Trembling With Fear 7-7-24

Stuck, by Kevin M. Folliard

While my boss enjoyed a honeymoon cruise with his third wife—a sappy millennial, half his age—I got stuck covering quarter end crunch. They island-hopped the Bahamas, while I met late-night deadlines for overseas clients. 

At half past midnight, I locked the office, packed my laptop, then as luck would have it, I got stuck in the elevator. The floor trembled, lights flickered off. The whole shaft swayed. Couldn’t have been more than a 3.0 on the Richter scale, but nevertheless, it knocked out power.

Wrapped in the blue glow of emergency lighting, I rested my aching back against the wall and flexed arthritic fingers. 

The perfect end to the least perfect week at my perfectly infuriating dead-end job.

After thirty minutes stuck between floors, the power hummed back on and off again, but during that five-minute surge, I managed to pry open the doors and climb onto the fourth-floor landing. Grease and grime stained my dress pants.

I descended seven flights of stairs to sub-basement C—where I’d stuck my car that morning—then crossed the cavernous underground parking complex. I cut across swaths of empty spaces, between hulking concrete pillars, toward my lonely blue Buick, which appeared bluer—sadder somehow in all that emergency light.

Then, I heard something.

Skritchy-scratchy noises. Shuffles. Scrapes. I glanced around. Not a single car but my own. Not a soul in sight.

I listened. The shuffling died away.

I put it out of my mind. It hadn’t been a big quake, but this complex was getting on in decades. There was likely already structural damage, and the tremor might have made it worse. In fact, the firm had signed to move to one of the new high-rises that had been stalled in construction for the past year.

I thought about all the exhausted concrete slabs above and below me, getting ready to quit their job holding up cars all day.

Best to leave before I got stuck under a pile of rubble. 

At least this late, I wouldn’t be stuck in construction traffic.

I started my car and began the nauseating spin up the centrally-located parking ramps—there, a slim shadow arched in sheaths of blue lighting. I braked and glanced around. Had something fallen? Whatever had moved past the ramp hadn’t made a sound.

I observed shady corners, draped between levels C and B.

Soft shuffling continued, followed by the thin plink-plink of gravel trickling on the roof of my car.

The shuffles grew louder. With every scrape, more rocks plinked my roof. In red brake lights, speckles of cement snowfall trailed my car. My heart picked up. Was the ceiling collapsing?

I sped up.

It hadn’t been that bad of a quake, had it?

Scratch. Scratch.

Shuffle.

My tires squealed around the corner as I reached ground level.

Scrape. Scrape. Scratch.

Rocks plopped in my rearview mirror. I rounded a row of pillars and accelerated toward the exit. 

Spindly shadows danced across the garage. Angular shapes flexed on either side of my car.

The hairs bristled on the back of my neck. Something’s above me, I thought. I hit the accelerator. Don’t stop to flash your parking badge. Gun it.

The orange arm of the automated parking gate glowed in my headlights, but so did something else. Strange blurry strands, barely visible in the shadowy garage.

The whole car jolted as I collided with an odd substance. The airbag burst. Sticky, clear fibers clung to my windshield. I floored the gas pedal. Tires squealed and scraped pavement. Smoke billowed. Burning rubber assaulted my nostrils, and I released the gas pedal. I’d hit some kind of strange translucent mess that now splattered the front of my car. 

The parking gate was less than ten feet away. I hit the gas again, and the back end of my car tilted up.

The shuffling overhead intensified. Whatever was above me now started scraping the roof. Thick, black stalks covered in sharp spiny hairs curled around my side windows. A pointed appendage bashed the windshield, leaving a firework of cracks.

“Holy hell!” I unbuckled my belt and tried to open the door—but it was stuck, the same, whitish-clear substance stretched across the door. I tried to roll down the window, but it wouldn’t budge. I squinted and noticed more of the stuff, faintly glimmering in blue light. Dozens of strands cut to and from edges of the parking garage, strung between concrete columns.

The spiny stalks reached down again, and my car tilted right. I pushed around the airbag and crawled to the passenger door. It opened partway, but ghostly filaments held it back. A clawed appendage jabbed down, and I recoiled. But as soon as it pulled back, I pushed as hard as I could, created just enough of a gap, and rolled out of the car.

Some of that sticky substance mashed my jacket as I tried to stand. I was pinned. I glanced up and saw a bulbous monster, hanging upside down, swiping hulking tarantula legs. It was a spider—twice as big as my Buick—with a furry mustache of fangs and spinnerets oozing near-invisible web onto the back window. 

I shouted. Struggled. Wriggled free from my stuck coat, and crawled away from the car, carefully avoiding taut gossamers of web.

There was no way out to the street. The entire exit had been splattered in orb-shaped webbing, which from my new angle, shimmered between my car’s headlights and the moon. I was stuck in the garage, but if I ran I could make it back inside the building. 

The spider stopped wrapping my car. It gnashed its fangs, then aimed eight globular eyes in my direction.

I ran.

It skittered after me. 

I glanced back to see it scrambling upside down, mandibles twitching.

I nearly tripped, but managed to keep going. The space between me and the entrance to the first-floor lobby stretched into a small eternity. The spider was too fast. But if I zigged and zagged down the parking ramps, maybe I could disorient it.

Chunks of ceiling crumbled behind me as the spider clawed closer.

Scrape. Scrape. Scratch.

I wasn’t going to make it. 

I panicked. Changed directions. Angled down toward level B.

I cut across the ramp, felt the bristles of its leg brush my back. 

And I leapt. 

Maybe I could make it to the other ramp.

I hoped. I prayed.

But the gap was far wider than my hopes or prayers.

I screamed and plummeted down the center of the parking complex. 

Concrete rushed past me. 

Sub-basement D zoomed toward my face.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

My whole body jolted.

My stomach somersaulted as I wobbled in midair. I opened my eyes to find that I’d landed in a jangled mess of web at the bottom of the parking garage. Blue light illuminated cavernous holes in the walls, tunnels that surely led to the site of all that new construction. Enormous spiders had burrowed into the garage. 

On all sides, bristly legs shuffled and scraped. Their forelegs clawed and widened their newly formed passageways.

I tried to calm my breathing. To find a way to loosen the web’s gluey grip. Every movement forced the strands tighter around my limbs. I managed to flip onto my back, but the effort stuck my arms behind me. Above me, my pursuer’s eight eyes flickered like blue candles. It floated between the parking ramps on glimmering rope, venom dripping from the hooks of its fangs and splatting my chest, burning like acid. Skin blistered and seared under my poison-soaked shirt and tie.

Chemical burns filled my nostrils. I rasped for breath. Couldn’t even scream. There was no way out.

Spider legs splayed over me. Fangs hooked toward my heart. I was stuck. 

But only—I hoped—for a moment longer.