Spiders

A short short story

Warning: Subject matter may not be appropriate for children.

The houseboat, built on oil drums, moved up and down with the waves. Spiders infested the darkness in the space under the floors. Irene caught a big black one and pinned it on her bedroom door. Eight legs and two body segments splayed out on a torn piece of paper. Beneath the body in red lipstick she wrote, "Enter this room at your own risk. Look at your brother."

"They bite me in my sleep," she showed Carl. "Look. She hiked up her T-shirt so he could see a line of red welts running like stitches from her navel to just below her right breast.

"Horrible," he said.

"That's why I kill them."

Carl caught spiders in a towel and escorted them out the door, setting them free saying, “You belong outside.”

"They just walk back in," said Irene. "And bite me! You have to show them who's boss!"

*

In the first stages of their love affair, some said they were an unlikely couple. Irene's story was simple. She was a farm girl, the last of six kids, with thick glasses, and skinny as a stick, but pretty none the less. She married her first boyfriend. More friendship than passion. She dropped out of college when he graduated and announced that he was moving away. They got hitched to please their mothers and then they went west. After a couple of years, she realized she was still a kid. She didn't know her self.

They tried to have a baby. Tried hard for a year. They had sex on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and all weekend long. She did head stands after he came, hoping his ejaculation would run down deep into her vagina and hit pay dirt. But after a year, she got depressed, and told him, "It's not you. It's me. I have to go find myself." And she left.

*

It was five years later. Carl spent most nights with Irene on the houseboat. Three geese came in through the doors Irene left open onto Lake Union. They waddled into the living room honking.

"They act like they own the place," Irene said. "Shoooo," she stamped her feet and screamed. "Rats. They are rats with wings."

Irene stood on one leg, flapped her arms like an angry crane and shouted, "Don't fuck with me. I'll pluck you, and cook you for my supper."

The geese reared up as though ready to fight.

Irene charged them flapping her arms. All three geese turned and fled out the doors and slipped soundlessly into the lake.

"I love doing that," she said.

"Is there anything you are afraid of?" Carl asked.

"Yeah," she said. "You."

"Why me?"

"Because you," she swallowed, "can hurt me."

*

They had a four poster bed that Irene and Carl found at a yard sale for 50 dollars. It was painted an ugly yellow. "They used to paint things yellow during the depression," Carl said, "to cheer themselves up, when everything looked bleak, and there was no work. I guess wood being brown looked dingy and hopeless."

"How smart," said Irene. "Did it work?"

"I don't know," said Carl.

"I'm going to try it."

"You know what you do with a four poster?" Carl said, changing the subject.

"No," she said.

Spread your feet apart and stand on your toes." She placed her feet wide and stood on her tip toes. "Now put your arms over your head to either side." She put her arms up. Her eyes opened wide.

"Oh, you devil," she squealed. "Promise!" she said.

*

Carl had a daughter named Ginny, eight years old. He doted over her. Irene loved her too, and loved to dress her, and bath her, and tie her hair up in ribbons. Irene also taught Ginny to whistle with two fingers, and how to climb trees and beat up boys who dared pull her hair, or "gross you out," Irene said.

"She's not your daughter," Carl said.

"Why are you so scared?"

"I'm not scared. I'm honest."

"I think you're mean," said Irene

*

Then one day Irene was at Carl’s and she picked up a stack of mail. She held up an envelope, addressed by hand with a return name and address. She sniffed it.

"Who is Jane?" said Irene.

Everything changed.

*

"What's wrong with me?" She screamed at Carl. "Why don't you want me?"

"It's not you. It's me," he said.

"That's my line," she said. "And I know it's a lie."

"I'm not ready to get married again. Or even a live together."

"You'll never find anyone who loves you as much as I do."

"That's what I'm afraid of," he said.

She stamped her feet and screamed, "Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane."

"I'm leaving now," said Carl.

Irene kept screaming the name after him.

*

They met for coffee on the weekend.

"Come back to the houseboat," she said.

It was Saturday morning. The wiz of espresso machines and the laughter of couples still in the early bloom of love surrounded their table.

"Make love to me." Irene's eyes were fixed on him. "One more time."

"It'll only be sex."

"I know," she said.

*

So here they were. On the yellow four poster. His legs spread wide and tied with silk. His wrist wrapped and secured with woven yoga straps. His mouth stuffed with a pair of her white socks with little red hearts on them, taped so he couldn't spit them out. He was lean and tight. Young and handsome. Maybe too pretty, she thought. Even now. His nostrils were covered with duct tape and stuffed with cotton.

It had been awful. He thrashed and made futile attempts to break the restraints.

Irene tried in the end to get the sock out of his mouth, to save him. But too late, his teeth clenched on it. He was strong. She breathed in his mouth, and pressed his chest. In the end she lay beside him, not breathing in his mouth, but kissing him with deep, soulful kisses. Realizing, she loved him now more than ever.

The houseboat rose and fell with the rhythm of the water. A spider walked across the sheet in front of her. It froze in its tracks when it realized, she was looking at it.

End