Uninvited Visitors

Temple, Texas
July 19th, 2003
A Saturday . . .

Sweat rolled down Emily's forehead into her eyes, blurring her vision as she feverishly typed. "Damn, it's hot in here," she said aloud, wiping her stinging eyes with the cuff of her blouse.

The small oscillating fan clipped to the shelf above her computer desk was falling short of its intended purpose. Realizing she had the fan on low speed Emily flipped the dial to its highest setting and adjusted the flow of air directly toward her head. A cooling breeze immediately swept her face and lifted her short, dark hair from her damp, usually pale, but now heat-reddened cheeks. "There... that's better," she muttered, lifting her chin to allow the stream of air to dry her moist throat.

"I've got to make the manager fix the air-conditioner. This July heat is unbearable," she complained. Emily was more than ready to wring his bloody neck and refuse to pay rent until the air-conditioner and the torn, flapping window screen were repaired. Money, or the lack of it, was the only thing that would get his attention. Allowing herself another moment to enjoy the rhythmic flow of air over her face, Emily sighed and resumed her dutiful pounding of the computer keys.

As darkness descended, Emily's computer monitor provided the only light in her small kitchen. The overhead light, which only added to the stagnating heat and attracted moths and other night-flying insects, was off.

Emily was a neatness freak who detested bugs and clutter, in that order. Her apartment was Spartan in its simplicity, containing only those objects she really needed. The bare walls held no pictures or photographs because Emily considered them to be dust collectors. Besides, she didn't look at the walls for entertainment. She was her own entertainment. Emily collected nothing to clutter her life, with the exception of books. Reading and writing were her only passions.

Her living room reflected her simple tastes: a sofa with a few pillows, a rocking chair, two floor lamps, and three white bookcases purchased at a yard sale and filled to overflowing with her beloved books. She owned no television set that might distract her from writing. Although the living room was furnished, Emily rarely spent time there. She lived, for all intents and purposes, in the kitchen, creating her stories on-line.

She lived to write. Her every waking moment not spent performing routine chores or laboring mindlessly as a presser at a nearby dry cleaning establishment found her consumed by frantic typing or doing on-line research for facts pertinent to her most recent plot.

Emily frothed inside with stories to be written and told -- stories that were sometimes purchased by anthology publishers, providing her a nice second income. In fact, Emily's mind swirled with too many ideas. There never seemed to be enough time to write, eat, attend to her personal appearance and hygiene, and sleep. She chose to neglect the latter three. As a result, her always slim figure now bordered on skeletal, and her complexion became more wan with every passing day.

Emily Sorrels was wasting away.

In her private world of fantasy she became the beauty men fought over. She was the courageous hero, saving the day when others stood helpless. She could be the villain who readers loved to hate, or the vicious monster destroying half a city, leaving havoc in its wake. She could be anyone or anything in her stories.

Real life was boring -- too complicated by problems she could not solve or control. Her loneliness was self-imposed, as people demanded attention, and attention meant working to have a relationship. Any such attempt would steal time from her beloved fantasy world and thrust her into reality.

Emily sensed that she might be insane, wrapping herself in her own world of fiction to the exclusion of all else, but she had faked "normal" for so long she had no doubt she could continue. Obsession was a cruel task master, but one she willingly served.

A breeze, unimpeded by the torn screen (a ragged remnant left by the previous tenant), caused the white, lace kitchen curtain to billow inward over the chipped porcelain sink.

The torn screen was an open invitation to insects -- mostly flies, mosquitoes, moths, and the occasional roach. But the creature moving across the window ledge as Emily sat engrossed in her latest creation was no roach.

Eight black, hairy legs moved stealthily in unison, propelling the spread-hand sized, thick-bodied visitor over the sill and into the sink where it stood out in stark relief against the white porcelain even in the dim light cast by Emily's computer monitor.

Yawning, Emily stretched and arched her back, which ached from being slumped over the keyboard for hours. Two in the morning and she still had not completed her story. Rubbing her lower spine she rose stiffly from her chair, thinking a cup of tea might give her the boost she needed to continue writing.

She approached the sink with the intent of filling a cup with water and nuking it in the microwave when she saw the inky form of the tarantula, its two front legs seeming to wave at her.

A started "oh!" escaped her lips, and she backed up, nearly falling over a chair. "Where the hell did you come from!"

As though it knew Emily was addressing it, the spider quickly scuttled up and over the edge of the sink, scampered down the cabinet door, than leaped to the floor, and headed towards her.

The thing was too big to bash with her shoe, even had Emily been brave enough to get close enough to attempt such a foolhardy act. Eyes darting, Emily spied her broom leaning just within her small pantry. Edging toward the broom, while trying to keep one eye on the tarantula, Emily reached into the shadowy pantry and wrapped her fingers around the broom handle.

Something furry and horrible scampered across the back of her hand on its way up the handle.

Emily screeched and flung the broom away from her.

Shaking with revulsion, she whirled around to look back at the sink cabinet in time to see the spider disappear beneath the sink.

"My God! How many of these things are in here?"

Almost afraid to turn on the kitchen light, fearing she would find the room literally crawling with tarantulas, Emily reached out in the darkness to find the bone-colored, plastic switch. Her fingers felt the switch and just as she flicked the switch upward a furry leg caressed her finger. She reeled away, cradling her hand closely to her chest as the huge spider from the sink waved its front legs as if to say, "No, no, no. No touchy."

Eyes wide with terror, adrenaline pumping through her veins, Emily felt her chest tighten, her breathing become labored as her asthma reacted to her fear. She gulped air, trying to get more oxygen to her compressing lungs, only to feel her lips tingle with numbness and a swirling dizziness flow over her.

Realizing that her nebulizer rested on the table beside her bed, and knowing the last thing she wanted to do was fall unconscious in the spider-infested kitchen, Emily forced herself to move.

Two beady, ebony eyes watched her every motion from the light switch -- eyes seemingly manifesting a strange intelligence.

Cursing the manager for not repairing the screen, and knowing she needed to reach the relative safety of her bedroom and the nebulizer there, Emily made her move.

Staying as far from the spider as possible, she sprung toward the doorway -- just at the tarantula launched itself toward her. Emily screamed, drawing her arms close to her body, making as small a target as possible as the spider misjudged its leap and missed her by inches, landing with an ungraceful plop on the linoleum floor.

Momentarily stunned, a slight tremor shook the spider's thick body before it staggered drunkenly, then more rapidly in pursuit of Emily.

Ignoring her burning lungs and pounding heart, Emily ran.

The hallway seemed ten times as long as usual as Emily dashed toward her bedroom, the tarantula running, then jumping, to close the distance between them.

Emily made it into her bedroom and slammed the door closed as the spider leapt once more, thuding against the outside. Emily bolted to the night table and, retrieving the telephone and her nebulizer, returned to press her back to the door. After taking two quick sprays from the nebulizer to open her constricted airway she shakily dialed the landlord's number.

She did not see the spider's legs poking beneath the door as it tried to squeeze its fat body between the bottom of the door and the carpet. Frustrated, it lashed at the wood, making tiny scratching sounds that eventually captured Emily's attention.

The telephone continued to ring, unanswered, as she saw the furry legs attempting to inch under the door.
Terrified, she prayed Mr. Talbott would answer his telephone.

"H-hello?" a groggy voice finally responded.

"Mr. Talbott, this is Emily Sorrel in apartment 109-B. You need to get over here now!"

"What? It's, uh, two-thirty in the morning. What the hell..."

"The apartment is full of tarantulas!" Emily fairly screamed into the telephone. "Not a backed up toilet... tarantulas... , huge, aggressive tarantulas!"

"Ah, Jeez, again?" Talbott moaned.

Emily swallowed hard. "What do you mean 'again'?"

"The tenant before you had them, too."

"Well, I don't know what he did about them, but I'm locked in my bedroom scared to death," Emily said, taking another huff from the nebulizer.

Talbott coughed. "He left after he called me. Tore up the damned kitchen screen and never came back."

"Great! Well I'm certainly not leaving this room until you get here with some heavy duty bug spray and kill these damned things. I'll call the cops if I have to. I'll tell them you're running a prostitution ring or dealing drugs from here . . . whatever it takes to get their attention. You don't want your property management license revoked do you Mr. Talbott?" Emily threatened.

"I'm coming! I have to get my pants on and find the bug spray. So just hold on. Look, stay where you are...I have a master key. The one thing I don't need is you in the way while I spray poison everywhere. Give me five minutes..." Talbott promised, Emily's threat having lit a fire under his normally procrastinating butt.

Emily heard the click as he hung up.

Talbott hung up the phone and started pulling on his trousers, cursing under his breathe at being forced to deal with this issue so early in the morning. A sleepy voice behind him asked, "Where you going at this hour, Raymond?"

He explained briefly the problem to his wife of thirty years, Myra. Alarmed, Myra sat up in bed, clutching his arm. "Not those horrible spiders again? Honey, please be careful .. . you know they have venom in their bite, and with your allergies you can't be too careful. Take your antihistamine with you, okay?"

"I will, dear. Now go back to sleep and I'll be back soon." Talbott leaned over and kissed his sleepy wife's furrowed forehead and brushed a tendril of silver hair away from her eyes before leaving the room in search of the insect spray.

Emily sat on her bed with her feet tucked beneath her, her hearing attuned to the slightest sound. She imagined she heard dozens of spider feet skimming across the carpet, although her eyes told her otherwise, she had seen only two. The slight scratching sound on the other side of the door was all too real.

Having slept only two hours of the past thirty-six, and still suffering from the fatigue that always accompanied her asthma attacks, Emily leaned back against the headboard and stretched out in exhaustion. Her jeans, two sizes too large because of her weight loss, slipped down over her hips into an uncomfortable wad. She kicked them off, and lay there in only her T-shirt and panties, finally comfortable and much cooler. Emily thought she would hear Mr. Talbott's knock and have time to put her jeans back on. Yawning, she hoped that Mr. Talbott would arrive soon. She noticed, as her eyes drooped, then opened, then drooped again, that the faint scratching at the door had ceased. Sleep settled over her like a warm blanket, and Emily dreamed...

She was a child again, tucked safely in her bed. The comforter was decorated in bright colors with kittens in various playful poses. She felt the warm huddle of Muffy, her own kitten, curled against her thigh, and absentmindedly stroked its silken fur.

Disturbed from its slumber, Muffy tippy-toed higher, coming to rest in her favorite place -- the hollow between Emily's shoulder and neck.

"Hello? Miss Sorrell? I'm here. I brought the bug spray," Talbott called out, having let himself into Emily's dark apartment.

He flipped the light switch by the door, and the ceiling light illuminated the hall and living room, chasing away the shadows. He saw no arachnids to spritz with the can of spray he held tightly in his left hand. Thanks to Emily's sparsely furnished living room, there weren't many hiding places.

"Are you in the there, Miss Sorrell," Talbott asked, peeking around the corner into the kitchen.

The smaller of the two tarantulas didn't miss. It jumped from the top of the refrigerator on to Talbott's weathered neck, sunk its fangs, and injected acid-hot venom into Talbott's jugular vein.

Talbott, seared with pain, slapped the tarantula from his neck and fell back against the wall. The spider landed at his feet. "Sonuvabitch!" Talbott growled. He aimed the can and sluiced the spider thoroughly with the poison as it started to elongate and change in size. Talbott could not believe what he looked at.

The tarantula rolled itself into a tight ball and quivered as its respiratory system was destroyed. Its body, distorted by the shift in size and form. A tiny scream emitted before it died, sounding like...Mom!

Talbott badly shaken, thought he was having hallucenations. His own condition, rapidly deteriorating.

The venom, injected into a major vein, was already coursing through his entire body. Frantically fishing his antihistamine from his pocket, Talbott quickly sprayed it up his nostrils. But the allergic reaction had begun. Sweat popped out all over his body, and his head swam. His breath caught in his throat. He looked for a telephone, but saw none.

What he did see, to his horror, was the long, thick, furry leg dart through the open window. It wrapped around his waist and yanked him off his feet, wisking him forward. Talbott wasn't a big man, but still too large to fit through the small opening...until his spine snapped and he folded like a closed book. Two glaring, angry black eyes lit up as his body propelled through the window, straight into the awaiting maw.

His last thought, as he saw the huge fangs awaiting him was, "I need a bigger can of bug spray."

Only the sound of crunching bones and dead leaves being crushed beneath the female tarantula's feet as it dragged Talbott away, disturbed the quiet as dawn approached.

An hour later Emily was jolted awake by the telephone ringing on the night stand. She leaned over, stiff from the half-sitting position in which she had slept. Bleary-eyed and groggy, she fumbled the receiver to her ear. "Hello," she mumbled from a mouth seemingly filled with cotton.

"Is this Emily Sorrell?"

"Uh, yeah. Who's this?"

A distraught female voice answered. I'm Myra Talbott... Raymond's wife. He-he didn't come home last night. What time did he leave your place?"

Emily, still not fully awake, slowly remembered. Spiders. Talbott had never shown up -- meaning the spiders were still there!

"He never got here, Mrs. Talbott. Dammit! I'm still locked in my bedroom because of those spiders!"

"Oh, don't be angry with him, please. He did leave to go to your apartment. Something must have happened to him on the way. God! I have to call the police. I just know...." Myra Talbott wept softly.

"Mrs. Talbott? Hello? Are you there?"

"Yes, but I'm hanging up now to call the po-police," Myra Talbott sniffed.

"All right. Please let me know if you hear anything about Mr. Talbott, okay? But I'm going to see if the spiders are still here and, if they are, will you send a pest control company over?"

"I sure will, honey, after I call the police. Just let me know."

"Thanks Mrs. Talbott. Bye," Emily said, realizing that, as she leaned to hang up the telephone, Muffy was still sleeping on her shoulder. Without looking, she patted the cat's head.

At the same time she noticed that Muffy had no ears, she remembered her dream. A dream of her childhood. Muffy had been dead for years, so...what... was... she.... petting!

Slowly turning her head, she saw the now cat-size tarantula. Afraid to move, she carefully lowered her shoulder until the still spider fell from her onto the pillow, then she gently rolled off the bed, hoping, if the spider was asleep, it would stay asleep.

Breathing hard, she stood near her bedroom door looking at the spider on her bed. It was huge -- and it had slept with her for two hours -- without biting her. In fact, it snuggled!

As Emily watched, the tarantula moved. One leg stretched tentatively to where Emily had been and seemed to be feeling around for its sleeping companion. The scene struck Emily as comical to see that leg tap-tapping in one spot then another, searching for her. The gesture was somehow cute -- even affectionate.

The leg withdrew back, and suddenly the spider lifted up, totally alert. It turned from side to side as if wondering, "Where is she?"

Then the black eyes found her across the room.

Watching what happened next Emily decided that, indeed, she was insane. Her fantasy life must have taken over, because reality didn't allow for such things.

The spider's body, to a chorus of snaps, creaks, and crunches, grew longer, larger, twisting and changing as Emily, both terrified and fascinated watched it take the form of a man. A very naked man with black eyes.

Stunned, Emily backed up against her bedroom door, blindly feeling for the doorknob. Now she knew how he got in...if he could become larger... and take the form of a man...he could become smaller as well...small enough to glide under her door.

The black-haired, well-built man smiled. Then he jumped her.


Seven months later . . .

The cold winter kept Emily inside her apartment except for going to and from work. Her computer sat unused, moved to a corner of the living room, because writing was no longer her first love.

Twenty pounds heavier, her skin rosy with health, Emily shivered slightly as a cool draft washed over her shoulders. She sipped coffee while Herb tenderly rubbed her shoulders and bestowed a loving kiss on the nape of her neck before sliding a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy in front of her.

"Now, you eat every bite, Em. Expectant mommies need to eat for their babies," he said.

Smiling brightly at her tall, dark-haired companion, she dove into her meal. Talking around a mouthful of eggs she asked, "Honey... is Mom back yet from out of town?"

Herb watched his mate eat. "She'll be back around seven tonight."

"Is she going to expect dinner?" Emily asked, smiling slightly.

Herb spooned live crickets into his mouth from a cereal bowl, his dark eyes gleaming. "Ah, as a matter of fact, she did say she'd wait until she got here to eat. Maybe you could order out?" he said, an amused smile flickering at the corners of his mouth.

Emily finished her breakfast and went to the bedroom telephone. She started to dial a number, paused, and shouted back to the kitchen. "Herb? Dominoes or Pizza Hut?"

"The ones from Pizza Hut are usually fatter," Herb answered, appearing at the bedroom door picking a cricket leg from his front teeth.

Emily grinned at Herb and nodded as she dialed the number, thinking, "Mom will eat well tonight."