The Visitor in the Shower

Andrea Simmons undressed and scrutinized her reflection in the full length bathroom mirror. She turned around, looked over her shoulder, and frowned. She looked over the other shoulder. Reaching back, she lifted her buttocks an inch and let them fall back into gravity’s cruel embrace.

I’ve got to get back to the gym, she thought. Not right now, though. Right now it was going on six-forty-five, and if she didn’t shake her slightly-sagging ass she was going to be late for work.

She threw the shower curtain aside and turned both faucets. She stepped into the hot jet of water and reached for the shampoo. The water felt invigorating, and Andrea could feel herself throwing off the last after-effects of sleep. She lathered her hair and rinsed, her eyes closed against the rush of soapy water.

Her thoughts turned once again to Rusty, her daughter’s hamster. The rodent (who she saw more often than she did her daughter, Rachel) lived with her full time, her daughter part. Last night the animal had managed to escape its habitat somehow, and Andrea knew that Rachel was going to be bitterly disappointed. Well, she’d have to put that in the file labeled “nothing I can do right now.” for the time being. Next to the folder labeled “sagging butts”, perhaps...

She turned to face the showerhead, meaning to soap and, if necessary, run a razor across her armpits. As she did, she looked up and to the left…

...and froze.

Watching her from a webbed perch in the top left corner of the shower, in the space between the top of the shower curtain rod and the gloss-white ceiling, was a nightmare.

There were probably larger spiders in the world, on distant continents in countries whose names Andrea wouldn’t recognize if she heard them, but this interloper was the certainly the largest she’d ever seen, and by several orders of magnitude. Its hairy, bristling body alone was the size of a novelty-sized football, and its abdomen was obviously engorged.

My God, she thought, Rusty…

Of course the idea that a spider, even a tarantula, could have eaten her daughter’s favorite pet seemed ridiculous to Andrea, even now as she stood in terrified awe of the thing.

But it did… She felt the certainty of it, the truth of it. It actually did…

Andrea had backed herself into the far corner of the shower. It was downright stupid, she knew, to think that the disgusting arachnid would actually lunge at her- still she planned on making a hasty exit. She dared take her eyes from the spider for just a second, and felt her breath catch in her throat. In her haste, she’d neglected to close the shower curtain.

In the brief time she’d been washing and rinsing her hair, the monster had woven her a new one.

The words that’s impossible spilled up into her mouth but never made it past her lips. A whimper escaped instead, small and frightened.

She backed further into the corner, the cold tile of the shower walls sending gooseflesh up her back and neck. Her face was flush, and she was perspiring. The two fronts met somewhere in her middle, creating a storm-front of nausea which she fought to keep under control.

Okay, okay...get ahold of yourself. You’re dreaming. You dreamed that you woke up but you’re STILL ASLEEP…

She wanted to believe that- with every fiber of her being she did. It wasn’t the truth, though. She knew that as surely as she knew that the monstrous spider that had invaded her shower had eaten her daughter’s hamster.

The jet of water was cooling now, but Andrea dared not turn it off. Just now everything seemed to be in a sort of stasis- the spider held his ground and she hers, and neither had moved an inch. She feared that altering the situation in any way might affect that fragile peace.

Webs, she knew, took time for spiders to build. She could remember getting high in college and watching a small but determined spider create a geometrically pleasing reality spun from its own neural fibers. It had been a slow, and hypnotizing process.

She tried to imagine how the demon in her shower had managed the web he’d spun in so short a period of time. The speed of the thing would have to be incredible.

Andrea pressed her bare back a bit harder against the linoleum.

The water was cold now, going from uncomfortable to unpleasant. Twenty minutes, she guessed, had passed since she’d spotted her visitor. She was shivering, her body racked with goosebumps. Her nipples were sore, cold gemstones perched at the swell of each breast.

There was only one possible course of action, Andrea realized. She would reach out and turn off the water (and hope that the movement and change of atmosphere didn’t incite the spider to action) and then run headlong, naked and wet, through the impressive web the creature had spun.

Warily, she eyed the densely-woven curtain of spider-silk. Would she be able to run through it? There was no reason to think that she wouldn’t- but then might not this super-spider have some sort of super-web? She imagined herself stuck to the fibrous membrane like a fly on paper and shivered even harder.

She couldn’t take anymore. Reaching out with one badly shaking arm she moved to turn off the shower...and had an idea. She snatched the removable shower-head from its bracket on the wall and aimed the icy spray at the web’s center.

The spider reacted, she was sure of that. Whether or not it had actually moved, she was not as sure. She spared a glance at the web and wasn’t really surprised to see that the jet of water, which was considerable, had done nothing more than add glistening, reflective beads to the intricately woven organic fabric. The entire web bowed, just slightly, where the force of the beam hit it directly, but that was all.

Andrea felt a tear well in her eye. It broke and traced a wet path down her cheek. She reached out and turned both knobs violently to the off position; stood and let drops of cold water fall from her body. She eyed the spider, silently willing it not to move.

That was when it sprung.

A scream escaped her, then, shrill and blood-chilling. The disgusting thing landed on her right shoulder and bit. She screamed again and batted it away with one badly shaking hand. It landed on the shower floor with a chitinous rattle and scampered for the other side of the small, enclosed space.

Hyperventilating and crying, Andrea tried her best to press her naked flesh through the pores of the linoleum tiles. A sickly, unnatural heat radiated outward from where the monster had bitten her. The space inside the shower seemed to darken a shade, and suddenly her head and limbs felt heavy...incredibly, impossibly heavy...

Before she could register the horrific implications of this new development, her legs wobbled once, and then buckled at the knees. She felt her back sliding (and, in those places where the linoleum was still dry, dragging) down the wall. She landed on her tailbone with a wet thud that sent electric jolts of pain out into her extremities.

Through watering eyes, she saw the spider watching her. It crept forward.

Andrea tried to lift an arm to fend the creature off. She may as well have been trying to lift a railroad car. Her body was no longer accepting commands (or even suggestions, it seemed) from her mind.

The arachnid crawled, click-clicking its way across the wet, hard surface. It alighted upon her ankle. To Andrea’s horror, she could feel every touch of the spiders eight legs as they picked a careful path up her calf and onto her thigh. There, at the meaty area below the swell of the hips, it bit once more.

And then a different sensation; one of a gelatinous substance making contact with her skin, solidifying upon impact. The creatures forelegs worked furiously, scraping bloody ravines into the white meat of her thigh.

Rolling me...she realized, fighting to keep growing hysteria at bay, he’s rolling me into a cocoon, but I’m too heavy for him…
The pain from the spider’s repeated scraping at her thigh was white hot and insistent- and yet it was nothing compared to the pain of the knowledge that she herself would soon be a part of this abomination. Her life would sustain its own, and the thought made her feverish.

After what seemed an eternity, the spider gave up on trying to move its prey. Instead, it started working the web around Andrea. It made loop after loop around her feet and legs. She tried to imagine that she didn’t feel it crawling over and around her slack legs. The thing’s hard, bristling appendages poked at her upper thigh and buttocks (had it been mere minutes ago that her most immediate concern had been that her thirty-five year old ass was beginning to sag?) and other, even more intimate, places.

The spider continued its gruesome, unnatural work. Andrea, however, was no longer there. She was on a beach, watching the setting sun bleed stains of brilliant red and orange into a vast blue sky. She’d read, and had seen accounts on television, of people who’d withstood torture by mentally transporting themselves to another place. She was aware that she had managed something akin to this. There was no sense of accomplishment in the knowledge, though- Her mind hadn’t learned a new skill, after all, it had utilized a very old one. She hadn’t achieved this out-of-body experience through force of conscious will- it had been a necessary act of desperation, a last ditch effort of the mind to save itself from inevitable insanity. Or, she wondered, was this insanity? And at this point, did it matter, one way or the other?

There was a warm, salty breeze coming off of the ocean, and Andrea breathed of it deeply. Now and then the air would carry with it what felt like a handful of small seashells that would scurry across her arms, legs and midriff, as they blew past.

The sun seemed to be setting faster than was natural, and the brilliant lights in the sky were fading to lesser hues. It was as though the very life of this landscape was being drained from the inside. Andrea had a bittersweet feeling that the faintest touches of color would be the last to go.

A thought blossomed in her mind, a thought that originated in the mind of an Andrea far away, and under great duress.

Goodbye, Rachel. I’ll miss you, sweetheart…
John Kane/Oct 22 2016/Sound Beach, LI