Spiderkid Page 2

  “Right. It’s Marie. She’s been a wreck. She can’t sleep. All she can think about is you, and you stay away. Don’t you love her?”

  “But she hasn’t called me. I left my number. I wanted — ”

  “The way you snuck away . . . and that cold, impersonal note. Marie’s afraid that you’re not sure if you want to be with her anymore. If you’re going to toy with her . . . fuck. I don’t know whether to drag you back or scare you away.” I look down at his hands, and I see his fists tighten in frustration. “She admires you. She’s always wanted to be together with you again. But she was afraid that you’d moved on after that mess with your families and wouldn’t want her anymore. Her whole life has been upended. She needs you to be clear about what you want.”

  I meet his eyes, and I see how much he cares for her. Something breaks inside me; I know that I’m beginning to love him.

  We’ve got a bottle of wine going. The three of us are packing up my stuff; the process is neither efficient nor rapid. There’s a lot of laughter, kidding around, kissing, and groping.

  We began early Saturday morning. We finally get everything into boxes as the Sunday morning sun rises.

  We go out for breakfast, and then Sam leaves to get the rental truck, so we can move me into their apartment. Our apartment, Marie corrects me.

  Marie and Sam sit across from me on the floor of the living room. We’re all naked. I stare at the spiders tattooed all over their bodies. Between us, there’s a sealed clay urn decorated with a painting of a giant mesothele spider.

  It’s not quite dawn yet, and there are candles burning. Marie’s eyes are closed; she is chanting softly, almost humming. Sam stares hard into my eyes while he talks solemnly. I don’t want to be nervous, but I can’t help it.

  “God the Spider devoured the previous, dead universe, and then wove this universe into being. God has no name and no gender. Its memory lives on in degraded form in human folklore. Some peoples have not forgotten that Spider created the universe, and they gave God a name, made up stories based on their primordial memories but filtered through their cultures. Around the world Spider is worshipped as creator, in either male or female aspects: for the Akan of West Africa, Anansi Kokuroko is the spider god of creation; in the Congo, the name is Mebege; the Kiribati in the Pacific refer to the creator as Nareau the spider. In the Americas, the creator is remembered as Spider Woman: Koyangwuti to the Hopi, Sussistanako to the Pueblos, Teotihuacan to the Aztec. For comics fans, God has become a superhero called Spiderkid.”

  He cracks a smile, and I relax.

  I straighten my back, and I nod at Sam. I’m ready. He nods back.

  Marie is still humming.

  Sam leans forward and takes the lid off the urn. Marie’s mouth opens wide, and now she’s chanting a high note that conveys joy, anticipation, and awe.

  Two mesothele spiders crawl out of the urn toward Sam and Marie. They climb onto my lovers’ toes and move upward. The spiders reach Sam and Marie’s open mouths. Sam and Marie extend their tongues, and the spiders crawl onto them, then disappear down their throats.

  Sam is chanting, too, now.

  For a while nothing happens. Then Sam and Marie fall silent, their eyes bulge, and their bodies convulse.

  Legions of mesothele spiders file out from Sam and Marie’s tattoos. The primitive spiders crawl toward me, subsume my body.

  I feel their jaws dig into my flesh. The pain is delicious. I welcome the creator.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Claude Lalumière (lostpages.net) is the editor of eight anthologies, including Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic and the Aurora Award-nominated Tesseracts Twelve: New Novellas of Canadian Fantastic Fiction. He writes the Fantastic Fiction column for The Montreal Gazette. Claude is the co-creator, with artist Rupert Bottenberg, of Lost Myths (lostmyths.net).

  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  “Spiderkid” first appeared in Reflection’s Edge #22 (February 2007).