Spiders Feasting (JongKey Oneshot)

            He remembered when the spiders crawled up his body and the sun started its long nap in the hills beyond and when his eyes stayed fixated on the ceiling above. Patterns flew around, clinging to the webs of the ones lapping at his fingertips with their sharp razor pincers. Memories twirled down with the black widows, their hour glass patch ticking down the seconds. A count down to insanity.

            Shadows danced on the walls and cooed to the arachnids waiting in the crevices and cracks of his decay. They chirped to each other, attempting to coax the other to go first but once the first hour glass ran out of sand and touched its tips to his chest they all swarmed in. Two by two they walked in rows and held their heads high, sniffing the silence and breaking it with their click-clacking feet. With their ropes of silk they bind his hands to his sides and sew the gaps in his chest where the acid tears burned through his green skin.

            Above the sky changes from dark blue, to shimmering navy, to dull black... The colour of charcoal. Red hour glasses are everywhere; interlacing and interweaving each other in a blurring pattern in the sky. Stars in the abyss.

            His teeth would light up the patches of his face left unmarked by the tarantulas. Their fuzzy legs would caress his face and keep him warm against the chilly breezes keeping his body afloat. And he would float done the abyss… Nothing but the chipper voices of his arachnid friends to assure him of his safety.

            The sand fell down…

            He swooshed through a tight tunnel and felt drops hit his face. Pinches. Then wet drops. A cackle from mother spider as she let her milk fall into his veins. Feeding him the spirits of her young and the instincts that came with her breeding… She croons to him the stories tangled in the webs she wove and her family wove… The tarantulas try hard to guard his ears but…

            The grains slid down together…

            And the drops of dampness he’d felt turned to full out beads slapping his closed eyes and knocking off the bugs on his cheeks… Brown recluses quickly jumped out of his ears, barely managing to hold on by their thin strands of web. Tarantulas tripped over his thinning hair and tried to keep all eight of their legs attached to no avail.

            The sanity escaped…

            But mother spider kept preaching. She called to her cousins to keep latched on and seconds after pincers entered his skin. Two holes – side by side – in perfect symmetry all over his body. The mouse spiders took care of his toes while the black widows did everything below his waist… Drops of mother spider’s milk dripping off their fangs… Redbacks were crawling beneath his clothing and building nests in his navel and mother spider cheered…

            The drops turned to waterfalls…

            He was encased in a mist of legs. In a case of bellies rubbing against him… In a cocoon of filmy strings clinging to every part of his body…

            He was being swept down the abyss… Mother spider was driving… In the distance he could hear a voice. “Key… Key please wake up…” Gasps of air and his chest rising and falling. “O-one Mississippi, two Mississippi…” An ear hovering over his pinched nose but every time it came close mother spider would lash out with her hefty fangs and strike the person a dose of her milk… A milk he was being immunized to…

            Mother spider was singing about adventures and raising her pairs of legs in dance as her children pranced around and strung their webs over his chest… Burying his nipples and encasing his finger tips… Tarantulas back to clinging to his face, braving the strength of the waterfall as it slowly diminished in strength… Protecting him from the whisper of a voice… “Come on! Damn it! W-wake up!” Mother spider jumping on his chest and heaving his diaphragm up and down.

            His eyes were being milked… Sucked dry by mother spider’s new babies… But the recluses were back in his arm pits and dripping their share of milk into his body to keep him rejuvenated…

            “Please just breathe! One fucking breath!”

            Soon mother spider would bring him his bottle and tell him to rest easy… He could hear her – hear her but not see her – singing the lullaby she sang to her young after she’d safely woven them into her cradle… He was one step closer… Wrapped up everywhere but his head. His siblings were nestled in the crooks and crannies of his body, suckling on the milk he let drip out… Almost tucked in but being held back by the waterfall gushing in his mouth… Pushing on his chest… “One Mississippi! Two Mississippi! Three Mississippi!”

            But then mother spider wrapped up his head… And the lights clicked out… It was time to rest his head on the belly his black widow sister… Ear on the hour glass and dry eyes sewed shut by mother spider’s thread…