The Women of the Cosmos

Did you know that number eight refers to chaos and destruction? — This was our eighth journey together. — Poetic justice? Coincidence? Irony? To say the trip was a fiasco is an understatement — disastrous.

I had no feelings of trepidation, no sense of impending doom when Zach trundled onto my driveway the morning of our excursion. I was excited — we were excited for our annual escape from the responsibilities that come with life. Just two guys searching for new adventures and making new discoveries; Tom and Jerry, Mario and Luigi, Scooby-doo and Shaggy. With no particular destination in mind and no time restrictions hindering us, we set out.

After about three hours of driving on the open highway, our jovial chitchat was replaced with hangry sneers, scoring some decent food became a priority. We spotted a billboard advertising all-you-can-eat pancakes, next exit. The moment we turned onto the off ramp, we could detect the aroma of grilled onions and smoky bacon wafting through the open windows of the van. The alluring smell came from Charlotte's Diner. We pulled into a parking space near the establishment, and before turning off the engine, Zach jested about the rumbling of the idling van barely being heard over our gurgling stomachs. I shoved the passengers’ door opened with my shoulder, nearly tumbling onto the asphalt. We strolled up the ramp to the glass doors.

A woman in a loose-fitting, violet dress directed us to sit wherever we pleased. We sauntered toward a booth near the window, Zach elbowing me in the ribs, alerting me to take note of our hostess’s beauty. Her collar pointed to a pin with the name Kenya embossed on it. I slid along the torn couch across the table from my friend. While we studied the menus, Kenya strolled over with a pot of coffee. We turned our cups upright as a gesture for her to pour the steaming java. She introduced herself, promising to return to take our orders then moseyed over to some customers sitting at the counter.

“You think she’s beautiful, right,” Zach asked.

I gave him a thumbs up and a smarmy grin.

“I kinda like the muumuu,” he said. — the way it flows over her chest like a waterfall over a cliff.”

Kenya was voluptuous. Come to think of it, all the young women I’ve seen around Sanctuary were quite curvaceous. I raised my eyebrows; I knew my cheeky friend had more to say.

“You just want to see what's in the shadows of that cliff, quite mysterious.”

I snorted and shook my head.

Kenya returned to our table and Zach scooched over, inviting her to have a seat. She accepted the offer, claiming sore feet. To her credit, the place was busy, so the excuse could have been genuine. Zach turned up the charm.

“So, what town are we in?”

She said we were in the town of Cosmos.

“Cosmos,” Zach repeated. Then, doing his best Captain Kirk impression, “Sounds like somewhere no man has gone before.”

Kenya rolled her eyes and wrestled back onto her feet, but before she was able to grab her order pad off the table, Zach snatched a crayon from the holder and drew a flower on the top sheet. Our waitress ripped off the paper and stuck it in her pocket. We ordered and, with a wink, Zach told Kenya to check back often. She giggled and sashayed toward the counter.

We ate, and on our way out of the diner, we lingered to check out a few flyers affixed to a cork board. A bright orange paper announced a bonfire to be held that evening at the town’s lake; “A celebration of Mother Nature,” below the words, a simple outline of a spider. Zach pulled the crayon out of his shirt pocket and doodled two eyes and a grin dripping with fangs on the silhouette. Kenya sidled up next to me. She swiped the crayon from between Zach’s fingers.

“Stealing crayons from children,” she quipped, then she added six more eyes to the illustration. “Eight eyes, eight legs, a creature in the form of the number eight. Did you know that the number eight refers to chaos and destruction?”

After some back-and-forth banter, Zach tore off a curling, perforated tab with the directions to the lake. We drove up and down the streets of Sanctuary that day, recording our skirmishes, adding impromptu commentary like amateur influencers. By the time we decided to make our appearance at the lake, the sun was setting in the West, and the sky had turned a vivid orange and a pinkish purple. The fragrance of damp, decaying organic matter hovered in the air, getting stronger as we approached the celebration. We looked around and spotted Kenya chatting with another woman, then stuffed a few dollars in a water jug before grabbing four beers from a cooler.

We ambled over to the girls. Zach handed a beer to Kenya, and I offered one to her friend. They were wearing shapeless dresses, so short that, when a breeze blew, we got a glimpse of the matching panties. We also noticed that the girls were wearing those plastic spider rings children get at Halloween time.

“Smells like my grandma’s dirt basement,” Zach announced.

“You smell the scent of Mother Nature,” Kenya answered before taking a swig of beer. I again took note of the spider ring on her index finger.

“Interesting ring you've got there,” I said.

“We are wearing them in honor of the celebration,” her friend said. “Spiders are considered to be the manifestations of Mother Nature, their spiral webs converge into a single point in the center, so the spider sitting in its web is the ultimate symbol of the center of the world or universe.”

Kenya shot a mischievous grin toward her friend. “Spiders are associated with femininity; they are the weavers of fate and magic, both strong feminine goddess traits. Did you know that in many spider species, the male only gets to have sex once, after which the female eats him?”

Zach, always ready with a wisecrack said, “I once dated a chick that bit my head off for taking her to a fast-food place on our first date.”

An awkward silence followed, and I offered to fetch more beers.

At some point during the evening, my foot sank into the muck causing me to lose my balance, so I grabbed onto a rotting dock post to steady myself. A spider crawled onto the back of my hand, startling me and I flailed clumsily. The ugly creeper dropped to the ground before scurrying away. Zach, in his merry state, was laughing like a hyena. I must’ve had too much to drink myself because his amusement made me angry, and I marched back to the car.

I sat in the driver’s seat glaring after Zach as he sauntered into the woods with Kenya. I shook my head and rolled my eyes while drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. Ten minutes elapsed and I was unable to simmer any longer, I was ready to leave, so I trudged into the thickets in search of Zach. Instead, I only found Kenya.

She was naked and she stared blankly ahead of her as if in meditation. Her breasts uncoiled like twisted pythons, revealing a large red blemish in the shape of an infinity symbol. The thick ropes of fatty flesh dangled limply beneath her armpits. Tubular sacs of blubbery tissue unfurled from her ample behind and swung like an untied belt from her waist down to her ankles. The four new appendages began to awaken and squirm like Medusa’s snakes. A total of eight extremities flanked her torso.

She rose onto the balls of her feet and began to topple forward. Instinctively, I lunged toward her with both arms outstretched, prepared to catch her. Dry leaves crunched beneath my sneakers, and she snapped her head my way as she crouched on all eight limbs. I turned on my heels and bolted back toward the car.

I gripped the door handle and froze; I knew that I couldn’t leave without Zach. Then I saw him stumble out from the brush taking his hand out of his pants as if adjusting himself, Kenya followed. She was fully clothed and grinning as if nothing was amiss. I had to convince Zach to leave with me, so I feigned a migraine, a common and frequent problem for me, and we sped off. I wanted to leave Sanctuary right then.

Zach insisted on finding a hotel and staying in the wretched town for a few days, so I told him everything I saw, from the fake breasts to the four writhing members. Just as I expected, he blamed the “hallucination” on my alcohol-induced mind and my unsettling encounter with the spider earlier. In the end, we compromised and found a nearby hotel suite, agreeing to leave Sanctuary in the morning.

Rather than lying awake in bed for the next five hours, I walked across the desolate highway to an all-night café. I embarked on a conversation with my server, a sweet woman, tall and slender, in her fifties I’d guess. I asked her if she knew Kenya. She shook her head but claimed that one of her five children might know her. I nursed two carafes of coffee until dawn.

Excited at the thought of leaving Sanctuary behind us, I burst into the hotel room at 5am. At first, I heard the slurping sounds as if someone were sucking on a corncob, but I didn’t think of it as being unusual; Zach had a reputation for waking up famished after a night of drinking while everyone else suffered with a hangover. I slammed the door with my foot and rounded the partition separating the bed from the kitchenette.

Kenya was balancing on eight extremities while she perched over Zach’s naked body, her mouth clamped onto his neck. I gagged, and she whipped her head in my direction nearly tearing out Zach’s throat. She hypnotized me with her spellbinding stare and sprang from the corpse on the bed, pinning me to the floor. I was face to face with that infamous Black Widow hourglass on her chest. I heard a pop and several clicks as her jawbones realigned. Blood streamed from the corners of her elongated grimace.

My fear was intense, and I pleaded for my life. She cackled and bowed closer to my ear. I could smell her sour, rancid breath as she spoke, “Your friend will nourish the children he planted in my womb, but I have another plan for you.”

The radiating pain of her fangs sinking into my neck was excruciating. Within seconds I became incapacitated. Then she pounced back onto the bed to resume her meal. I closed my eyes but was unable to block out the squelching, and guzzling sounds reverberating throughout the room as she consumed my friend’s insides.

*

Well, thanks for listening to my story. You were right, talking about what happened is healing. Zach and I shared many fabulous antics together and, in a morbid way, this last one was a suitable ending to our exploits. I mean, he made a habit out of lovinum and leavinum in almost every town we traveled through, and I just cheered him on. Our eighth adventure, — eight, —chaos and destruction, huh.

Oh shit, I think I hear Kenya’s triplets crying.

[Quiet laughter]

Please excuse my snicker, I was just thinking about Zach’s wisecracks. He would say that I’ll be a part of the children until they crap me out. After all, we aren’t really here to entertain the triplets, we both heard horrific screams from our former captive. It is well known that Black Widow spiderlings are born with cannibalistic desires. — Here come the cronies now.

“Unhand me you cowardice minions. — No, no, no, no! Please, stop! — I’m not ready to go yet, it's not my turn, she was here before me. I have a wife, children, —They'll be looking for me. Get the fuck off of me! — Helllp!

END