Vignettes - 2. The Web

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Hunger.

Always hunger.

This . . . is Its reality.

It hangs in the dark cool . . . waiting, ever waiting. Waiting for prey to come. Prey to end the hunger.

The rats. The rats and the stray dogs. The sharp fingered cats, no. They are too difficult. They are always cut loose form the Web. But the rats and the dogs . . . they are food when they come. But they are such foul food! Delicious Humans are the best!

Alas, there are too few dogs and rats left. Scarcer still are the Delicious Humans. The other things upstairs get them now that they have come. None of them have been here as long as It has. It . . . has been _here_ as long as the hunger has been here and that, of course has been . . . forever!

This house, built only a few lifetimes ago by the reckoning of the Delicious Humans, was built over It's cave. The ones with the diggers collapsed the cave and attempted to bury It in the earth unwittingly, but It could not be trapped. It was OLD and It was strong . . . oh so very strong and oh so very patient. It would take so much more to kill It than burying It alive. It had been buried alive before when the giant lizards walked the earth and the great rock from the sky had come. But, It had survived even that and It had fed and It had grown bigger. So much bigger!

So, the house had been built and all the long years that the house rested on top of the cave It had dug. It dug, dug, dug ever up, up, up. It had dug up until It surfaced inside a lovely cool dark room built of cold bricks. The room had been dark and cool and the Delicious Humans had made soooo many nice nooks and crannies in the dark room under the house. There had been lots of shelves and rafters and wooden supports all over holding the big house up.

It hadn't been even a day after surfacing when It had finished with its first Web in the dark room. The Web's beautiful gauze had covered every surface and all the spaces between inside the room that the Delicious Humans called a 'Cellar'. It had been only shortly after the great Web had been finished that the first of the Delicious Humans had come to visit.

The boy had been medium sized, perhaps half-grown. He had tried the light switch which It had found before and had learned to use. It hated the light the switch made and so It had destroyed the light. So the boy could not have turned the light on.

It had sat in Its web hammock watching the Delicious Boy descend the steps down, down into the Darkness. The boy had a light he turned on in his hand. It couldn't abide that light either so It had snatched the light away with a bolt of webbing. The boy had yelled a bit at that. It had scared him. But it had been too late for his screaming. It had been far too late for him to run away either.

"Daa-aad?" The boy had called up the stairs. But, no sound would travel out of the Nest since Its webbing had curtained everything. The webbing absorbed all sound. Such beautiful webbing It made. It was so proud of Its own webbing!

The webbing had been so gentle and so insidious that it had collected around the boy's feet as he had been wading through it down the stairs. The webbing had given no resistance so the boy wouldn't have felt it slowly ensnaring him more and more with each faltering step he took into the Dark.

"Daa-aad? Dad, my light went out. I can't see. Can you come down and get me a new light?" The prey had said with words It could understand. It had learned all the languages of the Delicious Humans. The 'Indians' had many beautiful languages and they all screamed with the same intent, asking for help from their gods as they learned of what fate It had in store for them.

The boy had panicked as he had tried to turn and go back up the stairs. He had found that he couldn't move his feet. Hehehehe! It had him then!

"Uh . . . Dad? DAAAAD? I . . . I'm caught in something! I c-can't get free! D-dad? Are you even up there? DAAA - " Its first spit of webbing had wrapped around the boy's mouth silencing him from being able to scream very loudly anymore. He would definitely scream, but it would be all muffled up.

The next strands had twisted first around the boy's arms so he couldn't hit or scratch or any of those other foolish things. Then It had wrapped up the boy's legs.

The boy had started screaming hysterically into his gag as It dragged him by the legs toward the hammock in which It rested. It had spun the boy around and around with its huge spindly candy stripped legs completely encasing him in silver casement webbing, the most precious kind! It was also the strongest kind! There would be no escape for the boy!

The boy had wiggled frantically within the casement, but of course to no avail. It had left too things uncovered: the eyes, for one, and a portion of the thigh for another. It had always liked to look into the eyes of Its prey. It loved to watch humans die. The terror, the anguish, the hopelessness. Humans were smart animals. They could experience the full breadth of horror for the kind of death It could bring.

The thigh had been the thickest muscle on the young human. It had been the best place to inject the venom and then the acid.

It had used Its pedipalps, as big as human hands, to turn and love the human boy: feeling him and tasting him through the webs. The salt of his fear had been the most delicate and refreshing of glazes.

It had delicately used one of its razor sharp fangs, as long as a hunting knife, to gently tear away the outer skin the humans called 'clothing' from the boy's thigh. The young flesh had been so pink and tender. It had used its pedipalps to taste the sensitive leg there. The touch had sent the boy to wriggling and writhing frantically again. The eyes had been wild with terror and tears! Soooo sweet!

But foreplay had been over. There was hunger. There was ALWAYS the terrible hunger.

It had been time, then, to feed.

Even through the webbed casement gagging him, the boy's shrill screams of unimaginable agony had echoed in the cellar. They had been sounds so primal and so terrible that it was only be the magic of Its webbing on the doors and windows that those screams were contained.

Its fangs had sunk deep into the muscle of the boy's thigh. Blood-juice had squirted out scrumptiously all around the fresh wounds. The boy writhed frantically inside the webbing as if he could have some how gotten himself loose from the agonizing bite. His howls of anguish had been sometimes cut off by gut wrenching sobs.

Then the venom came and the boy's shrieks became impossible louder and shriller! Sooooo wonderful! It loved the sounds of shrieks! The pain of the prey had been divine!

Then . . . the acid.

The boy had gotten so that he could no longer scream from the severity of the pain as the digestive acids started their work inside of him. Shock had set in and soon death would follow but, It was sure, the death could not have come soon enough from the boy's perspective. The boy had long enough to live to feel himself being digested alive from the inside. It must have been such exquisite pain!

The fun came to an end soon enough, however, and as the boy died he began to melt into juice inside his skin. His body had shivered and spasmed within the Web as his nervous system shut down in death. With the boy finally dead, It had begun to suck the sooo soo sweet juices from the boy's body.

Soooo sweet!

The boy's bones and husk had been later found first by his mother and then his father and then they all had died similarly. The whole family! The father had been the best! He had fed It for a whole week! His death had taken exquisite days!

The police came, but by then It had felt the instinctive need to withdraw from the house and go back into the hole in the floor at the back of the hot water heater. It's cobwebs were all over the cellar, but the police had only thought it was from bad housekeeping on the missing family's part.

Apparently, the house had been passed to other humans who left after only one night in the house since they kept hearing the ghostly screams of the dead boy in the cellar. The screams It had caused. The screams were so indelible etched into the house that they served as an eternal reminder of what lived deep in the bowels of the earth under the house. Waiting.

Always waiting.

The house was abandoned now. Delicious Humans sometimes dared to come into it. Some left alive. Some 'disappeared' when they would go down into the cellar.

It had been a long while since the last human had come.

So when It heard the familiar creak of the floorboards from upstairs, It was overjoyed! Someone had come for a visit! Someone had become foolish enough to come back into the house again! This cursed house! This house cursed by an ancient monster still hiding deep in its lower depths.

Maybe this new Delicious Human would come down into the cellar? One could always hope! The web was ready and waiting!

Waiting for dinner to be served!