It was nightfall and he was arriving there to put an end to a lengthy streak of disappointments, to a lair with no shadows and low ceilings where summer heat suffocates like it does in an old brothel. Tired of the day throws the keys on the kitchen counter…
Besides this depressing architecture, the all white decor of the house created one of those new age ambiences, the rough wooden furniture and the old couches and sofas, not particularly clean, not filthy either. In a few words the habitat adapted well to his needs.
He goes to the fridge to grab a drink when a fly fat and brown fly in front of his eyes, and strange webbings appear and dark spots move fast.
Could not really say if they were there or not, when he sees what looks like knotted scorpions stalking from some sort of fetal position. Afterward mosquitoes came, small winged beings landing shy on skin giving a hard sharp itch. Earthworms sprout from the hall plant pots. Cockroaches slithering over naked feet, kissing toes with their obscene mouths like little religious fanatics. He fights trying to shake the tickle of frantic antennas, with his own breath panting hot on the chest, and then there it was.
Crouching grotesque in a corner a spider the size of a shoe…
Rubbing its body on the wall responding the contact with the stare of a fistful of sinister orbs, and it appears to be getting bigger. Then he gets distracted by cockroaches licking the cheeks to taste the salty flavor of fear. Slaps them off sickened, looks again and it’s gone… Doesn’t have a chance to understand what’s going on, the insects were not allowing a single moment, even to stop them from climbing up the calves.
He was retreating slowly, humiliated losing ground, cowering to the kitchen. An army followed and he takes the pants off to wield them as a weapon, flaking beetles and bugs and opening a path on the floor carpeted of murky shells and iridescent membranes.
Then his footsteps slip on the stairs and fells face-on screaming, as a living avalanche covers the arms, almost pulls down not letting him up and invading completely, until miraculously releases both hands and runs towards the bathroom in panic.
Locked in, he pulls the towels from the hanger, cleaning his body as fast as he can and throwing the cloths to the ravenous chasers to buy time, and then gasping at the sight of an abandoned cavernous crust of a spider that kept growing and growing…
Holding his temple imagines the size of the monster, feels an extended agony. Finding some courage mounts a last stand sealing every split under the door, his hands move like sentient beings in the closed quarter that he knew by heart. A mob of whispers rises from the shaft of the empty courtyard; it’s a tremor that causes him a deep feeling of abandon. With eyes closed prays to a god that never listens -Why would he now…?-
Outside a great weight swings, marking the hour with the grave sound of metallic lungs, he doesn’t wants to hear it and at the same time forces himself to be aware of it. Scrape debris from the forehead with wrists disgusted to touch his face. Suddenly all noises stop, it’s a mockery of silence; a nervous confusion starts as the light-bulb falls of its socket and to the mirror he spits an abominable word. Fear pours in acid sweat tempting the horde on the other side of the door -How many will they be…? – If opens, he would will uncover a gigantic blob of revolting plagues crunching into each other, a vibrant live flood ready to drown him, thousands of diminutive tongues, evil crawling fiends exploring the soft spots in the flesh. His eyelids are transparent; every blink flashes bright spots on the retinas and grey larvae floating on his sight -Maybe this horror it’s in my mind…- He thinks spinning on a schizophrenic carrousel. However, that comfort didn’t last.
Inside the globe on the ceiling, crickets scratch the plastic sphere with demon claws, sawing the weakened barriers of sanity. They play a song with its hairy limbs and he explodes in a scream, stretching to hit the lamp to the floor, stomping it in madness and next standing on the toilet, filling the holes above with tissue paper making the mortar out of saliva. But hundreds of curved soft antennae wails and whips reaching and touching the side of his fingers. In quiet whimpers they die squatted trenched in the shiver of a second. And suddenly a violent lightning strike his lower loins.
Every abdomen muscle tense like hemp strings from the esophagus to the stomach. Bites his lips choking the high pitched moan of a tortured man, as slim columns of ants begin to descend on an insignificant parade thru the very little cracks of the window frame. Moving to arms trying to get into the nose and the ears, as he hits his face to get rid of the ones penetrating into the eyes… The little spaces in the door yield and the worms are soon all over him, the earwigs with its useless pincers pinching on the armpits. He rips the rest of his clothes off, desperate gets into the shower and opens the stream full force. The bugs climb in masses defeating the resistance of water with the grasp of spiked extremities wet and repulsive in the neck. Thick centipedes slip from the clogging drain as the wires on the stomach tightens and feels like they are going to burst him like a ripe fruit.
He wants to scream but no sound comes out of the mouth, only a ten eyed monstrous visage and then the rest of an endless viscous thing. He is vomiting an enormous arachnid creature, hugging him with eight arms as it comes out, exploring and squeezing slowly in an abhorrent union of bodies… And he has no more strength to keep fighting it.
The rest of the carrion hungry insects renounce the attack and they become the nuptial bed and quiet spectators. With a cold cavity the spider grabs his sex, flaccid of fear and pain, because in each hump of the copula the spider stabs him in the belly with a poisonous sting, leaving him covered with bloodied infected green blisters and his back skinned raw from the rough touch of hirsute tarantula legs. His senses are already deafened from the constant insidious wheezing of the beast that reaches an orgasm in the ways of the praying mantis, biting his head off leaving the rest of the body dying twitching as a skull is crunched by big sharp jaws-
Far, far from that house and that cursed bathroom… In a square of green grass there is a girl, lying almost naked under a blue parasol of yellow flowers half covered with tehuana laces. The moon witnesses her scribbling little letters on the back of cards from a deck. Maybe she knows it or maybe she doesn’t, but is holding a tarot deck of cards.
Not sure of what she is writing is throwing the draft messages into a small plate lit with charcoal and incense. And high, very high there is a branch with a wretched harpy devouring a rat as unseen little drops of blood are falling into her bonfire.
-I want you… and I love you- She scripts on the back of the card called “The Devil” tempting a terrible fate, smiling and thinking about her prince resting his long day in the interior reflection of white walls. For some reason she doubts as she stare that innocent love declaration as if it was an old photograph capturing an old remembrance.
That’s why she doesn’t notices the deformed chunk of wood in the flames, shaped like a rotten doll, like some sort of pagan idol… but it’s neither.
In fact what burns in the fire is the dry mummified cadaver of a loving spider.