The Tarantula Man

© 2004 Steven Mallas
All rights reserved.

They called him the Tarantula Man.

Calling him the spider man probably would have been more accurate—more inclusive—but there was a good reason for it: although he owned all kinds of spiders, it was those big hairy monsters that made the biggest impression on the kids. Besides, the title was already taken by a certain other webslinger.

We all have that one thing, that singular idiosyncrasy which serves as a unique point of definition of a personality; sure, we all go through phases, ephemeral stretches of time that are notable for the execution of all sorts of idiosyncrasies that are merely overhyped, trite examples of dumb histrionics ... Darius Williams went through such periods: one time, he was a rock 'n' roll drummer hellbent on stadium superstardom; another time, he was fascinated with molecular genetics and wanted to go to college for the express purpose of curing AIDS by learning the craft of Watson/Crick; at yet another time, he deemed theology his ultimate calling, daring himself to give it all up as Jesus was wont to do and mission the world into redemption and salvation. Times, times, times; all transient, all the opposite of everlasting. There are some who can do many things somewhat well (and there are very, very few who can do many things extremely well), but Darius Williams—like just about all of the human population—was an able practitioner of hardly anything. Except for one thing, one thing he did well, with accuracy, precision, and- it was undeniable, though odd for many to accept—a generous helping of love...

He could breed spiders.

Propagating generation after generation of arachnid lifeforms was what he was best at, what he was happiest doing. Some people had green thumbs; his opposable digit was cocooned in soft, tough silk. The former grew vegetation, the latter grew eight-legged invertebrates ... there had to be some symmetry somewhere in the mix, perhaps. But Williams—the Tarantula Man—began his hobby quite late, around the age of 29. He was burnt out on life: after all the college classes, after all the schemes and dreams, after all the heartache he had caused his parents (his parents were greatly disappointed in their one and only child; they had such high hopes for him, they were sincere in their collective belief that he was intelligent and filled with so much promise and potential, they truly were certain he would outpace his father's career as a laborer, they never had a second thought that his life would amount to anything other than blissful success, first in the area of employment, then in the area of matrimony and family ties; but their hopes slowly degenerated and recessed year after year as they watched him die on the vine and not follow through on his educational opportunities ... they watched as his science degree turned sour and fretted with the facts before them that their son was not going to wind up a millionaire by age 30 and be contentedly married with two children and own a house with a three-car garage located in the tony western section of the city ... they never made mention of any of this, neither his mother nor his father, but he could sense their hurt disappointment by the lack of things he used to take for granted, such as long talks with his father about the future during prolonged joyrides in the family vehicle and similar discussions with his mother out in the small child-friendly yard they worked so hard to give him; it stung them so much to see him trudge off to work every day, careful to take his nametag and smock with him lest he get a browbeating from one of the managers at his retail job, managers who were younger and not as educated as he; he hated his job immensely, but he hated the intellectual tears he knew they wanted to cry for their son who had been passed over by all that life could offer), he was burnt out on life, so burnt out that he desperately wanted to find a hobby, a hobby that could offer ample distraction from the day-in/day-out monotony of his existence.

He found it in the spiders, and it was quite a contradiction from the way he had lived all his life: namely, in dread fear of the creepy crawlies. He hated—he loathed—spiders. Like a lot, if not most, people, he couldn't stand to be around them. He detested with complete surety the tiniest thought of one of their kind making contact with his skin. He wasn't sure why. After all, nothing else made him fearful: cockroaches, centipedes, rats, snakes, scorpions, nothing else frightened him. But ... spiders ... now that was a whole different ballgame. Altogether. What was it about them? Why he was so scared? What power did they hold?

What was their secret?

One day, not long after his burning out on life (he imagined himself to be a patch of yellow, dead grass that hadn't received so much as a drop of water for a millennia), he decided to confront this blood-pressure-raising fear of his once and for all; he figured that'd be one hell of a distraction. He formed an idea: he'd go down to the mall pet shop and ask to handle the tarantula. The formation of the idea was more easy, more simple than the practical application; it had taken him no less than fifty tries (over a three-month period) to finally work up the guts and chase away the sweats and actually go and do it. But, that one day did eventually arrive, and ... he did it; he held a tarantula in his dripping palms (which were dripping so much the clerk was staring at him slackjawed and with quite a bit of fear that the spider was going to slip to the floor, its delicate exoskeleton to be unforgivingly pulverized).

That day was an epiphany, a renaissance. He fell in love with the fact that the fear that swam and diffused/dissolved through his blood offered ample diversion from the misery of his life (and the misery he caused those closest to him); the fear acted as a mediator, a point of equilibrium that shifted the thermodynamic equation of his life and rendered it more balanced, less painful, perhaps useful, utilitarian. All because of the spider. All because of the big spider in his hand.

And the rest, as they say...

Not long after the pet shop incident his dear mother passed away, still with the knowledge that her one and only child had realized neither his dreams nor hers. Not long after his mother died, his father moved on, still with the knowledge that his one and only child had realized neither his dreams nor his own. This hurt Darius, but there was nothing to be done about it. He inherited the house and a small sum of money (a small nest egg, really, nothing to write Buffett about). He also inherited something else: an opportunity to pursue his hobby in a big way. Darius had wanted to breed spiders after his encounter at the pet shop, but his parents had forbade him to bring one of the hairy things into their household (hell, they wouldn't even allow him to have an ant farm, no matter how much Darius protested that the structures were practically escape-proof). So, instead, he contented himself with interacting with the spiders he found in the yard and playing with them down at the pet shop where he had his fateful, life-changing encounter, which was a simple thing to do, since he acquired a part-time job there. But, with his parents now beginning their long sojourn/communion with the inner sanctum of the earth, he was free to build his menagerie dedicated to the proliferation of all kinds of arachnids.

Which he did. Successfully. Extremely so.

He dedicated his entire abode toward the interest of his spiders. He mostly raised a multitude of tarantula species, but there were all kinds of orb weaver spiders, crab spiders, jumping spiders, grass spiders ... you name it (well, this is probably an overexaggeration; after all, there are literally thousands of species of spiders, but you get the point). Every space was used to its utmost quotient of potential efficiency, and every possible container—glass jars, plastic jars, sundry Tupperwares, terrariums, boxes, Dixie cups, on and on—was used to house his geometrically growing collection. Was all of this legal? Did any local ordinances/zoning regulations come into effect? Who knows ... he made a reputation for himself in the small city, even appearing on local cable access now and then (he was one of the official Halloween guests of the popular Zones Of Evil program). No one seemed to mind. Most regarded him as a town curiosity, nothing more esteemed. But the kids on the block...

Ah! Totally different story.

To them, this guy was a cultural landmark. They loved him like they should have loved their mothers ... and they probably loved him a little more than that. And, to his credit, Darius Williams encouraged the kids to stop by his house after school and on weekends. He enjoyed their company and enjoyed sharing his creepy (subjectively to some, anyway) hobby with them. And none of the parents or town elders minded this older fellow spending so much time with their youth; they knew he was no perv, and they were right.

I myself can attest to this last statement: Darius Williams was nothing but a gentleman, kind and pure of heart/mind. He tried to help me one time; I'd like to tell you how. You see, I had—and still have—the very same problem he at one time possessed: arachnophobia. Awkward word. Awkward fear. I hated it. The mere thought of a spider crawling on my personage was tantamount to a mental version of an instantaneous diuretic. And for some reason, in some exotic fashion, I am convinced that arachnophobia is what has held me back in life. Don't ask me to explain it, I don't think anyone can, not psychologists/psychiatrists/brain physiologists, not any of them; there isn't a think-tank large enough to house all the scientists necessary to figure this one out. There just shouldn't be any connection at all; most people have some degree of phobia about spiders or other things, and most get along just fine. And I don't think I suffer any mental illness, either. It's just ... something about spiders, dude. I dream about them. They are the source of my nightmares. Vicious, viscous nightmares, in which I am surrounded on all sides by all manner of spiders and they are massing on me like a liquid wave, and they're not biting me, filling me with noxious stuff, no, it's just not that simple, not that easy to grasp; fear of death has already been documented and rationalized. I am afraid of spiders, period: no semicolon, no ellipsis, no dash, no parentheses (perhaps an exclamation point, I suppose). It doesn't matter if they can kill me or not. Just their being there is enough to destroy me. And I tell you this is what has held me back, what has given me failing grades in school and dead-end jobs and a life without a pretty pie-baking wife and a picket fence. Arachnophobia. Fear of spiders.

Somehow, my fear invades my subconscious like an evil army, hell-bent on establishing a cruel regime, an empire founded not on the pursuit of happiness but on an ambition to suppress any evidence of such, like the immune system is supposed to suppress foreign germs. It's like an autoimmune disease: this fear has sparked the synthesis of a system in my head that is slowly destroying/cannibalizing my emotional will; yes, I admit that I'm not blaming the fear altogether, I admit that I am partly to blame for not pulling myself together and facing up to it and exorcising the demon from the chambers of my psyche—but one's psyche is a wide place, cavernous, dotted with grand, grand canyons, so there's lots of places to hide (which means there are lots of places to haunt, too). I believe in the will of the individual, and my will has been compromised. By the spiders.

By the spiders.

I know, I know, it's hard to believe, difficult to swallow, painstaking to fathom. How can someone really place the blame for the negatives in their life on spiders? We're such a it's-not-my-fault-it's-the-other-guy's-so-sue society, I acknowledge as such, but still, I know that this fear has humiliated me to such a devious degree so as to be incapacitating on so many levels, materializing in one form after another: just blew the job interview, just failed the test, can't concentrate on the project at hand, screwed up the presentation, etc. You see, if I can't conquer the fear of the spiders, what right do I have of being a conqueror over anything else? Know what I mean? I hope so, because that's about the best I can word it.

Anyway, back to Darius ... like I was saying, this guy's a venerable deity worshipped by the kids. There were always a few kids in his home something like seventy-five or eighty percent of the time; seemed like that, anyhow. And I was one of them. I wasn't at first, but the pressure of my peers was too hot to handle; they went in and enjoyed the experience, so I had to follow suit because of the sociology involved. I'd go in and nearly defecate at the sights before me: everywhere, everywhere, spiders at all turns, in all corners, running around the entire household (after all, there was no way all of them were going to follow the rules and stay in their neat, nifty cages; this house probably had more spiders running wild than any house in all of North America ... I doubt a fly would have survived a nanosecond once it entered those infested walls); there were webs all over, with the creepy critters holding court in the centers, spiders were dangling on silk from the ceilings, oh dude, it was like the worst funhouse on earth, I have no idea how I survived these excursions. All of my buddies had a ball. They yucked it up with Darius to no end, while I just walked around like a zombie, trying to keep the tears of fear in and the asthmatic symptoms of terror at bay. Think about it: I'm deathly afraid of these things, and I'm in the den of the enemy; words can't describe the horror. Why did I go, you're wont to inquire? Mere peer pressure doesn't do it for you? Well, we all have a habit of forgetting what it was like, of not being able to empathize once we're out of certain situations. That's why parents are never sensitive to their kids whining about the bully at school or the fear of taking off one's shirt in gym class: they're parents, after all, not what they once were, which is what their offspring are now...the perspective is gone, as if it never was in the first instance. So, if you doubt the power of peer pressure, you're free to do so, but I tell you here and now that's the reason I went.

I endured visit after torturous visit; I'd do my best to ensure my buddies—my peers—saw a kid who was at one with the spiders surrounding him, who wasn't fearful even a speck of an iota. I fooled them pretty good, for the most part (there were a couple who would throw quizzical glances my way now and then), and it's not surprising, when you consider all of the attention spans in the giant, ominous eight-legged theater were fixated on the exotic things before them. So, my fear remained rather anonymous with my clan members.

Darius wasn't a clan member, though.

He saw/sensed what I was going through; he read my body language, my facial expressions, he saw the aversion in my eyes and the sweat beads on my forehead. He saw it all. But he didn't just see my fear. Believe it or not, he cared about it. Yes, he felt badly about it. He wanted to help me; he wanted to help me.

One day—it was the first day of summer vacation, in fact—the Tarantula Man was waiting outside on the sidewalk in front of his house. He didn't have any spiders on him, was totally clean, in fact (which was an amazing fact because if you recall what you've read so far you'll understand it was nearly inconceivable for Darius to get all the spiders off of his personage; many times, he'd said, he'd accidentally ingest a few of him during his meals, a righteously sickening concept). Considering that he was waiting for me, it made sense. I happened to be all alone, walking down the street; all my buddies (peers) were doing their various last-day-of-school runs (going over to this friend's house, going over to that friend's house, going to show relatives their final report cards and evidence of accolades ... it's funny how on the last day of school classmates tend to break up, as if it's instinctually known that summers and schoolyears are different worlds regulated by different temporal tides, and as such only your most extreme best of friends spend time in both worlds; Darius seemed to know this, and knew there'd be a good chance I'd be coming down the street alone, which was important for his purposes).

He was eyeballing me with intent as I made my way closer to him, shifting my backpack nervously. I knew something was up. He was waiting for me. I had a nervous fantasy just then: he was going to turn into a spider and spin a web around me and take me into his lair for a session of bloodsucking.

I began to sweat. I hoped this wasn't psychic foreshadowing.

"Hey, pal, how y'doing?" the Tarantula Man greeted me.

"Hey," I replied, in a tone and volume indicative of my probability of inheriting the earth someday.

"All alone?" Oh no—why did he ask this, I wondered with fright. Why was it important?

"Yeah ... sure," I stuttered like a goat.

"Come on in, pal. Need to talk to ya. Especially now, since you're all by yourself."

Uh-oh. But I just said sure and went into the Tarantula Man's house of spiders.

We ended up in his kitchen, and as usual, there were spiders everywhere, captive and free roaming. I don't know how I survived these sessions in there. I was sweating like crazy. He did something then he'd never do in the presence of my friends: he handed me a towel to dry off with. I was appreciative, to say the least, although I did have to shake off a couple of spiders before I applied the towel.

After I dried up, he said: "I want you to come downstairs with me ... to the basement." That pause—between the word 'me' and the phrase 'to the basement'—will probably stay with me for the remaining eternity of my mortality.

The basement—where he kept the really big specimens. The mygalomorphs, suborder Orthognatha...

...tarantulas.

Let me say this: these are the worst. So hideous. Repulsive. So scary. Terrifying. They make the surfaces of the imagination run with dread like melting candle wax, they make the testicles tighten and descend in the scrotal sac simultaneously, they make those prone to the phobia so wound up with frightened anxiety that they'd rather be shot in the head or have their head guillotined off at the neck; anything, ANYTHING, to be rid of exposure to these big entities of horror.

But I followed Darius silently and with no resistance to the basement. Something was up, I could feel it. I didn't know what its polarity was, positive/negative. I certainly hoped for the left side of the slash over the right, but I knew that anything from this point on could happen. Maybe there were things I didn't know about Darius. Maybe he was a perv. I'd hoped that was it, that was all. I desperately hoped my fantasy I'd had outside—about him actually being a spider—was a gross falsehood, a misunderstanding, an ignorant whim of a kid's stupid daydream machine. But I wasn't sure, especially as I heard the click/clack of each step I took as I descended down into the basement of the Tarantula Man.

The basement was similar to all the other basements on this street of the not-so-poor, not-so-rich: had some paneling here, some exposed cement walls there, was cool, dusty, had old artifacts of the past (e.g. yellow/deteriorating magazines/newspapers, dilapidated boardgame boxes which probably held incomplete games inside, IRS documents, school records, miscellaneous clothing, etc.) lying on the floor (a floor where some sections were covered over with a cheap rug while other sections, especially by the boiler and the bulkhead door, were exposed, showing off the primal dirt earth that existed there at construction time) or in boxes or on shelving, a splintery tool bench with a mishmash of tools/equipment/jars-full-of-nails/jars-full-of-screws/etc., you got it by now. Only I want you to forget all that because you've seen it all before, I'm sure, time after countless time; instead I want you to focus on the following:

...there were literally hundreds of containers of tarantulas in the basement, on every available space (Darius had constructed all kinds of new shelving and countertops over the timeline of his hobby's progression). All hairy and big. Most were static, as they usually were, just content to sit there in their little plastic/glass worlds, resting one/some of their octet of appendages against their rectangular boundaries ... but not all were dormant, not all were sitting there in sleepy states, perhaps dreaming of catching crickets. Some, in fact were feasting on the insects, and others were slowly crawling around their containers, perhaps getting a little exercise, to make sure they were in shape if they were ever granted furlough from their prisons.

If I were the judge, I would've sentenced them all to death.

The Tarantula Man looked around and beheld his kingdom, smiling queerly and brightly, with a nascent deluge of animation in his eyes I'd seen only that one time.

"These are my pride and joy, pal ... my pride and joy."

I swallowed heavily and wanted to be out of there on the double.

"The tarantulas." Like I needed to be informed of what he spoke of.

"Yeah. I ... I noticed," I stuttered.

He looked at me then, with a deep pit of perception.

"You're scared of them., aren't you?"

"I ... I'd think that was obvious."

"It sure is, pal; but I needed to hear you say it. Sort of a confirmation, if you please. Don't believe I'd heard you say it before."

I'd had no idea if I mentioned anything before or not; those spiders were driving me out of my mind. I was dizzy, faint.

"You know, I'm deathly afraid of spiders, too. You know that, don't you? I explained it to you guys one time, right?"

I suppose I nodded at that point, although I couldn't offer any surety for the supposition.

"In fact, the only reason I can stand these things is because of the complications in my life. I'm able to keep the fear at bay because other things tug at it, other things compete with my mind for its attention. You've studied physics by now, correct?"

"Sure," I barely spoke.

Darius smiled slightly. "It's like a vector diagram of various forces acting near a single point. Some vector in one direction with a specific magnitude, others vector in other directions with differing magnitudes. These positive and negative interactions can sometimes cause equilibriums to form. Equilibrium can sometimes be synonymous with serenity, especially in cases of the emotions. Wouldn't you agree? Do you understand what I'm saying at all?"

I actually did understand, of course—you know, because you've read what I'd written earlier about Darius and the incident at the pet shop and what followed. But I know he didn't think I understood, which is perfectly understandable, since I was so much his junior; after all, show me an adult without enough cynicism to doubt a youth's comprehension of matters philosophical and I'll write you a check for my entire bank account.

Anyway, Darius merely smiled a slight smile again, and went on. "So, you see, I'm at an equilibrium with the spiders, but that doesn't count for much, if you stop and think about it. After all, the fear is still there. It's just overshadowed, like a dominant allele masking the deleterious effects of a recessive gene. You don't win anything unless you conquer something directly. To conquer something directly, like a disease or an enemy, you have to have information which will help you in the cause. In the case of a disease, you need to know the causative agent and its mechanism of infiltration. In the case of the enemy, you have to know its various specs: types and numbers of weapons, where its routes of reinforcements are, training methods ... you dig?"

I dug, but it was getting harder and harder to dig, considering what was excavating my thought processes at the moment; I kept feeling the claustrophobic fear that the walls of the basement were being pushed steadily towards me, mashing me against the containers of tarantulas, containers that would burst open as they yielded to the pressures and released their angry, phantom contents.

"Well, guess what? I've discovered the causative agent of arachnophobia. I've uncovered the route cause of fear of spiders. I've discovered their secret."

Beat...

"The secret of the spiders."

All at once, Darius seemed very, very nervous. He swiftly looked around the basement, almost expecting something to occur, something dastardly, something dreadful. This made me extremely nervous as well. What was spooking him? What was scaring him?

He produced a handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his brow.

"I want you to come back tomorrow, about this time. I can't tell you why, not right now, but I'll tell you tomorrow. I'll tell you the secret. I'll tell you what I know, what I've found out. I'll tell you how I found out, too. Then we'll spread the knowledge, publish it. We'll cure arachnophobia for good. People don't need to be afraid, there's no reason to be afraid. The vast majority of spiders are harmless, but some people—like you, pal—can't even bear to look at them, even think about them. But I don't need any distractions anymore, I don't need any vectors flying in opposite directions. My serenity, my equilibrium, can come from me now, all me. I know the secret, and I'm going to tell you. Hear that? I'm going to tell you."

He was sweating bullets now, and I think when he said 'hear that,' he wasn't talking to me, I think he was talking to the spiders, and I think he was trying to be sarcastic, defiant.

And then, it happened...

...the spiders went mad.

There in the basement, the spiders went mad with anger, and, I'm willing to bet, with a liberal dose of hatred, as well. Remember I said most of the tarantulas were content to sit quietly in their cages, without any movement? Now every single one of them was flipping out, crawling around like crazy, jumping, leaping, falling on their backs and then righting themselves so they could jump and leap again. The bird spiders were shooting off clouds of their irritating hairs into the containers, you could hear it as a wheezing sound. Some began to spontaneously molt, intent on increasing their size. Some of the containers began to shift positions because of the biological energy being released. A subtle hissing sound could be heard all around. Here and there were a pair of spiders which did not participate in this odd rally but instead turned and faced each other in their side-by-side containers, motionless, silent, as if exchanging some form of communication, one which might be lower than ours but probably just as powerful.

"Okay. I think you should go now."

Darius preceded me up the stairs. Once in the kitchen, I could see that another rally was taking place up here as well, although it wasn't half as violent. I guess tarantulas are a bit more manly that way. All at once, some of the loose spiders that infested the house began to drop down from the ceiling courtesy their silk-synthesizing apparatus. There were dozens of them, then hundreds ... when it began to approach a thousand, I was mercifully out of the house, still brushing them off as Indiana Jones brushed the spiders off at the beginning of Raiders, although I wasn't as calm and nonchalant about it as he was.

I walked home in a daze. I looked back once at the house; to me, it was a haunted abode, a structure that should be razed and burned, in the pursuit of excising an unholy presence within the street.

I barely got any sleep during that night. What little I did manage was fleeting and fitful at best. It was better this way. Too much sleep would've lead to too much dreaming, which in turn would've led to too many nightmares. I hate nightmares, I don't need them. Who does?

Exhausted, fatigued, I arrived at Darius' house at the appointed time. There were no kids around, as they were still decompressing from the school year that had just faded into a nonexistent memory and were still plotting trajectories of fun for the vacation period. There would be time for the Tarantula Man in due course. But I didn't have such luxuries. I was going to learn the secret, the surreptitious would be made discreet, open. I'm not sure I wanted to know, but Darius had been a cool guy to me, so I figured I should oblige him. Still, I was afraid, deathly so. This wasn't fun, and I should be having fun: school's out, I don't have to go through all the permutations of self-conscious disaster one must go through when one is in the clutches of teachers and classmates ... what gives?

What I found in the Tarantula Man's house wasn't fun at all. To say the least. The very least.

I knocked on his door and received no answer. I rang his bell and received no answer. I called his name and received no answer. I did other things.

I received no answer.

I was beginning to feel happy, because I had every right at that point to just leave and be on my way; I'd held my end of the bargain, after all. But I couldn't do such a thing. Something was wrong. I couldn't have known that, of course, I'm not going to say I have a sixth sense, but something at least seemed wrong. So I proceeded on a course of action I never thought I'd proceed on.

I decided to enter the house.

I knew it was unlocked; Darius was like that. I crossed the threshold and stood there for a moment, trembling with anticipation, exhilaration, fascination: with imagination, in other words, and let me tell you, it was of the dark sort. As black as an evil, polluted pool. My mind was racing to keep up with what I imagined I'd find if I went further into the house. I was stymied, crippled even, I didn't want to go further, I wanted to do a 180 on my heels and escape this den of phobias. I didn't, though. I finally broke free of my mental captivity and walked into the kitchen. Immediately, I was struck by something.

There were no spiders.

None at all.

Nada.

Zilch ... zero.

This fact permeated my faculties slowly but surely. At first, it was a huge relief, for obvious reasons. But, suddenly, it became a unique source of disconcerting feelings, because it didn't add up, didn't make sense, shouldn't have been like this...there should have been spiders, all over the place, on the walls, on the drapes, on the tables, on the ceiling, in the containers, the cups, the tanks, the webs in the corners. There wasn't one to be found. All the tanks, containers, cups were empty; so were the webs in the corners. Some of the glass aquariums were actually shattered. Some of the Dixie cups were overturned. Some of the plastic containers seemed to have been eaten or clawed through.

I needed to scream, but there just wasn't enough air.

The cellar door was open; silence came at me from the threshold like a suffocating tidal wave. I saw what I had to do.

I descended to the cellar.

There were no spiders here, either. All of the habitats were empty, with some of the same escape routes apparent, the smashed glass, and so forth. There was something in the corner, though, a form, lying prostrate on the ground.

My heart became heavy and suddenly sank.

I approached the shape on the cellar floor. I reached it. I stood over it. I smelled it.

I vomited.

It was Darius.

Darius Williams.

The Tarantula Man.

His flesh was mostly gone, but there was enough left for me to see the multitudes of bite marks where the fangs penetrated. He was totally naked, as the clothing was somehow consumed as well. What was left was a misshapen skeleton in a pseudofetal position, which was ironic since there was nothing of birth about it.

The cadaver was totally dried out, a horrible husk of anatomy that used to have blood plasma and other fluids fertilizing its channels; now, there was nothing. Everything was caved in. The face was the worst feature: the eyes were so sunken/recessed so as to be nearly nonexistent, the cheeks were drawn back so far that the entire dental structure was exposed, forming an inconceivable and indescribable rictus/grimace so as to be akin to a gruesome Halloween mask one might find at Spencer's gifts during season. It was the body of a concentration camp victim, one who had been obligatorily intimate with a holocaust.

Darius Williams had literally been sucked dry.

By the spiders. The rampaging spiders.

I ran up the stairs and out the house, vomiting all the way.

You wonder about the epilogue? Well, his body was eventually discovered after the stench started traveling to the neighbors' noses. Miraculously, no one had observed my connection to these events, so I wasn't hassled with questions by the fuzz. Which was advantageous, considering what I was going through.

I had it figured out. The spiders, they didn't want Darius to tell what made people afraid of them. It was their little bit of selective advantage, and they wanted to keep it that way. They liked that people feared them, it made things easy for them, and I suppose I can't blame them, since it's such an animalistic world out there. All of us need some special equipment.

But, many nights—which means most—I sit awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if the spiders are going to come for me, just to be sure the Tarantula Man didn't mention anything incriminating to me before I left his house that day. My doctor thinks my bedwetting is psychological, but it's not; anyone can see it's real. I have a real fear for my life. Spiders can be tenacious, and they can be treacherous, but mostly, they're protective. Of their secret.

I wonder what it is...

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