK button and pressed it against his ear. He spoke in short gasps. “Hello.”

  The woman’s voice shot into him sharper than the blade had penetrated his stomach. “You stupid motherfucker. You stupid-ass motherfucker.”

  “Yes.”

  “You got any goddamn idea what you just done? Any goddamn idea at all?”

  “What do you want?”

  The woman laughed in anger. “What do I want? I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, bitch, don’t you get that?”

  “Okay. Well. That makes sense.” He dropped the phone between his legs and it bounced somewhere at his feet. He pointed at the windshield. “Take a left up here.”

  Amy swerved to the left without slowing down. “What did they say?”

  “What?”

  “On the phone. What did they say?”

  “Oh.” Jeremy coughed. “She said she’s gonna kill me.”

  “What? Oh shit. Oh shit. We gotta go to the police.”

  “Maybe later. First...my apartment. Please.”

  “We’re in deep shit, dude. Seriously, what in the fuck. Oh my god. Oh my god.”

  “It’s okay.” He coughed again and blood splattered against the dashboard. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  Amy opened the passenger door for him and allowed him to lean on her shoulder as he stepped onto the pavement. They moved through the parking lot like conjoined twins learning to take their first steps together. His apartment door was ajar so they just pushed it open. Had he left it like that? Hell if he could remember anything right now. The couch was soaked with blood, but there were no signs of Nick Malerman’s gutted corpse. Maybe he’d moved the body before leaving. Maybe Nick had never been here in the first place. What did it matter?

  Jeremy collapsed on the couch, holding his stomach. He groaned, leaned his head back, and looked upward. Layers upon layers of spider webs covered the ceiling of his studio. Silky majestic threads of white, picturesque over their heads. Judging by the sound of Amy’s gasp, she also noticed his new decorations.

  “Holy shit.”

  Jeremy spat blood out on the carpet. “You should probably leave.”

  “What?”

  “Forget about everything you saw today. Go back to work. Beg for your job.”

  “Fuck you. I’m not going anywhere. Are you serious?”

  “This is only going to get darker.”

  She sat next to him and grabbed his hand. “I’m not leaving you alone to die.”

  “We need to shoot up.”

  “No.”

  “Listen.” He froze as a wave of pain shot through him. “I’m shooting up. If you’re staying here, then so are you.”

  “But why?”

  “Nobody sober can survive this hell.”

  14.

  Maybe she was so desperate for his approval, his love, she would subject herself to the needle. Maybe, after everything she’d witnessed, she needed the dope just as much as he did. He didn’t know, didn’t really care. He felt better having someone to shoot up with him. The life of an addict was a lonely one.

  He assisted the needle into her vein, then reloaded it and turned it upon himself. They sat, side-by-side, moaning in ecstasy. He closed his eyes awhile, enjoying the silence, pretending they were somewhere far away from his apartment. Then Amy said, “Your stomach is moving.”

  He looked down. She wasn’t kidding. Something pressed against his stomach from the inside, trying to escape. He felt nothing. His body was numb, separated from his mind. They watched the object move toward the knife wound and pause, as if debating whether or not the hole was a trap.

  Amy leaned over him. “What is that?”

  “A new friend.” Jeremy poked his index and middle fingers through the knife wound and dug inside his stomach until something pinched him. He grabbed onto it and pulled it out.

  A large black spider, wiggling between his fingers.

  He dropped it in his lap and it fled down his leg, across the carpet and toward the front door.

  The front door, which was still open, despite Amy having closed it after they arrived. She didn’t want anybody passing the complex to notice two bloody junkies on a couch getting high, she’d said.

  Three men stood outside the doorway. Two held baseball bats. One held a pistol. Jeremy wondered how long they’d been standing there, looking at him. Were they waiting on him to say something?

  Amy beat him to i
t: “Who the fuck are you guys?”

  Jeremy coughed. “They’ve come to kill us.”

  The man with the gun stepped forward. The look on his face spoke of intense horrors. “What the fuck...what the fuck just crawled out of your stomach?”

  Jeremy reached inside his wound again and pulled out another spider, then held it out in front of him. “You want one? They are infinite.”

  The gunman shook his head, lost in a trance.

  “Your bullets will do nothing here. Stay and serve your purpose, or leave and delay the inevitable.” Alien words were leaving Jeremy’s mouth. Did he think them, or simply transport them? Parasite or host?

  One of the men holding a bat pushed the gunman out of the way and walked deeper into the living room. “This motherfucker killed Justin!” He raised the bat over his head and charged forward.

  Jeremy did not flinch. He sat and waited, calm, and three steps from the couch, a strand of webbing dropped from the ceiling and wrapped around the man’s neck, lifted him up, and swallowed him into the chaos above. The baseball bat fell from his grasp and bounced on the floor. His screams died instantly and evidence of his existence vanished. The webs had sucked him up and spat him out into some other reality far away from the apartment.

  The other two goons stared at the ceiling, unable to come to terms with what they’d witnessed. Eventually their flight instincts kicked in and they turned around to flee, but the door had already closed, maybe sometime during the abduction of their friend, maybe it’d always been closed, maybe they’d been here in this apartment their entire lives, maybe there wasn’t a world outside these walls, shit, any of it seemed just as unlikely as it seemed likely.

  One of the guys tried twisting the doorknob, but before any progress could be made another strand of thick webbing shot down from the ceiling and dragged him to the heavens. The last one standing raised his gun and started firing into the ceiling, screaming his fears away. The webbing gave him a couple seconds to relieve his stress before joining him with his friends.

  Jeremy and Amy sat on the couch and didn’t say a word, just stared up at the abyss above them, at the webs moving like flawless mechanisms designed to devour any potential threat. But a threat to whom? Jeremy?

  A threat to Eliza?

  Amy asked what it was they were looking at.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should you call somebody?”

  “If I need to talk to anyone, they’ll call me.”

  “I mean, like, doesn’t your apartment have a maintenance man?”

  “I think something like this goes beyond his job requirements.”

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  15.

  The next day they ran out of dope.

  Amy had long stopped freaking out about the surreality of their situation. The drugs calmed the both of them in that aspect. It was only when they were sober that everything threatened to sink in and ruin them. He ached to feel a needle stab his vein.

  The hole in his stomach had started healing itself. The spiders had sealed the wound with their silk. Half the time he felt immortal and the other half he felt one second away from death.

  Amy ran her hands through her hair and she paced back and forth in the living room, mumbling “what am I doing what am I doing what am I doing” over and over. A low hum emitted from the webbed vortex above them. It seemed to grow louder with every passing hour. Like a stomach growling with hunger. Jeremy remained on the couch, watching Amy and waiting for a web to snatch her up like the others.

  If you’re hungry, then take her, he wanted to tell the webbed ceiling. Quit bitching and dig in.

  But she continued untouched.

  “What am I doing what am I doing what am I doing—”

  “Will you shut the fuck up?”

  She froze, looking at him like she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. “I wasn’t saying anything.”

  “Like shit you weren’t.”

  “Oh, Jeremy. What are we gonna do?”

  He forced himself to stand up and walk into the kitchen for a glass of water. It tasted metallic. He entertained the idea of breaking the glass over the kitchen counter and slicing Amy’s throat with one of the shards. He also considered grabbing her hand and fleeing the state, never looking back, Eliza be damned.

  Instead he said the one thing he did not want to say: “We need to feed whatever’s up there.”

  “Feed?”

  He nodded. “It’s withdrawing just as much as we are. Can’t you feel it?”

  She paused. He waited for her to call him a psychopath, to run out of the apartment screaming for the police, screaming there was a crazy person inside who had an impossible portal to another world in his ceiling and it was eating anybody it could catch.

  “Yeah.” She grimaced. “I feel it.” She grabbed her hair with both hands and pulled, gritting her teeth. “How did I get here?”

  “This was your choice.”

  She blocked him from exiting the kitchen. “Do you even like me?”

  Jeremy hesitated, afraid Eliza was somewhere listening. It felt like she was never too far. “Yeah. I like you.”

  “Prove it.”

  “We have things to do.”

  “Goddammit, Jeremy.” She leaned against the wall, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “Please.”

  He searched the silk sky for some kind of sign. It gave no indication of opinion, one way or the other. “Okay.” He took her hand. Small and cold and desperate. “Okay.” He tried to kiss her, but she tasted spoiled, so he led her to the mattress and laid her down. He felt Eliza’s eyes on them as he entered Amy and he was certain he’d see her if he turned around. He closed his eyes and continued. Fuck it. Let her watch. If it upset her, then good. Served her right for hiding like they were playing a game. If Eliza was really his girlfriend, she’d be here for him, instead of off fucking around who-knew-where.

  Pain consumed him as he came inside of Amy. He lay on top of her afterward, resistant to remove himself from between her legs, terrified of what he’d discover smeared all over his genitals. Amy held him tight against her. Her nails dug into his back. Neither one wanted the other to part. As soon as this ended, they’d have to discuss what to do next. Whether he liked it or not, Amy was involved in whatever insanity had taken over his life. This was what she wanted. He didn’t know why anybody would willingly choose this route. He didn’t know a goddamn thing about anything, he was beginning to realize.

  They fell asleep holding each other.

  16.

  He awoke to Amy screaming.

  He pushed himself off of her, worried he’d somehow crushed her ribs or slightly suffocated her in his sleep.

  Her hands grabbed not at her sides, but between her legs.

  “Wh-what’s wrong?”

  “It burns! Jesus Christ, it burns! Oh my god!”

  “What?”

  She pulled her fingers out of her slit and lifted them up. Blood dripped down her hands and onto her stomach. She arched her back and gasped. “What the fuck did you do to me? Oh my fucking god, what did you do?”

  He backed up, unable to remove his glare from the blood seemingly pouring out from between her legs. She clenched her thighs together and crossed her ankles and writhed on the now-red mattress, sobbing hysterically. He looked down at his dick and blood drip-drip-dripped from the head to the carpet. Still erect. Still bleeding. Bleeding the poison corrupting Amy’s insides.

  She sat up. Eyes wide. Mouth twisted open in an almost-comical gasp. She stared not at him but through him, like they no longer co-existed in the same world, like she’d graduated to someplace far superior. A distorted rasp croaked from her throat as she spread her legs and dug her fingers into her vagina. The rasp increased in volume and anarchy. She did not blink, did not close her mouth. Every finger except her thumb on her right hand now lived inside her. She masturbated violently and blood—his, hers, maybe both—streamed over her ha
nd and soaked into the mattress.

  A strand of webbing fell from the ceiling and wrapped around her neck. It tightened against her jugular. The strangulation only seemed to fuel the speed of her fingers. More webbing followed, covering her face, blinding her unblinking eyes, snuffing her perpetually screaming mouth. A woman with a spider silk mask, naked from the neck down, masturbating and dying simultaneously. Poisoned. Spoiled. Expired.

  The spider webbing on her head, still connected to the world above them by a myriad of filaments, twisted sharply and the crack of her neck snapping exploded like a gunshot.

  Instead of falling back, the silk held her in a sitting position as it slowly consumed the rest of her body.

  Jeremy broke free of his temporary paralysis and fled to the bathroom. He stood under the shower and cried as the cold water failed to clean him of his filth. He needed a fix. Now. He couldn’t even contemplate the idea of going back out there without spiking his vein and letting the soft cushion of heroin surround his soul. Was this real? Of course it was real. He’d long passed the threshold that allowed him the luxury of considering the various confusing paths running through fiction and reality. Nobody had ever lived a more real moment in their entire pathetic lives.

  Eliza was waiting for him in the living room, naked and pale. Amy’s body had vanished, undoubtedly pulled up into the silk sky to satisfy the bitch’s hunger. Eliza sat on the couch, legs crossed, a needle in her hand, a smile on her face.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she told him.

  “What the fuck are you?”

  “I am yours, and—”

  “—and you are mine, yeah, I know. But what does that mean?”

  “Definitions are boring, honey. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did that happen to Amy and not to you?”

  Eliza’s smile died. “She wasn’t yours, and you weren’t hers. I’m the only one who can have you. Consider that cunt an example of a future without me.”

  “You’re fucking evil.”

  “My turn to ask what something means.”

  Jeremy groaned and rubbed his temple. “How did any of this happen?”