The Spider Inside (5 page)

Jim and Cherry walked toward her apartment building after
waving one final time to Soup and Two Step. Jim wondered when he might see them
again. Under his arm he felt Cherry shiver. The morning was cool, he could feel
gooseflesh harden on his arms and reminded himself to take a jacket from now
on. He heard the song of a little brown bird and thought of Zig, and how when
they’d left his house for the last time, it had been on a morning just like
this one; clear, cool, holding the promise of a perfect day, and had it really
been only a couple months ago? He almost opened his mouth to say something but
decided against it. Why talk about that now? Especially to Cherry?

Jim knew Cherry remembered the day well, it was burnt there.
“It’s indelible,” she’d told him the only time they’d talked about it, “Like
Nik cracked open my heart and inked it on the valves.”

None of them saw Zig very often, just occasionally to score
off if no one else was around. Two Step had begun to refer to their meetings
with Zig as “that time of the month,” because it was usually about once a month
and seemed to be around the same time. He was the last resort before Frog, just
because there had always been something a little bit off about the guy.

True to form, it had been about a month since the last time
they saw Zig, and that whole time the wheel of the tweeker universe had been
spinning at a million miles an hour and if there was one thing Jim saw about
The Life was that no one was ever out of it, not all the way. Not until death
did the elevator skip your floor. They were out of shit and no one else was
around and it had been awhile since they’d seen him anyway so someone called up
Zig, Jim thought it was Two Step who called but couldn’t remember for sure, but
they all ended up over there, everyone but Soup who had been inside at the time
just about to finish his bit for a possession charge. Cherry, Jim, Tattoo Nik,
Two Step, and Zig, all in Zig’s house. They’d bought him out, and had stuck
around. Why not? Zig had offered, they didn’t want to seem rude, and it was
better than driving around with a car full of gack on them, right?

Talk of spiders was what had started it. Cherry had said
meth was like a spider inside your head; Jim took it and ran with it.

“It’s like this spider lives in the center of your brain and
it’s in there just getting fatter, it eats fucking gack, right, the particles
of it get caught inside this web it’s spinning, always spinning, inside your
mind. Connecting places that were never meant to be connected, taking a simple
electric impulse or chemical reaction that was intended for a neighboring cell
and broadcasting it somewhere it shouldn’t ever be. And this spider lays an egg
sac in your Modula Oblongata and when it finally bursts open all these little red
spiders come out and start eating whatever’s left of your brain.”

They all got a little creeping shiver and then had a good
laugh about it and that was it. What happened hadn’t been Jim’s fault any more
than it had been Cherry’s.

Eighteen, maybe twenty hours passed.

Zig had been quiet that whole time, only laughing or talking
every once in a while, and he’d never been a total chatterbox or anything to
begin with, so no one took a whole lot of notice, but this was one of the
things that had always bothered Jim about him. What kind of fucking tweeker
didn’t
talk
?

It was seven AM on the dot when Jim first noticed that Zig
was crying. Not full out, no huge sobs or wailing, just a subtle shaking of the
back and tears running down his face.

He elbowed Cherry and when she looked at him he nodded
toward Zig, hoping she could go to work on the guy, she was always the best at
this type thing. Despite being sexy as hell and giving off a dirty girl vibe
she could be quite motherly, and this was the quality Jim was hoping would go
to work.

Cherry had stood and walked over to where Zig was sitting,
knelt down by him with a hand on his shoulder, asking him in soft tones what
was wrong and telling him not to worry, don’t worry, everything is going to be
fine. Just tell us what’s going on and we can help you with it.

“It’s the spider,” Zig said, his voice cracking and loud
like a gunshot in the silence of the room. “I c-can’t get it out of my head.”

Jim could tell this had been about the last thing Cherry was
expecting but god bless the girl she rolled with it.

“No, Zig,” she said, it those same soothing tones. “There
are no spiders. You just need to sleep, okay?”

“I can’t sleep!” Zig screamed. “I hear her in my head! All
the time, Cherry, I hear that fucking cunt
spider
in my
head
!”

Cherry looked around at them, silently asking for help, a
suggestion, anything.

“I know how to get rid of it though,” Zig said in a quiet
voice. Had Jim really felt relief then? Had he been that green to think
everything would blow over so easy? He was afraid he had. He’d turned toward
Tattoo Nik, in fact, and was about to ask about doing the last little bit of
crank they had when Nik’s eyes widened and Jim heard the sound of a pistol
slide being racked.

“Zig, you don’t need that,” Cherry said. How brave had she
been to stay there, not even flinch, not take a step back?

“It’s the only way,” Zig said, and put the gun in his mouth.

“NO!”

Jim didn’t know who screamed that. Someone. All of them,
maybe, or maybe it hadn’t been any of them. Maybe it had only been inside his
head.

Then Zig started to laugh.

“Oh man, I got you guys so good! You should have seen your
face, Cherry!”

“Put down the gun, Zig,” Cherry whispered.

He laughed again. “It’s not even loaded, see?” He thumbed
the clip release button and it fell out of the gun and into his hand. Still
laughing he tossed the clip to Tattoo Nik, who caught it and gave it a glance,
then lobbed it, without looking, over his shoulder and into Jim’s waiting hand.
The clip was empty.

That was no excuse though, to do some shit like that,
especially to Cherry.

“That’s fucked up, man,” Tattoo Nik had said.

“So you were really just fucking around?” Cherry asked.

Zig was laughing too hard to answer. There was something in
his laugh, though, that Jim didn’t like. None of them liked it. As if on cue
everyone started to gather themselves together, preparing to leave. Jim found
his smokes, lit one, put the pack and his lighter in his pocket. Nik swept the
rest of their gack into a baggie and stood, Two Step found his sunglasses.

“Oh, come on!” Zig said. “You guys aren’t leaving over
that
are you? It was just a--Cherry! It was a joke! Like I’m really going to shoot
myself!” he held the gun to his head and laughed some more.

Cherry stood and rubbed her eyes. “D...”

“Oh the spider! The spider in my head!” Zig mocked himself.
“Help me Cherry! It’s in my head!”

Jim saw Zig’s finger twitch

BLAM!

The blood spread like a fan, Jim could see Cherry screaming
because it was all over her face but he couldn’t hear her, all he could hear
was this high-pitched buzz that he would go on hearing for the next two days
until it slowly faded out.

Cherry backed away until her back hit the wall and then she
slid down it, still screaming, still screaming.

Zig’s foot was twitching, Jim thought of a dog when its
belly was being rubbed and the thought almost made him sick. Two Step turned
and started to dry heave. He hadn’t eaten in a day so there wasn’t much in
there to come back up, but finally a thin stream of yellow bile dripped from
his open mouth and onto the floor.

Nik swept everything that had been on the table where they’d
spent most of their time onto the floor...a couple overflowing ashtrays,
paraphernalia of all kinds, lighters, empty cigarette packs and little baggies
with just a tiny bit of dust left in them, water bottles beer bottles soda cans
the mirror and razor blade they’d been using. He leaned over the table and with
the sleeve of his jacket rubbed it down.

“What the fuck are you doing, man?” Two Step screamed. It
was the only way to be heard. Hell, it was the only way to hear yourself.

“Fingerprints!” Nik screamed back.

Jim almost laughed. Their prints were everywhere. They’d
been here for two days, solid, without leaving. It was safe to assume their
prints were on just about every touchable surface in the house.

“We need to go!” Jim screamed. No one heard him. He grabbed
Two Step by the arm and moved him toward the door. Tattoo Nik saw and
understood. He and Jim helped Cherry to her feet. Jim took his shirt off and
wiped the blood off her face. She clung to him, was maybe clinging to her
sanity in that moment, and Jim felt as if she were dragging him down with her.
He fought the monster urge to shove her to the floor and just run, had to grab
hold of her and hug her tight to stop himself from doing just that. He squeezed
her and she squeezed back, hard enough so that he was running out of air.

“Come on!” Nik screamed at them from the doorway.

The light from outside was flooding the place, blinding
those without sunglasses. Jim knew his were somewhere but couldn’t recall
where. He would later realize he was holding them in one hand, almost tight
enough to snap them. He walked toward the door, literally dragging Cherry with
him for the first couple steps, then her feet and mind caught up with the rest
of her and she began to walk.

Were there sirens coming? Were the police already on the
way? Jim realized they could be camped on the front fucking lawn screaming
through a bull horn and he likely wouldn’t hear them. He looked back once
before walking out. The sunlight was splashed perfectly across Zig’s limp body.
The blood, all that blood seemed to be glowing, like he was covered in neon
paint.

Jim saw everything with razor sharp detail, the two beer
bottles that had shattered on the floor when Nik swept them off the table and
the billion tiny prisms of light reflected in the pieces of glass.  He saw the
sink full of dirty dishes, white with blue edging, the tiny black hairs on
Zig’s knuckles, the fact that he was still holding the gun, the flap of skin
peeled back off of his head, dangling like a strip of torn wall paper, the red
neon paint of his blood pooled on the floor and running down one wall, the
flies buzzing over the dishes and over the hole in Zig’s shattered head, the
popcorn texture of the ceiling and the spots in the carpet that were worn bare.
He knew the TV was tuned to a local station showing the news but that it had
been muted. He knew there was nothing in the refrigerator except for a copy of
Lesbian
Dildo Party
on DVD. He could smell the shit as it crept slowly out of Zig,
he could see the spreading stain on his pants and it only took him a second to
see all of this, a half a second perhaps. With his shirt he wiped the knob and
closed the door behind him.

Jim now thought of that long strange walk across the yard to
Soup’s car, which he’s left in Two Step’s care until his return. The distance
wasn’t great; it was a small, dead yard, but the walk itself seemed to take
forever. This is where they would be seen, leaving the house. Was anyone behind
the curtains in those other houses, peering out and describing them to a 911
operator on the other end of the phone?

The cool morning air awoke him a little. He looked down at
his naked torso and saw with surprise how skinny he’d become, how his nipples
were hard from the change in temperature and how the sunlight flashed off the
ring through the one on the right. How the sun seemed to glow in the tiny clear
hairs above his belly button. His head was still ringing. He didn’t hear the
car door close behind Two Step when he got in or hear the engine come kicking
to life.

Nik got the shotgun seat, and Jim didn’t hear that door
close either.

He saw Cherry still had blood in her hair.

He got in back with her and she rode sitting as close to him
as two people in a car can be without one bearing the weight of the other. Jim
wondered if he was going to hell for liking the perfect way her body snuggled
up against his. Just before the car pulled away from the curb, he thought that
even through the buzzing he heard the song of a small brown bird.

They had watched the news closely for the next few days, but
never saw a mention of Zig.

Jim wondered, now, as they climbed the stairs to Cherry’s
apartment if maybe Zig had just never been found…maybe he was still in his
house, rotting in the dark. Jim shook the thought away.

Inside Cherry’s small apartment Jim went into the bathroom
and changed into the clothes he picked up after coercing Soup to stop by his
place. A clean t-shirt, one that wasn’t crusted with dry crank-sweat, and a
pair of flannel pajama pants. This was pretty much standard come-down attire
for him. Cherry changed, too, into a faded pink tank-top and a pair of short
shorts. They popped a couple Valium and sat on the couch close together,
snuggled up under a blanket and not saying much, just watching whatever was on
TV.

Eventually they fell asleep that way, and at some point Jim
woke up and carried Cherry to her bed, and tucked her in. Cherry awoke when Jim
lifted her off the couch but she feigned sleep because if he knew she was awake
there would still be reason for him to carry her to bed but it would mean
something else.

Jim tucked her under the covers. He’d never been able to
sleep in a shirt so he took it off, and then his pajama pants, and climbed in
next to her, wearing only his boxers. He did this without thought or
trepidation as he had done so many times before. Falling back asleep, Cherry’s
last conscious moment was of scooting her body back so, laying on her side, Jim
was spooning her.

A few miles away Soup smoked a joint on the couch and
watched television. Two Step had already gone to bed, having taken his pills.
Soup hadn’t taken his yet. Flipping through the channels he passed an early
morning news program and while he passed it he caught just one word. Oregon,
the newsman had said, and it didn’t matter in what context, it didn’t matter if
it was a weather report or there had been a terrorist attack or if it was the
sports. Oregon only had one meaning for Soup. For him it meant home. He’d grown
up there. But home held a different feeling for Soup than it did for most. It
didn’t mean safety and warmth and childhood memories, but rung in his head as
shame, as sneaking away in the night. It was tears and disappointment and
failure and every other rotten thing he could think of.