Flies For Eyes

A horror story with a spider. For more of my writing, go to andrewhenleywriting.wordpress.com

Some gap year. Most people went to India or Bangladesh, smoked dope and pretended it was a mystical experience. Or else they went to Africa, on a pseudo-charitable urge to selfrighteously document their experiences on a blog, then add them to their future CVs. But Danny ended in Maine. Hell, he’d have rather stayed in England and f*****g worked for a year than go to Maine.

 

“We’ve got relatives there,” his mother had told him, “You’ll be right at home.”

“With the Inbredingtons?”

“Not all Americans are hicks, dear.”

“When was the last time you saw the Inbredingtons? Talked to them even?”

“Danny, their name is the Andersons, just like ours. And I talked to Trisha just last month to arrange this. We had a good catch up. Apparently Shauna just had twins.”

“Who’s Shauna?”

“I don’t know. Part of the family though, so we’re happy for her. Anyway, Maine is great for hiking. You like hiking, don’t you?”

“Ma, I’ve never been hiking in my life.”

“Oh, don’t you lie, Daniel Anderson!”

“You’re fullnaming me now?”

“You used to love exploring the woods behind our house.”

“There’s like, five trees there. And I haven’t done that in years.”

“Well, it’s all been arranged now. And I don’t see you coming up with any other plans, or any money for some grand global adventure, so Maine it is, Mister!”

 

And Maine it was. Trisha was a nice lady, who kept her grey hair in a bun. She made huge meals, pastas and roasts and grills, making all of them on Mondays. Then she put them all in fridge, taking one out eat night and reheating them. This lasted until Friday; weekends were for takeout. Her husband Zeke was a retired mechanic who now filled his days empty whiskey bottles and polishing a shotgun he kept in an unlocked case. To Danny that seemed a dangerous mix, but no one else in the house seemed concerned.

 

Shauna was their granddaughter. Her mother was never mentioned, and Danny never asked. Shauna was only 16, meaning she got pregnant at 15. Danny’s reaction this had been secretly smug, thinking it had proved his preconceptions of America and the Andersons to be correct. Then he remembered that a girl in his school had gotten pregnant at 14, and decided to get to know her before he judged her.

 

That didn’t take long. While Shauna was not a junkie, abusive, or in any way a bad enough mother to warrant contacting Social Services, she did rely on Trisha to do most of the work caring for the twins, imaginatively named Micky and Minnie. But Trisha was very able, and from Tuesday through to Sunday, Shauna’s laid back parenting didn’t affect Danny in any way.

 

But today was Monday. Trisha was in the zone. She was live, baby! On America’s Dumbest Gameshow, ‘Feed A Family Of Four For A Whole Week In A Single Day’. Trisha was far too busy with her simultaneous lasagne, chicken salad and beef stew to bother with Mickey and Minnie, not to mention the fact Zeke still hadn’t been to the store to get flour for the turkey pot pie.

 

So the twins wailed with their hungry mouths as they sat in their soiled diapers and Shauna filed her chipped red nails. The twins shouted at Shauna. Shauna shouted at Trisha for help. Trisha shouted at Zeke to go get some goshdarn flour. Zeke shouted at the twins to shut up. This is why Danny went hiking in the Maine woodlands.

 

Some damn gap year. Trees. That’s all Maine is. F*****g trees. F*****g trees and poison ivy. F*****g trees and poison ivy and a goddamn cave. F*****g trees and- is that a fifty?

 

It was. Danny walked towards the entrance of the cave and saw a $50 bill lying under the damp, stony arches. He bent down to pick it up, and a gust of wind swiped it away from him, like some cruel practical joke. He didn’t feel any cold air whoosh past him; he just saw the money disappear. The green note fluttered deeper into the cave, and Danny followed.

 

Inside, the note sped up, flying away from Danny’s grasp. His feet stumbled on the loose rocks as he ran, and his fingers reached out, straining as long as they could. They snapped together, each time failing to catch the money. Then the fifty zipped upward, disappearing from Danny’s view. Confused, Danny kept running for a few paces, wondering where the money had gone. What had caused the updraft in a cave?

 

He felt something warm and wet slap him in the face. It felt like a rope that had been dipped in paint. He was stuck to it. Not just his face, but his body, his arms and legs. Trapped in a freakish, gangly pose, like a cartoon character shaped hole in a wall.

 

Then he saw her. A woman with thin hair, colourless like dead grass. She had flies for eyes, and was vomiting ants. A buzzing cluster of flies were clambering over each other viciously in her hollow eyesockets. The juicy whites had gone, now the flies fought over the dripping strands of retina that bungeed down her pale face, chewing the last of the gristle. Her mouth, wide open in a scream, a deathrattle, was infested with an eerie army of ants. They crawled around her cracked lips, and had gorged themselves on the flesh of her tongue, now torn and threadbare. Below her neck, she was a bare skeleton propped against the wall of the cave. At each joint, there was just enough cartilage to keep the body together. As if deliberate.

 

Danny screamed, then slammed his mouth shut quickly, fearing the beasts would descend on him too. His teeth cracked together, hard enough to chip. Blood began to dribble from his gums, and bile bubbled up in his stomach.

 

There was a noise in the darkness. Danny managed to pry his face loose, leaving some scraps of skin behind on the rope, hurting him and making him bleed. Then he saw it wasn’t a rope; it was a giant spiderweb. He screamed and crunched his lips closed again. Blood squirted from his gums against the web. The noise in the darkness, a creeping noise, something moving towards him quickly, footsteps soft and heavy at once. From the shadows, a spider emerged.

 

It was gigantic, at least three times the size of Danny. This time he screamed and couldn’t stop. A wailing shriek like Mickey and Minnie’s. Diaper change, please. Its purple fur shone wet, toxic green venom dripping from its sharp and curved fangs. A thousand red eyes aglow.

 

Danny began to shake, vibrating against the web. The flow of urine did nothing to melt away the web. The cords had the strength of metal vines. The exposed patches on his face started weeping. Danny’s eyes joined them. The spider opened its mouth in a wide yawn, splashing the venom onto Danny. The sting was sharp in his wounds, the smell foul.

“Another victim,” he spider said.

Danny’s scream became a high pitched shriek.

“You know, humans are so easy to catch. With flies, I have to produce a specific pheromone to lure flies onto the web. An aphrodisiac, I believe. We spiders have evolved through millennia to perfect this pheromone. How much we coat on our webs, how often we are able to produce it, how to increase its scent. And it’s still a little painful to produce, even after all our evolution. But all I’ve ever needed to catch people is money. Just one $50 bill.”

“You’re a spider? But, you’re huge!” Danny had not been listening. Fear had turned him deaf.

“Yes, quite.” the spider said.

Danny screamed again, then took a deep breath, “You can’t be a spider! Spiders aren’t this big! Not even in Australia!”

“In Australia? Yes, absolutely massive over there, aren’t they? Bigger than your hand apparently,” the spider said with a baritone laugh and a roll of all his eyes. He continued, “I can assure you, I am a spider. One of the biggest ones, I’ll grant you, but still a bona fide spider. I could eat only flies; indeed they’re rather tasty. Though not as tasty as humans, nor as diverse. Quite a lot of flavours in the human race. There’s no variety with flies. And because you humans have proved so easy to catch, I’ve made peace with the flies. Of course, if the humans knew I was here, they could kill me very easily. Just avoid the web and bring a gun and that would be the end of me, I suppose. Even an oversized newspaper could swat me to death. Though it would have to be a broadsheet,” the spider laughed again.

Danny struggled, shaking and vibrating, but his limbs were glued in place.

“Knowing your own weakness can be your greatest strength,” the spider said, “That’s how I’ve survived. With humans, your weakness is money. Always money.”

 

The spider scuttled towards Danny, its eight legs moving in rapid coordination. It loomed over him, spraying more venom. The fangs sank into Danny’s stomach; he convulsed in pain, tearing his arms away from the web, leaving more flesh behind. Danny continued to wail until he was dead. Like Mickey and Minnie, wailing and wailing with no one coming to help. His skin and muscles were slowly ripped away from him. One by one, his organs slipped away, bouncing and rotting on the cave’s damp ground. The spider was careful to keep the skeleton whole. To add to its collection. At delicate joints, he would take small nibbles, not lunging bites. When the spider was full, it sprayed Danny’s face with the pheromone, and the flies attacked.