Hairy Jetta

Dylan lay on the bed. Through the window, he could see the first evidence of the morning breaking through. The stars on the frontier vanished one by one as the black slowly turned into blue. A tear flowed from his left eye. He was happy for it, as it was the only moisture that stopped the terrible pain in his eyes.

Dylan was paralysed and unable to blink.

He wasn’t paralysed at the start of the night. Neither would he have guessed it would last until the morning.

To put it mildly, he did not have a great night.

The promise of a good time with a beautiful woman had lured him into this web of death. As he lay there for hours, he could not stop thinking that his mother had warned him his love for women would eventually end him. He was quite sure she did not mean this exact woman and this exact time.

Without the ability to move his lips or do anything other than breathe, he rolled her name around in his mind and cursed her in every possible way he could think of.

Lucy.

If he could retch, he would have.

The whole night, he had been thinking of a plan to get back at her. The first few hours he lay there, he still had hope it was some sort of kink. As time passed and he had not seen Lucy the whole time, he slowly narrowed the options to three: kidnapped for his parents’ money, organ harvesting, or simply someone wanted to get back at him. He knew very well he enjoyed female company a bit too much now and then. He tended to have a rough way of lovemaking. Not really caring about how he left them after. Some of them were bound to be upset.

If he had known what was happening further down the bed, he would have praised Lucy for the decency to paralyse him.

The room was so silent that every gust of wind outside boomed inside as if it were played through a speaker. There was a clicking sound every few seconds that Dylan could not place. A branch against the window perhaps.

Footsteps on the stairs pushed the clicking and the wind into the background.

Dylan exhaled. Finally. Perhaps it was a kink after all. He would show her.

Revenge was on his mind as the door opened, flooding the room with light. Dylan’s eyes immediately hurt more. More tear fluid was needed or they would pop out of their sockets.

From the edges of his vision, the raven-black hair of Lucy bobbed. Affirmative sounds coming from the foot of the bed. “Good,” Lucy’s voice sounded. “Very good.”

Dylan tried with his mind to blink. He could not get a vibration in his eyelids.

Lucy’s head popped into view. Her ringed nose, tattooed forehead, black eyes. She was a sight to be seen.

Still, Dylan had no second thoughts about agreeing to the date. He probably still would.

He had always had a fascination with goths. The dark tattoos, the not caring about the world around them. He thought he was jealous of them. He himself had a sickening tendency to want to fit in everywhere.

He found Lucy beautiful from the moment he saw her first picture. Right then, he decided he would meet her, woo her and bed her.

He should have known better, as red flags were waving like a goddam parade.

Lucy checked Dylan’s face. She dripped some fluid into his eyes, bringing relief that sent shivers through his paralysed body. Then she checked his cheeks, put a finger in his mouth and squeezed his tongue. She bobbed her head left to right.

“Not sure if he will make it,” she said toward somewhere outside Dylan’s view.

An electrical shock ran from his toes to his head.

Someone was there with her? Shit, organ harvesting after all.

He tried to move his eyes, his newly wetted eyes, and managed, to his great relief, to move them. Still, he did not see another person.

If only he could move his head.

“He is moving his eyes?” Lucy nodded. “Perhaps he could survive after all.”

You’re damned right, he thought. I will survive and kick your pretty little ass.

The thought made his next few breaths sweeter. He had a waking dream of kicking the lifeless body of the small goth woman.

“Well, perhaps he wants to see you?” Lucy said while she squeezed her eyes, which had some black lenses in them, toward him. Her mouth formed a wry little smile.

Yes, Dylan thought. Show me the other one; I will kill them later.

Lucy’s head disappeared. “Come say hi, dearie.”

Dylan tried to sharpen his mind as much as possible. He wanted to remember every feature of that other one in the room with them, so he could recognise them and kill them with all the fury he had.

His mind was toiling with questions as some round ball of fur came into his vision.

Was it a dog or cat?

The hairs were too thick and looked more like barbs.

A hedgehog?

The woman had a lot of animals, so perhaps she had a—

What the...

Dylan counted two eyes.

Then two more.

Then another four.

“Wow, Jetta, hear his heartbeat. I guess he saw you.”

Lucy held in her hands a large tarantula. Holy shit, it was so big. She needed both hands to support it. Its eight legs draped over her hands like churros gone bad a long time ago.

Dylan’s body was sent into tremors.

“Amazing, isn’t it, Jetta, that even when paralysed, fear is never shut off completely?”

Foam bubbles formed on his lips. He wanted to scream so badly, but there was no sound at all.

The creature in her hand moved all eight eyes. Then it made a clicking sound.

A wet tear rolled over his cheek. His heartbeat played salsa while his breathing did a tango. His vision blurred. At first, he fought it. Then Jetta came a bit closer. The sight of her mouth, her jaws made his teeth clatter.

The jaws were red with liquid, a thick liquid that dripped slowly onto the sheets.

He encouraged his whole body to pass out. He eventually did, hoping he would not wake up anymore.

A small sensation of pain came from his left cheek, then a slightly larger sensation of pain from his right. The metallic taste of iron spread in his mouth.

Dylan blinked. The short beard on his chin made him wonder how long he was out.

He wanted to jolt up in bed but couldn’t. He could feel his feet, his arms, his chest. They were all functioning. He wiggled his toes. Squeezed his fist. He could.

But he could not move them anywhere.

It was as if he was contained by a sleeping bag made of elastic.

Dylan opened his eyes. Everything was white.

Was he dead?

Was this the afterlife?

He felt something on his stomach. Immediately, his thoughts drifted back to Jetta and Lucy. His whole body wiggled and fought to get loose from the elastic sleeping bag.

A muffled thump came from somewhere. Then pressure on his face. Two hands tattooed with black cobwebs ripped open the white sheet that covered Dylan’s face.

Dylan stared straight into the face of a smiling Lucy.

“Wow, he did survive. Good work, Jetta!”

Dylan screamed. Profanities filled the air. He was going to kill her, rip her open and string her up with her own bowels.

Lucy only nodded.

“You know what?” she laughed. “You deserve a mirror.”

She turned around. The sound of a door opening and closing echoed in the basement.

He tried once more to tense all his muscles to break through the elastic, but he couldn’t. Every inch he won immediately snapped back.

He cursed again.

Then he froze as a weight shifted on his leg.

Slowly, it moved up. As it went up his legs, it clamped around them as if it were a metal gripper.

Dylan tasted gall and bile in his mouth. The lump in his throat thickened as the weight went up.

Around his groin, the weight lingered. A sharp pain as it stepped on one of his balls.

“No, no, no.” Dylan shook his head violently, his senses sharpened by the sudden pain.

This was a bad dream. It could not be real.

What was happening?

Would he get eaten by a spider?

The weight was on his chest. Dylan counted the eight legs as they stepped over him one by one, feeling and probing their way toward his back.

Dylan was shivering. He retched.

Just as the vomit dripped over the silky elastic wires, with a snap, one of them broke.

He could twist his neck further.

Dylan turned his head around. He was not on the bed anymore.

The musty scent of stale air together with the coolness of the air made him believe he was in a basement…

Oh my God.

Spider silk surrounded him. Elastic white silky threads squeezed his whole body. He hung from the ceiling in a sort of cocoon. Only where his vomit had dripped the silk was loosening.

Dylan stared at the green bubbling the silk made when it mixed with his vomit.

He nodded.

Yes.

This was how he could break free.

He tried to retch more. He succeeded in spitting some bile on another strand of silk that loosened almost instantly. He moved his shoulder a bit. The movement made him exhale.

Dylan laughed. He breathed easier than before.

Then one hairy leg clawed into the silk on his chest.

Another leg tapped around, searching, then hooked into a strand of silk. A third followed, thickly covered in brown-red barbed hairs. Dylan was once again eye to eye with the spider.

Perhaps he could retch himself to safety. But not while the spider was watching him. His nerves steadied when a plan formed. The sudden possibility of escape made his head clear.

He whistled to the spider. Very gently. The tone still trembled, unsteady F minor.

Jetta hesitated. All her eyes were back on where the vomit had damaged her webbing.

She took one step closer.

Dylan could see the complete creature now. It was the size of his head.

He shivered again.

Her head was smaller than her body. It should fit in his mouth.

Dylan contemplated biting the spider's head off.

It was not a good idea.

She could bite him, poison him, but still. The only chance he could think of.

The spider took a step closer and weaved silk from her abdomen. With her hind legs, she masterfully mended the broken silk.

Dylan waited.

A warm sensation spread in his pants.

He blew air out of his cheeks, then violently stretched his neck to the side so he could throw his whole head forward.

His nose touched the nightmare creature.

Dylan did not think.

He opened his mouth and bit down as hard as he could.

Lucy came back into the room. She clumsily carried a human-sized mirror. At the door, she had to puzzle out how to get the mirror through.

“Normally we don’t do this. But for you, Dylan, you swine, we made an exception.”

As Lucy turned to face him, she dropped the mirror. It shattered on the floor in a thousand pieces.

“No!” she screamed. “What have you done?”

Lucy fell to her knees. Her black velvet dress tightened around her chest as her breaths became short heaves. She threw her head toward him. He smiled at her.

“Fuck you,” he said, spitting out two teeth.

Thick clods of blood ran over his chin. Red of his own mixed with whatever fluids Jetta held.

“Jetta!”

Lucy cradled the body of the spider in her two hands. The abdomen was still moving. Of the eight eyes, three were pierced.

Dylan’s muscles tensed. Vein by vein the toxin was spreading. Instead of retching, his teeth ground together. Two more fell out as he yelled in pain.

Lucy was no longer smiling as she took a piece of mirror from the ground. One of her black lenses flushed out because of her tears, showing one green-brown eye to Dylan.

Dylan screamed once more as a violent pain erupted from his chest.

“Look.”

Lucy showed him the mirror.

His spider-silk-covered chest stared back at him.

With one hand, Lucy ripped the silk from his chest, showing him his own skin.

Beneath the skin, bulges were visible.

They moved.

Dylan screamed “You crazy bitch!” his voice reduced to a high-pitched shriek.

Lucy smiled once more.

“Soon they will hatch. Soon they will start their first meal.”

Lucy checked the webbing.

“Not a chance in hell you escape.”

She gently caressed the man’s cheek. “You thought you could rape and fuck your way around without any consequences, did you?”

A hundred bulges moved in his body. They were stretching his skin, sending jolts of pain through his whole body.

She kissed him on the mouth. Bit his lip until blood flowed from it. Then turned and walked away. The door creaked when she opened it.

The click from the lightswitch made Dylan blink, then the lights went out.

“I will leave the door open so I can hear you scream.”