Spyder Threads by Craig Laurance Gidney

Author:Craig Laurance Gidney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

Behind the door was a set of metal stairs that went down. I couldn’t see the bottom, and there were no lights. The bony-sparkly man said, "Come on. He’s waiting." He held a flashlight in his hand, which he switched on. It did not illuminate anything. Then he went down the stairs, his footsteps echoing.

This was what I wanted. What I needed. I wanted to be beautiful, if only for one moment. To be bathed in the spotlight, adored by the crowd. I was unloved. Kicked out of my home at sixteen, not pretty enough or tall enough or pale enough to fit into gay culture. Queens can be vicious. I was called a midget, or Gary Coleman. But if I were outfitted in one of Spyder’s threads, I could transcend my defects. Be elevated and celebrated. That was worth whatever terrible thing that happened to other models, wasn’t it?

We went down and down, the flashlight’s beam bouncing against cinderblock. The flights of stairs seemed to be endless and it was dizzying. How far underground were we? It defied logic.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness to the point that the bony-sparkly man’s flashlight was unneeded. He did not remove his sunglasses, for some reason.

The smell of the SUV—bergamot and licorice—drifted up. And, at last, I could see the end of this descent.

The sub-sub-sub-basement was a chamber to the right of the column of stairs. I looked up, got Escher vibes at the interlaced metal mesh that I’d just come down. Was this some forgotten bunker or nuclear fallout shelter? The stairs were a tower that tunneled upward, leaving the surface world forever out of reach. I was tired, just thinking about going back up.

The driver gestured me to enter the chamber. I hesitated. The smell was so strong that I could almost see the haze of fumes. It was like a perfume factory on steroids.

I stepped into the chamber. Alone.

The walls of the room were concrete, hung with scattered capsule-shaped light sconces. The floor I stood upon was metal grating, like you would find in an abattoir. In the center of the room was a mound of dirt that was roughly in the shape of an anthill. But it wasn’t made of dirt at all. It was made of some substance that resembled puckered flesh. A pale violet mist trickled from the hill.

I crept toward this, against my better judgment, to get a better look—

"Don’t get too close," someone said. The voice came from within the pit.

I stepped back. Far back, almost to the chamber door.

A hand emerged from the pit. Followed by another hand. And another. And another.

Until a tall, thin man with too many appendages was up and out of the mound.

How tall was he?

How thin?

How many arms did he have? And how long were they?

I did not see a nose or mouth. Just tiny beadlike eyes that were black.

What I saw was incoherent and hard to look at. He was a blur of motion, with stick-like arms and legs, and a long, thin face.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.