This Book Is Full of Spiders

  I was getting seriously pissed off at this point. I stomped out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. I yanked open several drawers until I found a utility knife, what some people call a box cutter. Molly came trotting in behind me, figuring maybe I was making a snack and she could get some scraps.

  I pulled off my shirt, then grabbed a long wooden spoon and stuck it sideways in my mouth. I stabbed the tip of the utility knife’s short blade in at the point where the monster’s foot was fused with my skin, and started prying. I growled and cursed around the spoon, teeth denting into the wood. A thick drop of blood ran down my chest like candle wax.

  It took twenty minutes. In the end I had the six-inch-long jointed leg in my hand, with a little dot of bloody skin and fat on the end that used to be part of me. I held a bundle of wet paper towels to the wound, smears of blood making my abdomen look like a finger painting. I put the monster’s leg in a plastic container from my cabinet. I leaned against the counter, eyes closed, taking slow breaths.

  I had taken one step back toward the bedroom when a knock came at the door. I froze, decided not to answer it, then realized it may be John. I went into the bedroom to check on the caged beast. It had two legs through a slot in the plastic basket but had made no progress toward biting its way out. I made my way back across the living room, smacking my foot on the coffee table on the way. I yanked open the door—

  It was a cop.

  A young guy. I knew him, name was Franky something. Went to high school with me. I straightened up and said, “What can I do for you, officer?”

  I saw his eyes go right to my torso, where I was holding a red wad of paper towels over a freely bleeding wound, and then back to my face, where one eye was swollen shut under a ragged eyelid caked with dried blood. He had a hand resting on the butt of his gun, alert in that way that cops are.

  He began with, “Who else is in the house, sir?”

  “It’s fine. I mean, nobody. I live here alone. I mean, my girlfriend lives here with me, but she’s away at school right now. So it’s just me. Everything’s fine. I just had a problem with, uh, something that, uh, came into the house. Some kind of … animal.”

  “You mind if I come in, sir?”

  There was no right answer to that, since he clearly thought I had a butchered prostitute in here somewhere. I stepped aside without a word. That “sir” shit was irritating me. He was my age. I went to parties with this guy in school, watched him play teabag twister with underwear on his head.

  Burgess, I thought. That’s his name. Franky Burgess.

  He walked past me and I said, “I’d turn on a light, but the power’s out. Must have, you know, blown a fuse or something.”

  He gave me a look that suggested what I just said gave him a whole new perspective on my mental state. I could read his face perfectly because the living room light was on.

  “Oh. Right,” I stumbled. “Guess it’s back on now.”

  I blinked. Had it been on this whole time?

  The place was a mess. I mean, it had been a mess before (the blood I dripped on the carpet actually blended with a nearby coffee stain) but where we were standing gave us a clear view into the kitchen, where drawers were flung open, a roll of paper towels had fallen onto the floor and a pile of plastic lids had spilled out of a cabinet. A couple of steps after that and he would have a view of the main bedroom, where it looked like a bomb had gone off. Oh, and there was an alien spider monster trapped under an overturned laundry basket with a piece of furniture piled on top of it.

  The cop moved into the kitchen and I followed him. I heard a skittering noise from the bedroom and saw the spider trying desperately to escape between the plastic bars of his laundry basket prison. The cop gave no notice. He looked at the bloody box cutter on the counter, then glanced back at me and my several bloody wounds. I stepped casually backward, stopping in front of the bedroom door, leaning against the door frame as if I wasn’t somehow trying to block the view of the room with my body.

  “Yeah, that,” I said, nodding toward the little knife, “I cut myself a few times, no big deal, I was … trying to get this thing off me. I think it was a possum or something, I couldn’t get a look at it. It was clawing me up pretty bad.”

  He was looking past me, into the bedroom, and said, “Can you step aside, sir?”

  Screw it. Let this thing bite his eyes out, what do I care? Go right in, Franky.

  I stepped aside and Franky the Cop entered the bedroom. He surveyed the carnage, then finally looked down on the overturned basket. Five little armored legs writhed around between the plastic slats. The cop casually looked away, glancing into my closet with disinterest. Finally he looked back at me.

  “So, did you kill it or what?”

  The beast was right there in the basket. In full view. Jaws clicking against the plastic, a sound like a dog gnawing on a bone. It had gotten a few legs entirely through the basket and was now pulling its body through. All of this went entirely unnoticed by Officer Burgess.

  He doesn’t see it.

  “Uh, no. I tried to trap it.”

  The thing had its head out of the basket now. Franky looked down. Nothing to see. He looked back at me.

  “Have you had anything to drink tonight, sir?”

  “Couple of beers, earlier.”

  “Have you taken anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Can you tell me what day it is?”

  The spider had a third of its body out of the basket. There was a thick piece of armor around its abdomen that was wedged in between the plastic strips. It had four legs working on the problem.

  “Thursday ni—uh, I mean, I guess it’s Friday morning now. November fourth, I think. My name is David Wong, I’m currently standing in my home. I’m not high.”

  “The neighbors are worried about you. They heard a lot of noise in here…”

  “You try waking up with some animal biting you in your sleep.”

  “This isn’t the first time we’ve been out here, is it?”

  I sighed. “No.”

  “You put some weight on top of that basket there.”

  “I told you, I was trying to trap it—”

  “No, the basket was you trying to trap it. I’m thinking the weight is on there because you thought you had trapped it.”

  “What? No. It was dark. I—”

  The monster pulled the widest piece of shell through the bars. Halfway out. The difficult half.

  “Is it possible you made all those cuts yourself? With that knife in there?”

  “What? No. I—”

  I don’t think so …

  “Why do you keep looking down there?”

  I took a step back out of the room.

  “No reason.”

  “Do you see something down there, Mr. Wong?”

  I turned my eyes up to the cop. I was sweating again.

  “No, no.”

  “Have we been seeing things tonight?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Because this wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”

  “That was … no. I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  I focused on not looking down at the basket. The chewing sounds had stopped.

  I couldn’t hold out anymore. I looked down.

  It was gone.

  I felt my bowels loosen. I glanced around the room, checked the ceiling. Nowhere.

  The cop turned and left the room.

  “Why don’t you come with me, Mr. Wong, and I’ll take you to the emergency room.”

  “What? No, no. I’m fine. The cuts are no big deal.”

  “Don’t look minor to me.”

  “No, no. It’s fine. Put it in your report that I refused treatment. I’m fine.”

  “You got any family that live here in town?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody? Parents, aunts, uncles?”

  “Long story.”

  “There a friend we can call?”

  “John, I guess.”

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; I was glancing everywhere, trying to spot the spider, no idea what I’d do if I did.

  “Well, tell you what, give him a call and I’ll hang out here until he shows up. Keep you company. In case the animal comes back.”

  I couldn’t think of anything that would make this guy leave, short of punching him and forcing him to haul me to jail. That hardly seemed like a solution, though.

  The cop can stay as long as he wants, I thought. As long as he doesn’t go to the toolshed.

  Franky the Cop turned to me at that moment and said, “I’m going to have a look around outside.”

  I let the cop go out the back door, but didn’t offer to follow him. I guess he wanted to do a walk around of the yard to make sure there wasn’t a corpse out there. Let him. As soon as he was out of sight, I moved back through the kitchen, into the living room and then through to the bedroom. I flipped on the light, checked the ceiling, checked everywhere. No spider. I heard the muffled sound of steps on crackling leaves and saw the cop outside, passing the window with a flashlight. I headed for the bathroom, soaked a washcloth and cleaned the dried blood off me. I got a Band-Aid on my shoulder and cleaned up the eyelid, flinching with every stinging touch. I went into the bedroom, searching for the monster, even looking in the laundry basket in case the thing had decided to return for some reason. I put on a shirt and tried to push down my hair, thinking I could present a picture of a stable citizen for the cop and make him feel better about leaving.

  Before he asks to see the toolshed.

  I grabbed my phone from the bed and dialed John one last time. Three rings and then—

  “Hello?”

  “John? It’s me.”

  “What? Who?”

  “We got a situation.”

  “Can it wait until after work tomorrow?”

  “No. There’s something in my house. A—”

  I glanced around for the cop.

  “A creature. It took a chunk out of my leg and then it went for my eye.”

  “Really? You kill it?”

  “No, it’s hiding somewhere. It’s small.”

  “How small?”

  “Size of a squirrel. Built like an insect. A lot of legs, maybe twelve. It had a mouth like—”

  I turned and saw the cop standing in the bedroom doorway.

  I nodded sideways toward the phone and said, “This is John. He’s on his way.”

  “Good.” He nodded toward the back door. “Do you have a key to that toolshed outside?”

  I pocketed the phone without saying good-bye to John.

  “Oh, no. I’ve lost the key. I mean, I haven’t been out there in months.”

  “I’ve got a pair of bolt cutters out in my trunk. Tell you what, let me open that up for you.”

  “No, no, that won’t be necessary.”

  “I insist. You don’t want to be stuck without your lawn implements. You can finally rake all these leaves out here.”

  We stared each other down. Man, this just kept getting better and better. I found myself wishing the spider would jump down and eat this guy.

  “Actually, I think I have a key.”

  “Good. Get it.”

  I went into the kitchen and plucked the toolshed key off the nail next to the back door, where it had been in plain view the entire time. Franky the Cop let me lead the way outside to the shed, staying a few steps back so that he could have time to shoot me in case I decided to wheel on him with fists of fury. I held out the key and took a deep breath. I slipped it into the padlock and snapped it open. I pulled the toolshed door slightly ajar and turned to Franky.

  “What’s in here … I, uh, collect things. It’s a hobby, that’s all. And as far as I know, there’s nothing illegal here.”

  Though you could say some of it is, uh, imported.

  “Could you go ahead and step back, sir?”

  He opened the little shed and stabbed the darkness with a flashlight beam. I held my breath. He went right to the floor with the light, where a body would be, I guess. There wasn’t one there, not right now, and instead he illuminated the crust of grass on the wheel of my lawnmower. Then he flicked the flashlight beam to the set of metal shelves along the back and side walls. The beam hit a glass jar the size of a can of paint and illuminated the murky liquid inside. Officer Franky Burgess stared at it, waiting for his eyes to register what he was seeing. Eventually he would figure out it was a late-term fetus, a head the size of a fist, its eyes closed. It had no arms or legs. Its torso had been replaced by a jointed mechanical apparatus that hooked around to a point like the tail of a sea horse.

  I manufactured a chuckle and said, “Heh, uh, I got that off eBay. It’s a, uh, prop from a movie.”

  The cop glanced at me. I glanced away.

  He shined his light back onto the shelf. Next to the jar was an ant farm. The tunnels between the panes of glass had been dug neatly to spell out the word HELP.

  Next to that was my old Xbox, the cables wrapped around it.

  He moved the light down a foot, to the shelf below. He passed over a stack of old magazines, not noticing that the top one was an old, faded issue of Time depicting a swarm of Secret Service agents around a dead Bill Clinton, the words WHO DID IT? blasting across the picture in red. Next to the magazines was a stuffed red Tickle Me Elmo doll, the fur faded with dust. At the moment the light hit it, its sound box crackled to life and in a cartoony voice it said, “Ha ha ha! Five and three quarter inches erect!”

  I said, “It’s, uh, broken.”

  Franky the Cop inched the beam to the next object, a mason jar containing a twisted, purple tongue suspended in clear liquid. Next to it was a duplicate jar, only with two human eyes floating side by side, trailing a tangled tail of nerves and blood vessels. The cop didn’t notice that when the beam swept past the jar, the eyes turned to follow it. Next to the jars was an old battery from my truck, matted with smears of black grime. The light made it to the bottom, where it found a red plastic gasoline can sitting on the floor next to an old CRT computer monitor with a screen that had been shattered by a gunshot. Next to it was the one thing I didn’t want the cop to see. The Box.

  We heard crunching leaves behind us.

  “Yo, what’s up?” The cop and I turned to see a dark figure with one hand swinging the orange coal of a burning cigarette. John. “Hi, Franky. Dave, sorry I sent you all those pictures of my dick. I hope that’s not what caused you to injure your eye.”

  The cop put the flashlight on John, maybe to make sure he wasn’t armed. John wore a flannel shirt and a black baseball cap with the word HAT on it in all caps.

  Franky the Cop thanked John for coming over. I was hoping he would back out of the toolshed because each minute he stood there made me more and more nervous. My eye and shoulder were throbbing. The wind shifted and I picked up the scent of alcohol from John.

  The cop swung the flashlight beam around and spotlighted the floor of the toolshed again. Light fell on the box, and I mean the box, the olive green box we’d found in the back of that unmarked black truck. It looked like a serious box. It looked like something you’d want to look inside of, if your job was to keep people safe. Franky nodded toward it.

  “What’s in the green box there?”

  “Don’t know.”

  That was sort of true, I guess.

  John said, “We found it. You can’t get it open.”

  That was also true. Franky couldn’t get it open.

  I said, “You can take it back with you, if you want. Put it in the lost and found at the police station.”

  The cop clicked off the flashlight, then asked John if they could go inside and talk. He then gestured toward the toolshed with the flashlight and said to me, “You want to close that up while I have a word here with John?”

  I said that seemed like a fine idea and their shoes crunched through the leaves until they reached the light of my back door. I closed the toolshed and clicked the padlock shut, then let out a sigh of relief. The relief lasted approximately fo
ur seconds, the time it took me to realize John and Franky the Cop were now back inside the house with the murderous alien spider. I hurried back inside and saw John and the cop in my living room having a low conversation out of my hearing, the cop I guess was asking John to babysit me and to call if I showed more signs of craziness. I moved closer and barely heard John say, “… Been real depressed lately…” and wondered what kind of portrait he was painting in there.

  I scanned the kitchen for the spider, being sure to check the high ground. No sign of it. I closed some of the open drawers and cabinets, tried to straighten the place up. I made it all the way out of the room before I turned and realized that cabinets would be an ideal hiding place for the little bastard. I’d be getting out my cereal tomorrow morning and the fucker would launch itself at me. Could I search through them without drawing Franky’s attention? Better wait. Instead I checked the bedroom, again under the guise of straightening up. I looked under my blankets and then under the bed. I pushed around the clothes in my closet, I checked behind the door. No spider.

  When I came out, I saw John and the cop were on the front porch. Progress. John was thanking the man for coming out, saying he hoped Franky would remember me in his prayers because I could really use it right now because my life was really a mess and I was just a complete pathetic loser struggling with my weight and financial problems and alcohol and erectile dysfunction. I decided to join them before John could defame me further.

  The cop was already walking back toward his patrol car as John said, “… And his girlfriend is away and she’s only got one hand. She lost it in an accident. You can imagine the problems that causes.”

  Franky was desperately trying to escape the conversation, talking into the little radio mounted on the shoulder of his uniform, letting headquarters know that everything was under control here. John and I watched him go. Then we heard a skittering by our feet and saw the goddamned spider run past our shoes. It vanished into the darkness, heading right toward the cop.

  I jumped off the porch, waving my hands. “Wait! Franky! Officer Burgess! Wait!”

  The cop stopped just short of the squad car and turned to me. I opened my mouth, but the words retreated back into my throat. A bundle of thin black legs appeared over Franky’s left shoulder, touching his bare neck. And he couldn’t feel a thing.