A Jar Of Baby Teeth

The smell of rotten wood reaches its arms out to me. If I breathe through my nose it burns my sinuses, if I breathe through my mouth, the taste makes me gag.

“It’s not safe, Kiren,” Momma used to say. “Better to stay home.”

Not like my father passed away on the kitchen floor, when Momma’s screams were heard down the line of identical houses.

            I find a broken window at the side of the house. Glass shards crunch underneath my boots as I approach. I roll my sleeves over my palms and hoist myself through.

            Inside is far darker than the summer day outside. Dirt and dust float around the air and fills my lungs. I cough into my elbow.

            I enter through a dingy kitchen. The doorway leads to a long, dark hallway. I can hardly see the floorboards ahead.

I slow down my steps and pause at pictures hung on the wall. One shows a dark skinned woman and her two kids. Their smiles so large that it can’t be real.

Momma’s rants about the abandoned house at the end of the meadow, right before the woods forever engrained in my mind.

            “What are you doing in my house?”  

            I gasp and stumble away from the picture. A woman stands farther down the hallway. She’s the daughter from the picture. Much older, getting close to her last years at least. How did she get here?

            “You’re—“

            “Have you seen my dad?” the woman interrupts. “I can’t find him.” She hobbles towards me. Eyes glazed over, irises moving rapidly from left to right.

            I take several steps back.  “I—I don’t know.” Ahead, the front door is boarded shut. I turn and take off to the kitchen. Not sure why my blood pulses through my veins with a burning heat. My fourteen-year-old body can take a woman of her age.

            The woman appears ahead. Her white hair sticks out at all angles as she peers down at me.

“I don’t know,” I say, “but… I’ll help you.”

            The woman cocks her head. “You will?”      

            I nod. “Yeah, just tell me what to do.”
            The woman shakes her head. “You can’t do anything. I’ve already done enough, just need to finish…” She paces between the entryway of the kitchen and the wall. “I have to find him.”

            “What happened to your family?” I ask.

            The woman waves her hand my way. “They’re dead. He just got away.”

            The inside of my throat swells. My pulse throbs against my temple. “What’s your name?”

            The woman still stands in the way of my exit. Her hand shakes as she brushes a stray hair from her eyes. “Charlotte.”

I incline my head. Momma’s rants finally start to become useful. Charlotte Brandish, a seventeen-year-old killer. Her father survived, escaping through her own bedroom window.

“Where’s your bedroom, Charlotte?”

            “Down the hall.”

            “I’ll look for him there,” I say.

            “Good idea!” Charlotte calls behind me.

            Pink paint covers the bedroom walls. Its faded from time. The bed, neatly made with a wooden box at the foot. Wood splinters off of it. Hinges creak as I lift the lid.

            Inside lays a jar of baby teeth, a class ring, and a pearl necklace. Dried out art supplies fill the rest of the space.

I run a finger over a paintbrush. Its bristles prick my skin. These things kept her in her room and away from the memories that refused to move on.

            “Don’t touch that!”

             I jump, the box falls from my hands and smashes at my feet.

            Charlotte screams. She falls to her knees and hugs the pile onto her lap. Her bones creak and pop.

            I stand still, even my trembling knees pause.

Charlotte’s back stiffens. She glares up at me, tears stream down her cheeks. “What did you do?” She pulls herself up, and the box’s contents clatter to the floor.

            She shoves my shoulders. I wave my arms out to catch myself. My wrist hits the bedside table hard. I wince and yank myself away from her.

            Charlotte screams and charges.

            I scream right back as I throw myself out her bedroom window. I continue to scream through the meadow all the way to my back porch.

As I climb my porch steps Charlotte’s cries still reach me. I slam my back door.

I lean against the window and stare out at the abandoned house. It stares back at me.

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Inspiration for my Unholy Trinity Drabbles coincided with the arrival of a trio of large Wolf Spiders. The duo that settled in a huge web in the corner of my front window were easy to eliminate. But the third hitched a ride into the house in a potted plant. Online research warned that the female spider carries her babies–numbering in the hundreds–on her back and they can hatch and hide in one’s residence. – Margo Rife 

Mommy Fearest

My babies are dying of thirst. No water source. If my midnight plan doesn’t work, my precious ones turn against me. Suck me dry. So, this human baby must save my spiderlings. 

We gave birth the same week. Our abdomens ripped open. 100 eggs vs one. 

The chubby pink spawn silently sleeps. My babies’ venom will swiftly liquefy its internal organs. I descend on a silken thread to land on its soft belly and bite. The pink blob screams. Drops of salty liquid stream from its gelatinous blue orbs. 

Hop off your mama and drink, my babies. Bite and drink. 

Spider to the Fly

“Won’t you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly.

Hey! Come inside my bar. You’re getting wet. 

What’s a lovely thing like you doing out on a night like this?

So he wove a subtle web.

Dante, get this poor creature a Night & Fog. Drink it, frail one.

Your eyes shine like diamonds. You tremble. Are you high?

Let’s lie you down. My sheets are fine and thin.

No need to help, Dante. She’s light as gauze.

He dragged her up his winding stair.

Hey, beautiful. Welcome to my den.

Frail One was never seen again.

In Memory of Kevin

Power Point presentation to CEO’s at Spencer Scientific Labs.

Click.  Decades of dedicated lab research

Click.  to create synthetic spider webs that are

Click. stronger than steel—tougher than Kevlar. 

Clink. No army can penetrate these giant structures. 

Click. Molecules unexpectedly morph into glue. The idea was to trap not enslave.

Click. Skeletal remains of the terrorist group El-Traleet. Isn’t that web stupendous?

Click. Wasting bodies of Venezuelan immigrants. The glistening is the glue.

Click. Fly-infested hanging goat carcasses in Iran. Webs are a work-in-progress.

Click. In Memory of Kevin our first intern. He looks peaceful hanging from that web.

I See the Lake. Part 2

Then they began to undress and the cry stuck in my throat. Each wore a shapeless dress, one I remember was bold green, and when they lifted them over their heads, there were no panties beneath. The girls tossed their clothes aside and were as bare as newborns.

Try understand. I’d never seen nude women other than the two-dimensional creatures that lived inside my magazines and even with the distance between us I could make out the happy circles around their nipples and fuzzy patches of hair, two brunettes and one fair.

Not surprising to say, but the flaming nail lost my attention, so it was by complete accident I realised it had disappeared. I scoured the surface but the lake had returned to glass, no trace of disturbance. Five decades of self-doubt was the price I paid for taking my eyes off that fire, but at the time I didn’t care. I was happy to say goodbye, felt a knot loosen in my chest once the flame was gone.

The surrounding rock megaphoned the girl’s voices. One was so close to the water I half expected the lake to jump out and swallow her.

“Don’t go in the water. Go back to your campsite.”

No wonder they didn’t hear me. I didn’t want to yell, didn’t want the water to hear me.

One of them whistled and ran in. I clasped both hands over my mouth and my scream turned to saliva in my palms. She fell forward and became a blurred mass of brown hair and pale skin under the surface. I held my breath as if I were underwater with her. When her head burst out, I thought the noise was a gurgled scream.

“Ah! That’s better,” she said.

I removed my hands.

The other two waded in holding hands, then paddled chin deep into the water, the ripples circled and then happily disappeared. I even heard a sigh of bliss as one of them massaged the lake into her scalp. Those girls expected pleasure and, yes, the water obeyed, the lake loved them. The fair haired girl splashed her friends and the water landed on their faces as rain, not bullets.

But it was the same lake. There was no great space between us, no divide. I scrunched my bleeding toe and released a fresh ripple strong enough to make my eyes run. My pain, mixed with the sound of their happiness, twisted me and an unsettled feeling burrowed deep. I still feel it now, stuck to me like tar on the lungs.

A new voice blasted out the trees, made me jump.

“Hay minx, what’ya doing? You said you’d wait for us.”

Two men weaved out from the drooping branches, one walking behind the other. They were both tall, their hair long like mine, one was topless and so thin I could count his ribs from the distance.

“Aw. Tex I’m sorry babe,” one of the girls called out. She stood up and the water coursed down her back and over the curve of her buttocks. “It’s too hot. Get in here already.”

Another girl waved her hand at the boys. “Charlie, this was a perfect idea. I feel so much better. You’re coming in too, right?”

“You know I am, sweetness, be patient,” said the man named Charlie.

The boys talked with low heads and lower voices and I wondered what they were discussing so seriously. I figured they were talking about the lake, felt like nothing else in the world existed except the damn lake. The girls hooted, beckoned them in with long leg strokes. The boys attempted to ignore them, which seemed like a superpower to my young mind.

“Fuck, Linda I’m coming alright,” said the skinny man, Tex.

Charlie gripped his shoulder and made a gesture that I took to mean ‘we’ll talk later’ and the two of them undressed down to their nothings.

I didn’t call out, not this time. Those two men strolled into the water without a flinch, without even a light bruise. I puffed out. I don’t know what I did wrong but seemed I was the only son-of-a-bitch bitten by the lake.

The men sank real slow and their obvious relief felt like a massive fuck you smack in my face. I stepped backwards, feeling ultimately finished with the lake – finished with the entire holiday – but kept watching. The first stars lit up on the navy blanket above me and I continued to play chicken with the growing darkness.

Tex swam up to the fair haired girl named Linda and wrapped his arm around her teeny waist. He kissed her mouth and then her neck, and I figured that’s what love must look like. He lifted her up in his arms mid kiss, and then pulled away with a grin.

“No, Tex don’t-”

Linda kicked too late. Tex tossed her sideways and dunked her head several times under the surface. She thrashed, a drowning lamb struggling against a hyena.

“Nah man, stop it,” Charlie said. Charlie walked through the water with a girl on his back, her wet arms draped over his chest. The lake parted against his step with such infuriating ease.

“Don’t disturb the spirit of the water. There’s life in water, you know that, and if you show it respect then your body will drink up the spirit. Show some respect.”

“Yeah, Tex,” said the girl on Charlie’s back. “But don’t actually drink the water.”

“Leslie, hush,” Charlie said and Leslie was quiet.

Tex nodded and floated on his back. The third girl rested her head on Tex’s feet, as though she could fall asleep. Poor Linda took Charlie’s hand and they swirled together, Leslie holding tight as his jet pack.

“A song?” said Linda.

Charlie kissed her hand and started to sing. It was a Beatles song, goes something like, ‘she’s well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane…’

His voice swarmed the forest and the five swimmers moved in drunken sways. The guy had a good voice, strong without that airy hiss of breathing between the words. Leslie slid off Charlie’s back with her eyes closed and her arms moved under the water below Charlie’s waist.

Charlie stopped singing. “Thank you baby, but don’t do that, not while we have someone watching.”

He pointed towards the rock shelves above him. At me. Every muscle in my body screamed.

Someone whistled. Tex turned to where Charlie pointed and stood up in the water, and all of a sudden he didn’t look so skinny. He was certainly bigger than me.

“Howdy,” Linda waved with both hands. Someone slapped her hands down, but I wasn’t watching to see who. I was climbing. I lurched up the rough stairs of boulders, ducking under branches as I hopped off the rock shelf. A bright pain radiated up my leg, the gash on my toe left a trail of bloody breadcrumbs. The rocks I’d skipped down not so long before I now scrambled to climb up. I never took a backwards glance of the lake and I’m mighty grateful I didn’t.

I reached the top of the sunken forest ledge, the opening between the trees lay dead ahead. That’s as far as I got. Tex caught me by the elbow and pushed me into the dry mud, I caught a rock with my face and grazed my cheek.

“You make yourself comfortable in the dirt, alright?” He yelled without volume. “Don’t move.”

I nodded and sank my head into mud. My t-shirt and pants lay on the rock shelf where I left them, and the sticks and snags prodded my bare chest. My heartbeat prodded right back.