After Dark - 3. Chapter 3

The Empress and the Ivory Tower

1:25 AM

We left the bar and walked through the empty alleyways down Campanile into the clear moonlit night. I saw the campus bell-tower on the horizon, ticking away beneath the wide starocean, and its Spanish-style spire poking the bottom of the crescent moon.

Why was La Luna frowning? That's the first I'd ever seen her so sad and upside-down.

Bennet and I walked in companionable silence down the airy pavilion lined with palm trees and well-worn lecture halls and trimmed grass squares decorated with rosebushes. I knew where Bennet was heading: Koi Hill. A nice grassy park in the middle of campus, with a turtle pond at the bottom, and lotsa trees, where students congregated during breaks and did hood-rat things.

When we got to the hill, we heard crickets chirping and owls hooting and koi playing coy. The wind was a soft whisper and the air warm. Bennet hopped over a hedgerow and hacked through a little incline covered in wood-chips and loam. He jumped onto a brown slatted-bench and then pointed at the lone streetlight between the Old Oak and Grand Elm.

“Behold the Ivory Tower, Mr. Shinozaki-San. We'll offer our tribute here.”

“Are you talking about the lamppost?”

“To you it's just a lamppost, but to the Empress, it's the Ivory Tower,” Bennet explained. “But we can't see her Grace looking like this.” He dug a brown paper bag from under the bench that I supposed he had stashed there, and he unrolled some articles of clothing. Funny kid. He tossed me a bundle. As I unraveled it, I discovered the material was soft spandex with raised black lines running through. It felt silky smooth as I ran my fingers up the leg seems. The moonlight was kind enough to illuminate the brilliant red and blue patterns.

Frown all you want, La Luna, but I could only smile.

“Holy Potatoes, are these what I think they are?”

“Spiderman outfits,” said Bennet. “Fun fact: they're replicas from the Tom Holland movie.”

The one where Spidey was naked under the skintight suit the whole time.

“You gotta strip everything off for it to fit,” said Bennet, and he took off his shirt.

Oh behave yourself, Daddy.

After he slipped out of his jeans, a very hairylicious Bennet hopped off the bench, clapping his heels together, then he landed and cartwheeled over to the lamppost. He grabbed the white cast-iron pole, and swung around in two loops. He was wild and manic. Silly and ridiculous.

And now he was stripping off his skivvies under the moon.

After Seven Minutes in Heaven:

We changed into our Spidey suits and then Bennet asked me to help him find crickets.

“Why?” I asked, while stretching around in my new clothes. I felt so limber jackrabbiting around as a superhero. As an added bonus, the suit didn't ride up the crotch or itch at all. It was like a new skin. An exoskeleton. Magick tickled my arms and legs, flowed through my blood—metaphorically speaking, of course. The only thing rolling down the river of my blood was liquid courage.

“We need crickets for the Empress,” said Bennet. “She's a bit of a snack-fiend. But don't let her hear you say that.”

“Who is she?” I adjusted a wedgie, and now the suit was perfect.

“She's just an old gal I'm friends with. A bit of a bitch, don't tell me I didn't warn you. Ha! Look, there! Catch that little bugger by your foot, Dave. Don't let it crawl under the the recycling bin.”

A cricket scurried beneath our shadows. I bent down, and with a nimble hand, I plucked it by its legs. “I got it.”

“Good. Now put it in a mason jar, I know you have one handy.”

Yes, always in reach. Sticking out of my bag's mesh side-pocket, was a twelve ounce jar for specimen collecting and occasionally mixing drinks. When I opened it, the smell of an old Mint Julep was still strong. I'm sure the cricket appreciated the fermented film left inside for something to nibble on. Bennet got down on his tummy—singing, spiderman, spiderman, here comes the spiderman, as he picked up rocks and lifted logs. With a yelp, and an aha, he found a snail and two yelps later, he found another Find. He put them all in my jar and grinned at me.

“You reckon I'm a good catcher?”

“I reckon.”

Five minutes later:

We had two cockroaches, a common garden snail, and what looked to be a phasmatodean (that's fancy-talk for stick insect) that was about to die because I had accidentally crushed its head, mistaking it for the backside.

“No, no, leave the moths alone,” Bennet said when he saw me trying to scoop some Cydia pomonella midair. “We don't wanna hurt those. Come over here, I want you to meet someone—but before you do, I want you to repeat something, and I want you to mean it.”

“Got it.”

“Great. If all goes according to plan tonight, and you decide to finish your story, just remember one thing from here on out: Anything can happen.”

“Anything can happen?”

“Yup, say it again, three times. Those are the magic words and you're wearing your magic suit. This is all gonna work out.”

Breathing in deep, I obeyed. “Anything can happen. Anything can happen. Anything can happen.”

“Attaboy, Dave. Don't say I didn't warn you. Now let's go find the Empress.”

He sounded like an eight year old again back at camp. Sweet and playful. God, what was I thinking? Bennet showed me a web hanging beneath the streetlight that I hadn't noticed before. It was strong and sturdy even in the wind, and starlight shimmered off some water droplets caught on the threads. The intricate circles, within circles, connected by silver strands hypnotized me the harder I looked.

Harder. Harder. Dear Jesus, please grant me the willpower not to get a hard-on in this spandex suit.

“Empress, come out,” called Bennet. He swung around the lamppost again like a man singing in the rain. “Charlotte, oh Charlotte, I know you're still up. Little Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey—”

And along came a spider, big as a silver dollar, waltzing center-stage. The web sunk like a hammock beneath her plump little body. Bennet bowed in the piss-tinged light, not frightened at all. The park looked sepia-tone. How artistic.

“Good evening, your grace. Pardon the late night intrusion, but we come bearing gifts.” Bennet elbowed me and I bowed too.

What happened next changed my whole understanding of the natural world.

The empress dropped down on a line of silk so she was an inch from Bennet's nose. She had huge snake fangs and a furry butt, round and whirly-hued like planet Saturn. “Mr. Bennet,” she said, yawning. “You're back, and you brought a friend. How...quaint. What do you want?”

Holy potatoes. I dug into both my ears and unplugged pea sized gobs of earwax that I flicked away in revulsion, realizing how disgusting that was to do in the first place. Then I pinched my neck. That spider was talking. Was this what Bennet meant by, 'anything could happen?' I just wanted to get a hold of his web cartridges. This was unsettling--but I played stoic and looked on.

“We need information, your majesty,” Bennet said.

“It'll cost you, Ape.”

“Of course, luv, I said I brought gifts.”

“Let's see them.” She crossed one set of her legs. She was quite a leggy gal. “And Bennet, let me remind you, that if you ever call me 'luv' again, I promise someday soon I'll crawl into your room at night, slip down your nose, and inject my ovipositor through your mucus membrane. So when I lay my eggs they'll travel down deep into your black cancerous lungs. And when my sweetlings hatch they'll eat you alive from the inside.”

Porco dio. Spiders never scared me before, but this gal was something else.

“Right-ho,” said Bennet. “Note to self: spiders get real ornery when you forget their proper titles of address. Anywho, here's a little treat, lu—” Bennet caught himself, looked my direction and snapped his fingers for the mason jar. I unscrewed the cap and held it out for him.

“Those are cockroaches scurrying around,” hissed the Empress. “Get rid of them.”

“Yes, your grace.” Bennet took the pair of German cockroaches from my mason jar, with their butts melded together in an unashamed act of love. They screamed,“Yipppee,” as he launched them into the planters. Yes, the cockroaches—I heard them too.

Free at last, free at last.

“I hope they didn't spoil the taste of the rest of my treats,” said the Spider. “You know how I feel about vermin, Bennet.”

“Right-ho. But isn't everyone vermin to you?”

“Humph. You don't have any moths do you? They never visit anymore.”

I wasn't sure if she was addressing me, but I shook my head anyway.

“Now, Empress, no moths,” said Bennet. “You know in my line of work, that's a conflict of interest.”

“Oh bother,” she said, and rested her chin on her leg.

“How about escargot?” Bennet held up the snail.

“Tcha! You know how I feel about French cuisine. I’m watching my carb intake.”

“Dave here did catch a cricket.”

“That'll do, Ape. That'll do. Put it in the web.”

Tonight I was in passive-obedient mode. I grabbed my cricket by its hind-legs from the glass container, her other two pairs spazzing-out and her mouth spitting black tobacco. “Let me go. Let me go.” The cries of resistance were unnerving. I reached up to the spiderweb, but before I could place the cricket onto a line, the Empress raised her front claws in fisticuffs and grated her fangs like steak knives.

“Take your filthy hands off my home, you damn dirty ape.”

Stepping backwards from the spider, I almost tripped on Bennet.

He grabbed me by the shoulders. “It's fine, Empress. He's the new hire.”

So now I have a job? That's news.

“What's this now?” The spider gasped, which I didn't think anatomically possible. She eyed me over, head-shoulders-knees-and-toes. “He's a little short, but I suppose he'll do if he's not quite the jabberjaw like the last one. Approach me boy, and bring me my snacky-wacky.”

My poor captured cricket screamed as I raised her closer to the web. “You brute, you brute, please let me go. I'll play you a song, anything you want just don't let that witch come near me.”

Empress Charlotte chuckled. “So I'm a witch for wanting to eat a nice dinner? Let's teach this rude little beastie proper table-manners.”

The spider ensnared the cricket with a coil of silk, then she straddled her victim and punctured it's soft abdomen with her fangs, holding her down with four legs. After a squeal and a squirm, there was silence. The cricket slumbered through a nightmare while Charlotte spun her web around its body in a tight white casket. “There that should do it,” said the Empress, and then she looked at me with her eight little eyes. “Now that I've bitten her, do you know what happens next? You look like the smart academic type. What happens?”

Her insides would be broken down by spiderific enzymes and turned into a milkshake Miss Spider sipped through her fangs. Arachnids always made me a little wary, but now I had reason to hate them. Beneficial predators, my ass. They were all murderous bitches, and now I was an accomplice. A rush of nausea attacked me.

I wanted to go. I didn't care about Cute Soldierboy or his snooty spiders.

As I turned to leave, a wall of sound blocked me.

Don't turn your back on us.

A chorus of voices sounded everywhere. At first indecipherable. But then I understood they were all high-pitched pleas—in the same chirping tones as crickets. Help me. Save me. Someone ripped my wing off.

All the bugs on the hill were yelling. At me. Then the voices turned into chides: You killed, Molly. Murderer. Murderer. Just like a human to go and stick helpless kids into a spiderweb so willy-nilly. My captured cricket hadn't any wings, I recalled, she was still a white and pure little nymphet before her untimely demise.

Babykiller! Degenerate! Abomination!

My head was gonna explode.

The voices got louder. I looked to Bennet, and breathed out, “I'm going home,” then moved towards the quad, hoping to escape the noises. Just get back to work on your story, Dave. But the insects were everywhere. Even my story was about them. They'd invaded my school, my hobbies, now my brain.

There's a reason we called them pests.

“You're not leaving,” Bennet said and he grabbed my arm.

“Hey don't touch me—”

Before I could retaliate, I felt a hard object press into my gut; firm, but not forceful. I looked down. Porco Dio. Of course, the kid had a gun. An old German Mauser pistol, from who knows where. This was not the kind of jab with a long cylindrical object I was hoping to end my night.

“The bugs are our friends,” said Bennet. “You'll get used to them.” He looked over his shoulder and howled like a drill-instructor, “Shut up will ya? You're bugging out my friend here.” And the din died down. No more crickets chiding.

Silence.

He looked at me with his brown boring eyes. “See? All quiet on the Western Front. OK, so I know this might be a little weird—”

“Only a little?”

“Just so.” He guided my shoulders and I relinquished myself back down onto the bench. “Mr. Samurai Shinozaki, you're gonna sit here and write your story like a good boy, and everything will go according to plan.” His gun flashed cold steel.

“What plan?”

“Always asking questions. Just listen to what I tell you. You are going to park yourself on this bench and write.”

“Write what?”

“That thing you were working on at the bar,” he said. “Finish it.”