A Silence of Spiders

A Silence of Spiders

  By Todd Miller

  Copyright 2012 by Todd Miller

  Cover artwork by Jason Beam

  Thanks, Jason!

  Chapter 1

  Exquisite corpse.

  That’s what Kristin called it.

  She said it was a game invented by a bunch of crazy French art dudes.

  You need at least three people to play. People who like to draw.

  The object of the game is to draw a body.

  What you do is you take a piece of paper and fold it into thirds. The first person draws the head, folds the paper over so nobody can see it, then gives it to the second person, who draws the body. The second person folds the paper over again and hands it to the third, who draws the legs.

  When everybody is done, you unfold the drawing and you get some really cool, really strange creature, like with the head of a gorilla, the body of a ballerina and the legs of an octopus.

  Something so weird that if it existed in the real world, all the townspeople would have to get together and destroy it.

  A monster.

  An exquisite corpse.

  So me and Kristin and Curtis were fooling around in detention, drawing our corpses, and it was my turn to draw the head.

  Dean Carter was supposed to make sure we were doing our homework, but he had his nose buried in a bodybuilding magazine and seemed totally oblivious to our presence.

  I wanted to draw something serious this time, no astronauts or dinosaurs or anything wacky like that. I drew a woman, with long black hair and dark, sad eyes. I couldn’t quite get her mouth right, I was going for a frown, but it looked more like a snarl. So I erased her lips and drew them over and over again, trying to fix them, to make them like how I remembered.

  Kristin leaned over and studied the picture for a moment.

  “Is that—is that your mom?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, drawing and erasing, drawing and erasing. “This is what she looked like before, you know, before the thing happened.”

  I erased so many times, the bottom half of the drawing was turning into one dark smear. The more I erased, the darker it got.

  “Just start over, man” said Curtis.

  “No,” I said.

  Draw and erase.

  Draw and erase.

  Erase, erase.

  Tiny, dirty pink eraser shavings all over my desk.

  I stared down at the smear and the world disappeared and I had to fix it or make it go away and the eraser wasn’t helping and I couldn’t stop erasing.

  Then Kristin reached out and put her hand over mine. My pencil stopped jerking and was still. It was the first time she ever touched me. Her fingers were like electricity and I felt a jolt go straight to my brain.

  “Easy there, Picasso,” she said, and smiled.

  I looked at her hand on top of mine and nodded. We both sat there for a moment, just looking at our hands touching. It only lasted a moment, but it felt like forever.

  “You think about her a lot?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  Her hazel eyes meet mine, and they twinkled like a secret star.

  Yeah, that’s right. I said they twinkled, okay?

  Then her iPhone started to buzz, rattling around on the top of her desk like an angry bug.

  “It’s Eddie,” she said.

  Her hand vanished and suddenly she was hunched over the tiny screen, her fingers mashing buttons, a smirk on her lips.

  “God, sometimes he is so annoying,” she said with a smile.

  I looked down at the blurry mess on my paper and crumpled it up. I wanted to swallow it and die.

  “Here,” said Curtis, handing me another piece of paper. “I drew another head, now you can draw the body.”

  I started scribbling furiously, unconsciously, a huge dark form taking shape on the page, with a multitude of long, hideous black legs, eight hairy black legs, ready to pounce, ready to maim, ready to kill and kill and kill—

  Suddenly there was a snapping sound and I felt a sharp pain on the back of my neck. A rubber band lay on the floor beside my foot. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw John and Troy snickering in their stupid, Elmwood High School varsity football jackets.

  They bumped fists and grinned at me.

  “What’re you looking at?” hissed Troy.

  “You want to start something, Berger butt?” asked John.

  My face felt hot and when I turned back around I saw Dean Carter looking at me.

  “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” he asked.

  John and Troy were silent.

  “No, sir,” I said, looking down.

  “Then I suggest you all get back to work. We still have five more minutes, people.”

  He opened his magazine and began to read.

  “Five more minutes,” he said, to no one in particular.