The Spider Inside (2 page)

“He fucking killed her?” Jim asked.

Two Step, one hand on his hips, the other working his St.
Christopher, nodded and tapped his feet. “Yeah man. She done. Out the game. For
good, man. Cuz the steak was cooked wrong. Ain’t that some shit?”

“Lance just left her there?” Cherry asked.

“Yeah I guess so, that’s what he said, you know, soon as
Chris got hold of her he bugged the fuck out man.”

“What a fucking coward! I cannot believe he just left her
there.”

“He’ll get his,” Jim said. “Karma.”

“Did the cops get him?” Cherry asked. She’d known Reanna;
how many times had she told her to get away from Chris?

“Who?” Two Step asked.

“Chris! Did the cops get him?”

“Oh, shit yes. Found him at the scene man. Strike three him.
And a murder rap? Mm, that boy away for
life
.”

“Good,” Cherry said. Still, poor Reanna...

Tattoo Nik came back in the room holding high over his head
the tattoo gun he’d been looking for. Before losing his shop for not paying the
rent on the building or his insurance, Tattoo Nik had been one of the top ten
tattooists in Los Angeles, at least according to the copy of
Tattoo Savage
he had been featured in. That issue had come out about a year ago, and things
for Nik seemed to collapse right after that. He still had a large sum of money
in the bank from a business loan he’d gotten to use to remodel, add a room to
hire a piercer, and that was what he lived on. He looked around his living room
and nodded to himself, set the gun on the arm of the couch, left the room, came
back with a little jar of ink and a couple towels, some antiseptic and some
rubbing alcohol.

He plugged the little gun in and sat back down. Cherry moved
closer to Jim as it was obvious Tattoo Nik was going to need a little extra
space for whatever it was he was going to do to himself.

“Can I get a bump?” he asked. Soup handed the mirror around
and Tattoo Nik fired home a bump about a fifth the size of the last line they’d
done. Cherry shrugged when he handed her the mirror and cut out one for
herself, which she did, then three more for Jim, Soup, and Two Step. Soon the
manic buzz of the tattoo gun joined the music and the conversation and
everything was just spin spin spin.

Jim had been spinning his whole life.

Jim’s first memory was that of his little brother’s funeral
when he was four years old. His little brother David had died of SIDS, had been
only six months old. Davey had been big for a six month old, Jim didn’t know
what he’d weighed or anything but he remembered his uncle saying that over and
over at the little party they held afterward. What was it called? The wake? The
reception?

“He was so big for a six month old,” Uncle Dave, the child’s
namesake, would say, and shake his head. “So healthy.”

But the first memory was not from the reception afterward,
it was of the actual funeral. He’d overheard a few people asking whether or not
the coffin would be open. Open Casket, they called it, in whispers. Jim hoped
not. He didn’t want to see his brother as a skeleton. The coffin was so small,
even to Jim. He could have practically lifted it himself. A tiny silver coffin
set upon a small table draped in black cloth and Davey was in there, not even
Davey but his skeleton, Jim thought at the time. He remembered being horrified
of the thought of that tiny skeleton. At that age he’d known nothing of
decomposition or embalming or anything, had only the vaguest notion of death.
On cartoons when something was dead, like on Scooby-Doo, when someone was
supposed to be dead they were just either a ghost or a skeleton. You couldn’t
keep a ghost in a coffin so it had to be the skeleton, right? He thought of it
grinning in the darkness.

At the end of the funeral the minister had asked if anyone
wanted to come up and say anything. Jim wanted to, he started to get up but his
mother had grabbed him like a woman clings to a railing if she’s hanging off a
cliff. She was shaking, breathing in his ear in hot, high-pitched breaths, the
breaths of panic, clutching him, her fingernails digging into his arms and
shoulders and he still had two small crescent-shaped scars on one arm from this
event.

“I wanna talk about Davey,” he’d said, and his mother
squeezed him tighter, starting to sob, to really lose it, squeezing, squeezing.
Then her hands dropped to her side, and she hung her head and let out a long, low
moan. Uncle Dave, who had been sitting next to Jim’s dad, picked Jim up and
carried him outside. Jim wanted to kick and scream but didn’t want to wake up
Davey’s skeleton.

Outside Uncle Dave let him go and Jim ran out into the
middle of the grass in front of the funeral home and with tears streaming down
his face he started to spin, faster and faster. Davey always used to laugh when
he did this. He spun faster and faster, his arms straight out yelling
“Helicopter, helicopter!” the way Davey had liked and he could hear Davey
laughing and Jim was crying and the world was a blur, the bottom half green the
top half the light blue of the sky and he spun faster, knowing what would
happen, needing it to happen, needing to go further than he ever had. He hit the
point where he always stopped, where it felt like his stomach was halfway up
his throat and he spun faster and faster.

Jim spun and spun until he fell over in the grass and threw
up all over his brand new suit, and he did it on purpose.

He always looked back and tried to remember exactly what it
was he’d wanted to say about his little brother. “I miss you and love you,” is
what he thought, but that wasn’t it exactly, that part of the memory was just
out of reach, like something from a dream. He remembered that green and blue
blur though, and since then he’d always seen a little bit of that blur in the
world. It was only when he was on meth and spinning again that he was moving
fast enough to catch up with the blur and see what it really was.

Jim would often think about what he wanted to say about
Davey and would end up eulogizing people he knew. He was not always the main
speaker of course, he was sometimes just someone that stood up at the end and
shared a story or a memory like he’d wanted so badly to do for his brother.

Except Cherry. He’d never been able to think about Cherry
being dead. He’d eulogized himself, his father, his own mother, all his closest
friends, but when he tried to think of Cherry dead he would feel dizzy and like
he was going to fall over in the grass and puke. All he knew was that she was
in a red coffin, because she’d told him once that was what she wanted. A red
coffin with pink lining and everyone can fuck off with the crying and have a
party, those were her exact words.

Jim looked to Soup.

To Michael John Carruthers, Jr.

He was so young, Lord, but he lived more in his few short
years than many have that were twice his age. We’re gathered here not to dwell
on the tragic end to our friend or the circumstances that led to it, but instead
to celebrate the young man we all knew...friend, brother, son. He may have made
his mistakes and we hope that now he is forgiven, but he always had a smile for
his friends, even when his teeth were black and stinking and falling out of his
head.

Sorry, Soup, Jim thought. Jesus, what a shitty thing to say
at a funeral.

Soup cut and chopped and scraped lines out of the little
pile and then pulled them back together only to cut and re-cut while Two Step
did his boogie, man could never sit still, could rarely stand to even be
sitting down when he was up like this, when he was on, bopping his head to the
music, his hands slapping out a rhythm on his legs or his stomach, his feet
tapping all of it working together to form one perfect and complicated sound,
one beat; dusty and low, just beneath the surface of everything else, beneath
the stereo or the television, beneath the conversation and the buzzing of the
tattoo gun and no one minded, no one asked him to stop because they were all
thrashing out that beat inside themselves, they all heard it, all the time, no
matter where they were or who they were with or even by themselves. Their ears
rung with the soft sounds of faraway bells and they heard the rhythm and it
wasn’t Two Step that had brought the rhythm into their lives, for tattoo Nik
had been hearing it since the first time he got high on speed as a twelve year
old.

Two Step was the one who brought it out though, united them
by letting them know that they were not alone, that they all heard this same
beat, all the time, all together.

“And he looks at me like I’m the fucking scum of the earth,”
Soup said, talking about the probation officer he was required to see. “But
without me this fucking asshole probably wouldn’t have a job, you know?”

“Of course he wouldn’t have a job,” Jim said.

“You think?” Soup asked.

“No way, man. No way. Society needs criminals, it feeds off
them. That’s why the justice system is so fucked up; they fucked it up that way
on purpose. The
goal
is recidivism. They want you to fuck up. They want
you to piss dirty or miss an appointment with your PO. You go to the joint way
over off Broadmoore, right?”

“Yeah,” Soup said.

“Why else would they assign you to a facility so far away?
Paz goes right up the fucking road from here, man. But what’s fucked up is he
lives over on the other side of town. Why would they send
him
over
here
and
you
over
there
? They make it as hard as they can on you, man.
If every junky and speed freak and pot head and yuppie-coker were to wake up
totally clean, tomorrow? If the dealers quit dealing and the cooks quit
cooking, if there was no theft or burglary or assault or rape or murder, if
someone came up with a way to actually cure a child molester, the country would
grind to a fucking halt. The police would be out of a job, and that goes from
the asshole meter-maid that writes parking tickets all the way up to the DEA
and the FBI and the ATF. Then you got all the people employed by them, the guys
in the motor pool, the secretaries, the tech guys, the union reps, the fucking
janitors, everyone that provides them with health care. And that’s just law
enforcement. No more judges or clerks or lawyers or PO’s or people to run the
halfway houses, no one to even answer a phone down where you piss-test at. Then
the counselors, legions of fucking counselors. They have fucking counselors for
just about everything. And what about the people that teach those counselors?
Entire education departments would be cut out of universities across the country.
This is millions of people unemployed, man. Think of all the people that make
police cars. Unemployed. Riot gear, tear gas, batons. The fucking Baton
Industry would collapse overnight. Shit, we make up like half the customer base
for cold medicine, man. If no one’s cooking it up, the bottom falls out. No
demand. All those people, laid off. So next time you smoke a bowl or roll dope
or bang one home, next time you fucking jaywalk, you hold your fucking head up
because this country runs off your sweat, man. You’re not a fucking scum bag.
You’re a national fucking treasure.”

Jim leaned back triumphantly, only half-believing about half
the shit he had spouted but once he got on a roll it was so hard to stop.
Something stopped. The buzzing? The buzzing from the tattoo gun stopped.

Jim looked over at Tattoo Nik’s arm and the realization of
the passage of time hit home for him. How long for him to do that? He could
tell from the redness and the beads of blood that it was all new, so how long
would it take for Nik to sit there and do that to himself. How much shit had
they done?

More importantly, how much did they have left?

“Get that camera, will you Jim?” Tattoo Nik asked, not
taking his eyes off his work. He hasn’t blinked. When did he last blink? Since
we’ve been here? He had to of. His eyes look like the eyes of a statue.

Jim grabbed a small digital camera off the bookshelf next to
him and turned it on.

“Give it to her,” Tattoo Nik said. “Stand up behind me kind
of. Get as much of the room as you can. And my hand. Make sure you get my
hand.”

Jim gave Cherry the camera and she stood on the couch using
his shoulder to steady herself. He held onto her leg behind the knee to keep
her steady. She looked down at Jim and smiled. She looks like a fallen angel,
Jim thought, and she looked back at the table and gasped.

As Jim looked at the drawing on the table, the fat and thin
twisting lines all coming together, Tattoo Nik slapped his hand down in the
only empty spot of un-inked wood on the surface of the table. He spread his
fingers just a little and the effect his perfect.

“Holy shit,” Jim said.

The music has stopped, either because it was supposed to or
because Two Step knew that it should. The room was silent.

The image hit Jim all at once. The smoke on the walls and
the book shelves and the television and the floor and the legs and surface of
the coffee table, all of it ran smooth and seamless onto the back of Tattoo
Nik’s hand and all the way up his arm where it began to spread and thin out and
finally disappeared about halfway up the bicep.

He did this freehand, Jim thought. All he did was put an
outline of his hand on the table, I’d swear he hasn’t put his hand down there
again to match it up, he’s just been going off with that gun, and there it is.

It looks as if the whole world is draining into his arm.

“Wow,” Cherry whispers and takes several pictures.

She sits down in a daze and no one can quite express the
profundity, the beauty of what has taken place. A zenith has been reached. They
had all been shooting toward this moment faster and faster, for more and more
waking hours at a time until time itself seemed not to matter, until there was
only On and Off, Enough and Needing More, Snorting or Copping and this had been
the goal all along and none of them had known it until now, with a single
consciousness, they share it, revel in it.

“This
means
something,” Two Step says and they all
get the reference and laugh and it was the perfect way to break that moment; it
was like an orgasm, a long orgasm after a much longer and slower buildup and it
had to end, if an orgasm went on and on forever it would drive you mad and they
knew this, sensed it without the need to speak it and wasn’t it always better
to end a moment with laughter than sorrow?

Soup passes the mirror around again and they talk about
Close
Encounters of the Third Kind
and has anyone ever been to Devil’s Tower and
then if anyone ever seen an alien, or a UFO.

“No but I saw a vampire once,” Tattoo Nik says. “Walking up
Crenshaw at about four in the morning I was on my home after scoring, you know,
enough to get me through the next couple days or whatever, and it was still a
few hours before dawn, this was in the winter months. December, I believe, and
I happened to look down an alley as I walked by it, no reason for it, I hadn’t
really looked down any other alley, it was just a simple, random thing, and at
the end of the alley I thought at first it was a couple, making out or
whatever, so I stopped, you know, just to see if she was gonna go down on the
guy right? I figure it’s four in the morning the girl’s gotta be a pro, in that
part a town? Come on. So I kind of hid behind the wall and leaned over and when
I really started watching, I could see that wasn’t what it was. First off the
guy must have been a good six inches taller than her, and built, too. I could
tell that from where I was, that he was just a big dude, and he was trying to
push her away, right? He had his arms on her shoulders and was trying to push
her away and at the same time pull away from her. For a second he did, he
jerked his head back and I saw this splash come out of his neck and the girl
just slammed him back against the wall and leaned in, pushed his head back so
far I thought his neck was gonna snap. He just, the life, you know? Went out of
him. He stopped fighting her, and when she was done, he just kind of fell
over.”

“What’d you do?” Cherry asked.

“Are you kidding me? I ran the fuck home and smoked up!”

“Speaking of which, guys...”Soup said.

“You’re fucking kidding me, man!” Two Step said, and stepped
forward to look at the mirror. “God damn!”

“You got any more, Nik?” Soup asked. “We got money, right
guys? Do you--”

“I told you on the phone,” Tattoo Nik said. “You guys bought
me out, and Gomez is on the re-up. I thought you were gonna try and score more
before you came over.”

“Man you never told us that shit!” Two Step said, glaring
down at Soup, who was turning a little red in the face.

“There’s no way we did all that,” Jim said. But he knew it
to be true, the burning in his nose, and the hot marble feeling in his eyes.
They’d been here for hours. His stomach was tight and shrunken, how long since
he’d eaten anything? His jaw was a long, slow ache from grinding his teeth.

Gotta cut that shit out, Jim thought. End up like Soup.

Jim also knew it was his turn to go out and score, and he
could tell by the way Soup and Two Step kept looking at him out of the corners
of their eyes that they knew it too, and were waiting for someone else to bring
it up.

“Never, fear, boys,” Cherry said. “I’m on the case.”

“You got something?” Soup asked.

“I’m on it. I made a couple calls before we came over. I
figured we’d run out eventually, right?”

Nice, they said. Cherry comes through in the clutch. In
overtime, they said. She smiled and only believed Jim. Two Step danced and sang
a poorly rhyming song about her foresight and genius. You’re an angel, they
told her, a queen, a goddess to be worshiped and here’s my cash and do you
think you could get me this much but don’t go through Lego cuz we’ve been
hearing some bad shit about him and what do you think it will run who will you
get it from, and…

How Long Until You’re Back?

“Depends on who’s driving,” Cherry said.

“I’m up, right?” Jim asked. Soup threw him the car keys and
that was answer enough.

Cherry stood and her spine cackled up and down her, sending
a fresh little rush of crank and some pleasant shivers through her. She pulled
Jim to his feet and handed him his sunglasses from her purse.

“Really?” Jim asked.

Cherry smiled. “It’s like noon, fool. Look at the clock.”

The windows had Venetian blinds, which were closed, had been
boarded up, and were then covered with a large Dead Head wall hanging. All the
windows were like this. There was never any natural light in Tattoo Nik’s. It
was one of the reasons they liked it there so much.

“Jesus,” Jim said. “Time flies when you don’t need dope,
huh?”

“You ready?” Cherry asked.

Jim put his glasses on and followed Cherry towards the door.
Even behind his glasses he squinted his eyes against the onslaught of blinding,
burning white light that would soon blast its way into the house. He looked
back to the couch.

“You guys ready?” Jim asked.

“Hold up,” Soup said and pulled a blanket over his head. Two
Step took his sunglasses out of the front pocket of his shirt and put them on,
Nik covered his eyes with his hands.

Jim opened the door. He turned and looked at Cherry.

“It’s like noon, huh?” He took his sunglasses off and Two
Step’s laughter followed them out of the house.