Marvin and the Moths

by Jonathan Follett

  Lee bobbed his head to the beat. “Great song, isn’t it?” he said to her. “So, you want to maybe dance a little bit?”

  Olivia paused and looked Lee right in the eye. “You’re still in that place, Lee,” she said. “I get it. But I have to go back to living.”

  Lee looked at the ground and nodded his head.

  “But I won’t forget you,” she said. She raised her hand as if to touch him on the shoulder, then dropped it and walked away.

  He watched her walk back into the jubilant crowd. “Great song, isn’t it?” she shouted to her friends as she rejoined them.

  Lee scowled. “I don’t know why I even bothered to come tonight,” he said to himself, shuffling his feet in annoyance. “The music is terrible, and nobody here even cares whether I live or die.” He glared at the table full of Pork Loaf products, which seemed to taunt him. “And right now, I would kill for something to eat.”

  A large shape rustled in the shadows just overhead. “So would I,” a menacing voice replied, followed by horrifying laughter.

  As anyone who has read a book knows, unless there is some violence at the end, you’ll never remember the lesson. Unfortunately for Lee, the lesson in this case was that menacing inhuman horrors that lurk in the darkness are not to be trifled with.

  The spider swooped down on his silken cord and smashed Lee across the temple with one of his forelegs, knocking him half-unconscious. The half of Lee that was still conscious yelled, “Help!” Amid the cheers of adulation for the new king and queen, Marvin and Fatima were the only ones close enough to hear him.

  Marvin and Fatima had been told about monsters before, of course. All children had. But the monsters in stories go away when you close the book, and the monsters under your bed vanish when you turn the lights on. This monster was not going away. This one, blown up to enormous size as if by some accursed microscope, was visible in all his gory details, from his furry legs to his enormous fangs to his cold, unblinking eyes, which, at that moment, stared straight through Marvin.

  “Oh—” Marvin said, dropping his punch and turning pale. “What—what is that?”

  Fatima staggered up out of her folding chair and gasped as she squinted at the blurry shape. “Is that—it’s a giant Hogna helluo!” she said. “A wolf spider!”

  “What?” Marvin said. “But it’s the size of a cow!”

  “Or an elephant!” Fatima said, realization dawning at last. “That thing is the Elephant Vampire! It’s still on the loose!”

  Marvin couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Moreover, he couldn’t believe that the Elephant Vampire was real. And then the inevitable thought occurred to him, and as he turned to look at Fatima, he saw that she had come to the same conclusion.

  “You,” she said. “This is your fault, isn’t it?”

  “Did I not mention that there were four test tubes of Pork Punch?” Marvin said.

  “You sure about that?” Fatima said. “Not five? Or six? Should I be waiting for a vicious inchworm to eat us? Perhaps a malevolent cricket with a short fuse?”

  “Get in your I-told-you-so’s now,” Marvin said. “I hear in the next life, we have to be nice to each other.”

  “I told you so,” Fatima enunciated, slowly and deliberately.

  “Really?” Marvin said, shaking his head and turning back to face the spider.

  People don’t know what they are capable of until thrust into a life-and-death situation. Does a person panic, or does he or she face the danger head-on? For Marvin and Fatima, it was a little of each. Fatima, having the most sense, stood rooted to the floor, staring at the spider in openmouthed horror as the seven-foot-tall killer looked her up and down hungrily with his many shiny eyes. Marvin, being somewhat stupider and more impulsive, charged the hors d’oeuvre table where the spider was gathering the limp body of Lee into his clutches.

  “Lee!” he shouted, and jumped onto the table, grabbing a plastic spork on the way. In one fluid motion, he completed his charge and plunged the flatware deep into one of the spider’s eyes. The glassy orb popped like a water balloon, but one that was filled with rot and venom, and the stench of the hundred victims the spider had consumed. Disgusting goo shot all over Marvin’s wrinkled suit.

  The spider shrieked and recoiled in pain, the spork still protruding from his eye. “You infantile ape!” the monster howled. “You ruined my perfect vision! I’ll have your innards for soup!”

  As Fatima realized she was about to witness the death of not one, but two of her friends (however unfriendly they’d been recently), every single emergency health and safety procedure that she had ever heard flashed through her brain: performing CPR. Splinting a broken arm. Recognizing the signs of heatstroke. Waiting an hour after lunch before swimming. Sitting at least six feet from the television. Chewing each mouthful of food thirty-two times. Keeping hands inside the bus. And calling 911.

  “I’ve got to call 911!” she said, then remembered that she had left all her electronic communication devices at home. She patted herself from head to toe, but found only her corsage. She turned her tiny purse upside down, dropping a tube of lip gloss and a few dollars to the ground. “Stupid thing!” she said. “How do women fit cell phones in these?”

  Fatima turned and ran toward the cheering crowd of students, all of whom had their eyes on Stevie and Amber and were utterly oblivious to the deadly struggle taking place on the opposite end of the cafetorium. She grabbed a girl on the dance floor by her bare shoulders and spun her around. “CALL 911!” Fatima shouted, receiving only a blank stare in return. Finally, she huffed in exasperation and turned to the girl’s date. “Call the police!” The boy raised his eyebrows at Fatima and took a step back. Fatima glanced behind her and saw the spider recovering its balance. It wouldn’t be long now. She turned back to the crowd and snatched the purse from a girl’s hands.

  “Hey!” the girl said. It was her fellow Harvest Court competitor Tilly Hoefecker, whose reddish-brown hair hung in frizzy curls around her shoulders. “What do you think you’re doing, Fatima?”

  “I need your cell phone,” Fatima said, riffling through Tilly’s purse. “It’s an emergency!”

  “Give it back, you freak!” Tilly said. She grabbed her purse and shoved Fatima to the floor. “You lost! Get over it! It’s not an emergency. It’s not even a surprise!”

  Back at the table, Marvin cast about for another weapon. He pulled the metal ladle from the punch bowl and raised it up into a defensive position just as the spider started to advance again. He made a few halfhearted swings toward the spider’s face, but the monster just stopped and laughed. “Oh, valiant indeed, my dear Knight of the Ill-Fitting Suit,” the spider said. “I’ll joust with you soon enough.” The spider grasped tightly on to both Lee and the silken line. “But first, I’m going to savor this dainty appetizer!” He raced back up his webbing, Lee in tow, and vanished into the shadows overhead.

  Marvin stared into the depths of blackness above, trying to make out any sign of movement, half-afraid that Lee was already being sucked dry like a freeze-pop. There was no way Marvin could get up there to help him.

  No way, except the climbing rope from gym class, which was tethered to the cafetorium wall just above the far end of the table. Without stopping to think, he took a running leap and reached for the rope. His hands seized it, checking his forward momentum, and he swung around, straight into the wall. Marvin let out a grunt as he smacked into the painted cinder block, but kept his grip. He started climbing even before he had regained his balance.

  As he passed the halfway mark, Marvin reflected on his earlier failure to climb the rope in gym class. This time, however, would be different. Lee’s life was on the line, and Marvin had a chance to redeem himself—in front of the entire school, no less. That thought sent a warm feeling through his body. That feeling masked, for a few moments, the fact that his hands no longer seemed to be working properly. Then it was his forearms that began to quiver, and then his biceps. The warm feeling turned into a
cold, sinking sensation in his stomach, as he realized that he lacked the strength to climb any higher. He was at a critical moment: Marvin knew that he could simply slide down to the floor and walk away from this with no more than the discomfort and indignity of rope burns on his thighs. But he would also be walking away from Lee. So he scrunched up his legs and gave one last upward push with all his might.

  This proved to be a costly error.

  Across the room, Fatima had regained her footing. She had also regained her inner fury. Like a prophet of old, Fatima raised her hands above her head and addressed the sea of students in a commanding voice.

  “Everyone!” she cried, and the nearer members of the crowd turned their heads. “Heed my words! I call upon you to witness this dread moment in history—to witness our doom!”

  “Grow up!” someone shouted back. “You lost the contest!”

  “Not my doom, you idiot,” Fatima said, lifting her index finger. “The doom of us all! Look where my finger points, because it points to your doom!”

  All eyes in the crowd followed her finger, but they alighted not upon the giant spider Fatima was expecting, but upon Marvin, dangling from the rope. As they watched, Marvin grunted, gave a mighty wrench with all his might, and, with a loud tearing sound, split the seam of his pants.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Marvin said in a weak and exasperated voice, just before he lost his grip and plummeted through the air. He crashed into the hors d’oeuvre table, his impact upending it and showering him with dozens of appetizers as he rolled onto the floor. The punch bowl and all its contents arced overhead in a graceful, crimson-colored curve, a curve that ended directly atop Marvin’s head with a roaring splash. The final casualty of his ill-fated flight was the life-size sculpture of Mr. Piggly Winks, which came sliding down the table. Marvin looked up just in time to see the plump belly of the anthropomorphic pig approaching his face. The force of the collision with fifty pounds of processed meat hurled him backward, and the head and limbs of the sculpture tore free and skittered across the floor.

  The cafetorium broke out into riotous laughter. Little Stevie waded through the crowd, a smile on his face, and punched Fatima lightly in the shoulder. “That was a good one!”

  “Ugh,” Amber said, coming up beside him. “Disgraceful. Our moment of triumph has been tarnished by your klutzy cousin’s butt.”

  Tilly Hoefecker glared at Fatima. “That girl will do anything for attention. Pathetic.”

  Gradually, they all turned away, leaving Fatima to stare, aghast, at Marvin’s once-again-soggy figure. He shoved the broken body of Mr. Piggly Winks off to one side and turned his head toward Fatima.

  “It’s in the rafters!” he croaked. “It’s got Lee!”

  A look of grim determination settled over Fatima’s face as she realized that there was just one thing left for her to do. She turned and marched across the room to where she could see a blurry red spot on the wall. It was a fire alarm. In one swift motion, she reached out with both hands and yanked down on the handle.

  Immediately, two things happened. Alarms started screeching overhead, and a stream of blue dye shot out of a hidden nozzle on the fire alarm, straight into Fatima’s face.

  The kids shrieked at the sudden onset of the wailing sirens and the flashing strobes. “Fire!” the students screamed. Panic quickly set in.

  “Outta my way!” Stevie said, pushing people out of his path. “God save the king!” He and Amber led the frightened stampede toward the doors, shoving aside chaperones, Mrs. Goudy, and the DJ, who vainly tried to instill some order before following the mob themselves. Within mere seconds, the dance floor was empty, save for Marvin, who clambered to his feet and brushed bits of finger food from his jacket, and Fatima, who sputtered as she wiped blue dye from her face.

  “It was supposed to be an urban legend!” she said, rubbing her eyes. “It was supposed to be a scare tactic! No one actually puts blue dye into fire alarms!”

  “Looks pretty blue to me,” Marvin said, staggering over to her as he wiped Pork Punch from his own face.

  Just then, Lee’s voice cut through the wail of the sirens. “Help me!” he screamed. Marvin and Fatima looked up. There, lit by the flash of the emergency strobe lights, they could just make out the spider’s huge bulk, and Lee’s tiny shape struggling in the thing’s clutches.

  “We’ve got to do something!” Marvin said.

  “How?” she said. “That thing took down an elephant! All we’ve got is a spork and a prayer! We’re totally on our own here.”

  At that, the sound of a battle cry came from outside, and the doors burst open. Ahab and Aristotle charged in, wearing kitchen aprons as armor and colanders and saucepans as helmets, and hauling their siege engine between them. Abraham brought up the rear a moment later, waving a wooden baseball bat and screaming, “We’re here to save your soggy butt!”

  “Never mind!” Fatima said. “It looks like we have some giant bugs on our side now!”

  “We might have been better off on our own, actually,” Marvin said under his breath. Then he had a realization. “Do those things work?” he asked, pointing to Ahab’s wings as the big moth approached them. Another cry came from the rafters. “We need to get up there, now!”

  Ahab scooped up Marvin in his arms, plunked him on his back between his wings, and took flight.

  As anyone who has ever ridden on the back of a giant moth knows, there’s only one good way to hang on. Marvin learned quickly, gripping the scruffy fur behind Ahab’s wings as they spiraled upward. At last, Ahab alighted on the steel crossbeam where the spider perched, clutching Lee tightly to his abdomen.

  Marvin had expected it would be hard to read the expression on a spider’s face, but this one clearly seemed annoyed at having been interrupted. Still, he drew himself up into a regal pose, declaring, “Hail, oh mighty Lepidoptera! Have you come to face me, the great Caliban, in single combat?”

  “Is he talking to you?” Marvin asked Ahab, still clinging to the moth’s back. He peered past Ahab’s bulk to get a better look at their foe. For a moment, he locked eyes with the captive Lee, whose pale brow was covered with beads of sweat.

  “Don’t interrupt your social betters, my clammy little friend,” the spider said. “I prefer that my food remain silent when I eat it.”

  “Eat this!” Ahab shouted, lunging at the spider and swinging four different spatulas at the monster’s head. The flurry of smacking utensils beat against the spider’s face as though it were a snare drum, driving the creature backward. The moth continued to pound away at the spider until, backed up against the far wall, the monster finally lashed out in desperation.

  Sharply jointed legs sliced through the air faster than the eye could follow, knocking the kitchen utensils from Ahab’s grasp and sending him over onto his back. Marvin found himself half-pinned beneath the giant moth. They teetered on the edge of the beam. As Marvin struggled to wriggle free, he looked up to see the spider’s seven remaining eyes looming over them.

  “So easily disarmed,” the spider said, shaking his head from side to side. “I, however, am never without my weapons.” He reared up, exposing his fangs, which glistened with venom.

  Marvin cast about desperately for some sort of defense. Ahab’s spatulas were all gone, but in his apron—the can of nonstick Pork Spray. Marvin reached over and snatched it from the apron pocket, lifting it up just as the spider lunged forward.

  A cone of meat-scented chemicals shot into the spider’s remaining eyes. The monster reeled back in pain and clawed at his face with his many legs, dropping Lee in the process. Lee screamed in panic as he plunged through empty space.

  Down on the gym floor, Aristotle, Abraham, and Fatima watched the struggle. Aristotle saw Lee plummeting to the ground and acted quickly to help: He shoved Abraham underneath him, using the moth’s body to break the boy’s fall.

  “Oof!” Abraham said on impact. “Watch out! The Elephant Vampire’s throwing humans at us!” He shoved Lee off him
and took a look. “Oh, it’s just the stinky boy.”

  “Gangway!” came a shout from above. Ahab and Marvin had seized the spider’s moment of confusion and leaped from the beam. They spun toward the gym floor at a terrifying rate, but stopped at the last moment, Ahab drawing up into a graceful hover before touching lightly to the earth.

  Marvin let go of Ahab’s furry back and dropped to the floor. He reached down and helped Lee up to his feet.

  “We’re all safe,” Marvin said, doing a quick head count. “Now let’s get out of here!” Abraham and Ahab, Marvin, Fatima, and Lee all ran toward the exit.

  “But, wait!” shouted Aristotle. “The coup de grâce! The triumph of Newtonian science over Shakespearean melodrama!”

  The others stopped short of the door and looked back at the tall moth, who bustled around his siege engine in the middle of the gym floor.

  “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Abraham, “but this doesn’t look good.”

  Aristotle plucked up the severed Pork Loaf head of the Mr. Piggly Winks sculpture and placed it in the basket of the catapult. Then he pulled an old barbecue lighter from his own battle apron and set the oily meat-head on fire.

  “With this flame, I unseat the Bard!” he cried, and loosed the catapult.

  The ball of burning meat shot up into the rafters like a greasy comet, catching the staggering spider squarely in the abdomen.

  Aristotle shouted in triumph and danced in circles as the monster caught fire and fell back on the beam. Its legs flailed in the air as it tried to right itself and regain its balance. Flaming gobs of processed meat sprayed through the air and rained down on the cafetorium below, igniting the crepe paper streamers and spattering the walls and floor with small patches of greasy fire.

  “My God!” Fatima said. “There’s an actual fire now!”

  “I guess that solves your problem of explaining the whole fire-alarm thing to the police,” Marvin said.