Latrodectus mactans

CW: Gore, body horror, self mutilation.

Tick-tock. Tick tock.

Anthony palms his tired eyes, glancing at the minute and hour hand of the wall clock pass by.

Tick-tock.

He readjusts his flexible desk lamp over his work space and pushes a pin next to the slender, sparsely furred leg of a dry spider specimen. The pin enters the styrofoam with a faint pop. Anthony gathers another small pinch of silver pins and drops them next to his workspace, then selects one and presses it against the underside of the spider leg, posing it to look like the spider is waving, then pops it into the foam.

“Paraphidippus aurantius. Emerald jumping spider. Seven to twelve millimeters long, possibly male.” Anthony’s lazy gaze falls on a small, empty terrarium. “Often kept as a display pet, non-venomous to humans.” He prattles on into his dictaphone, growing quieter as each sentence stumbles out of his mouth. His sluggish eyes take inventory of all of the spiders he has posed and prodded with over the last forty-seven hours. Hogna carolinensis, carolina wolf spider. Loxosceles reclusa, brown recluse. His most prized piece is a fairly large spider specimen that he could have never cultivated himself, and unfortunately had to purchase online to have the opportunity to pose it. Latrodectus mactans, the southern black widow. He cuts his recording equipment off, and his head lolls down to his desktop. The second he touches the worn mahogany, the television static in his mind shuts off completely.

Anthony stirs some time later, the strange feeling of an indistinct tickle on his arm rousing him. Half asleep, he brushes at his arm and feels something wriggle under his fingers. Gently pinching the sides of the unwanted bug, Anthony tosses it away from his body. Plip. Rubbing his eyes, Anthony makes out the amber silhouette of a small spider resting in the bottom of his glass of whiskey, its flailing legs slowing to either a drunken stumble or deadly drowning.

Paraphidippus aurantius. Emerald jumping spider. His head thwips down to the styrofoam, but only catches a glimpse of the metallic pins lodged into it. Anthony polishes the sleep from his eyes. The spider is back home, displayed between the sharp pins, frozen in a friendly greeting. He snatches his whiskey glass from the corner of his desk. On inspection, no jumping spider lay in the bottom of his glass. He stirs the amber alcohol with his finger, checks the bottom once again, and shoots what’s left down his throat. Sighing, Anthony stands up to crack his neck and back, pulls his stained white undershirt over his head, and slips his days-old slacks off. He stumbles awkwardly into the bathroom, half from sleep deprivation and half from the slight intoxication fuzzing his mind once again. He pulls a cold wash rag over his sunken face, brushes his teeth, and staggers back to his desk to flip off the lone desk light before settling under a thin, grey bedsheet and crashing quickly back into his repose.

Anthony eyes jolt open to his mindless right hand smacking and clawing at his ear. His fingertips brush a thin, wire-like appendage and clamp around it, harshly yanking at it, but whatever it is won’t come out without a fight. A sharp, searing pain forces Anthony out of his bed and to the ground on his knees. Burning tears welled up in his eyes, and with his left hand, he cups his temple, trying to calm what few nerves he has left. He squeezes his eyes shut and takes a sharp, deep breath in before jerking the spider out of his ear. Through blurry eyes, he makes out the glowing red hourglass on the spider's abdomen in the pale moonlight of his slit window. 

Latrodectus mactans. Southern black widow. One of many venomous species he collects and displays for eclectic buyers. Anthony rears back his arm and throws the spider against the far wall with a sickening splat. A blood curdling growl emanates from his throat and escapes from behind his teeth as his whole left temple and ear sear like someone had shoved a hot cattle prod into the side of his head and punctured his thin tympanic membrane. He vacuums his right hand to his ear, trying to coddle it, but suspiciously pulls it away when he feels the slick blood dripping through his fingers. 

Mindlessly, Anthony wipes his eyes clear and regains control of his jagged breathing to inspect his palm, staggering back to his feet to flip on his flimsy desk light. He plops down onto his aged wooden chair and poses his malleable desk light over his palm. As he studies his bloody hand, he detects a medium grittiness and light popping as his fingertips graze each other. He flips his magnifying glass down under the light and discovers hundreds of brown, infant spiders teeming on his bloody hand and in between his fingers. 

Anthony surges to his washroom sink, desperately rinsing and smacking the babies dead in the bowl under running water. He swipes at the spiders traipsing up his arm, drowning as many as he can in the pouring lukewarm water. A horrific thought clouds his mind for a split second. My ear. They’re coming from my ear!

Stricken with a white, hot sense of fear, Anthony rips open the mirror cabinet above the sink while tilting his head to the right, in hopes of finding a plastic pipette—something he typically keeps en masse for measuring aldehydes for wet specimens. He can’t tell for absolute sure if the skittering he hears is the tiny spiders emerging from their egg-y casts, or if fear and paranoia have gripped him with auditory hallucinations. His large, trembling hands knock over his various prescription medications, toothbrush and paste, and a precariously placed bin of cotton swabs in search of his stash. When he finally grabs ahold of one, Anthony rips it out of the cabinet with enough force to bring a glass shelf down and he winces when it shatters over his bare foot. He stumbles into the shower with his bleeding foot, ignoring it for now.

Anthony reaches his unstable hands up to grasp the shower head down from the wall and switches from his ‘shower’ spray to a jet-like spray and aims it in his right ear. As the rough stream irrigates his ear, a mephitic, purulent drainage seeps down the side of his face and hits the porcelain tub with a noise almost as sickening as the sight and smell of it. The mucous green pus splatters all over the interior of the tub, and in the well-lit bathroom, Anthony watches in horror as hundreds of black widowlings distribute themselves along the floor and sidewalls, into his dirty foot wounds and up his legs. 

Between the feeling of millions of spindly legs crawling up Anthony’s body and the sounds of constant, painful scratching in his ear, the thin wire pulls and snaps in his fragile mind. An inhuman, low-pitched chuckle erupts from his vocal cords in waves, starting as quiet as the spiders he works with, day in and day out. His legs start to fail and crumble underneath him, his damp, bare back squeaking against the shower wall as he grips his face between both of his hands. Anthony observes in real time as the last of his sane thoughts swirl away like the matter in the bottom of the tub swirls down the drain. The sound of racing water collides with the rising tide of his demented shrieking into a chorale accompanied by the percussion of his fingernails scraping the sides of his face and the heels of his feet pounding against the porcelain. The scratching passes from shallow to deep, from the sides of his face to midline as his eyes start to itch. 

No relief. Itch harder. It's behind my eyes. Why won’t it stop? “Paraphidippus aurantius, emerald jumping spider. Good pets. Hogna carolinensis, carolina wolf spider. Largest native wolf spider. Loxosceles reclusa, brown recluse. Six eyes, six eyes. Eyes. Eyes. Two eyes. My two eyes…” Anthony’s murmuring continues while he reaches into the blood, pus and water circling around him. His fingers fish out his little plastic pipette resting on top of the puddle of nastiness.

Anthony raises the pipette tip and hovers it in front of the outer canthus of his right eye. The tip squelches into the space between the eye and the socket, and he starts to scratch. Not enough. 

The tip deviates toward his pupil, ripping the thin conjunctiva and sclera, and tearing open his pupil and puncturing the lens to scratch his retina. Deeper.

Anthony rams the pipette deep into his socket, scrambling the tip like a whisk, chasing some relief from the prickling feeling of legs creeping over his eye and lower lid. His screams crescendo to a peak as the tip breaches further, breaking the sphenoid strut and throwing plastic, eye matter, and a thin bone shard deep into his brain. Anthony’s bloody face falls slack, his flailing arms and thrashing legs following suit. Half of his bisected eye splats on the edge of the tub next to him. With his last good eye and the rest of his consciousness, he catches a meager movement on the floor by the door.

Latrodectus mactans. Southern black widow. With their silk being six times stronger than steel, escaping from their web is near impossible.