The American Dream: A Short Story

by Jonathan-David Jackson

The spider crawled out of its lair in the abandoned basement. Before it left, it blocked up the entrance with leaves and other debris so that no other creature would find its babies. Spiders don't have names. But they do have a sense of self somewhere in that bundle of nerves that functions as an arachnid brain, and if you spent enough time trying to translate that spider sense of self into English, you'd likely be poisoned and eaten, just based on the odds. Someone might find your notes in a large cobweb though, fumigate the place, and work out for themselves that a female spider thought of herself as something like She. The way they think it, it would definitely be italicized.

  She crawled up the outside of the house, picking her way carefully over the ivy-covered brick. At the bedroom window, She paused to look in. Eight eyes can see a lot, and She could see Emily through the not-quite-closed blinds. She rolled her head back and forth on the pillow. She turned towards the window, opened her eyes for a moment and shuddered, but didn't wake up. She was on the roof now, and then inside the house.

  Somehow, in her dream, Emily knew it had all happened before. She could sense the spider in her room even before she saw it. She knew it had happened the night before, and the night before that. Sometimes in a dream you can take control – you can break out. With a sound like you might make if your lips were sewn tightly together but you ripped them apart just an inch or so while screaming, Emily woke up. Her feet came down out of the bed, and she ignored the feeling that she had almost stepped on a spider. She picked up the previous day's clothes from her desk, and then went out the bedroom door, ignoring the feeling that maybe she could hear the sound of eight legs scrabbling against the closed door behind her.

  “Olivia?”

  “Who... Emily, is that you? But it's... well, I guess it's not that late, actually. What's going on?”

  Olivia was the only person who lived close enough that Emily could ask. Her parents would say yes, of course, but she'd already planned to see them soon and she didn't want them to think she couldn't handle things on her own. Ten minutes later, she knocked on Olivia's front door. Olivia answered, wearing just her underwear – underwear of the sort where you paid more because they'd used less material.

  “Sorry,” Olivia said, “you didn't give me much time to prepare.”

  “It's alright.” Emily averted her eyes. “Sorry to wake you guys up.”

  “Oh, don't worry about it. Charles isn't here.”

  Emily looked at her and their eyes met. Something about the way Olivia looked at her was almost frightening, and Emily broke away from her gaze. “Where... where is he?”

  Olivia waved her hand dismissively and walked into the kitchen, talking as she went. “He's out. Work. You know. It's just us girls here now.”

  Emily looked around the room while Olivia clanked in the kitchen behind her. It had most of the usual things you'd find in a living room. A television. A tall plant in the corner. A bookshelf with some best-selling books on it. One of the things it did not have, though, was a couch. There was only a loveseat, which is good enough for two people to sit close together, but not good enough for one person to sleep on.

  “Would you like a drink?” Olivia called.

  Emily said “No, thanks—” but then turned around and was met by Olivia's outstretched hand holding a glass of wine, and it was too late to refuse.

  Olivia sat down on the loveseat, and standing up on her own became too awkward for Emily to continue, so she sat down as well. Olivia sipped her wine and looked over the top of the glass at Emily. Emily looked away and down into her wine as she, too, sipped. They talked, and soon she finished the glass. She was about to set it down when Olivia produced the bottle from behind the loveseat and filled it back up. By the time the bottle was empty, Emily felt much more relaxed. Before, she had been almost wondering which was worse – the spider in her dreams or the real Olivia right in front of her.

  She began to feel warm, and she took off her top, which wasn't the sort of thing she'd usually do around people, but it still left her much more dressed than Olivia, so it was fine. Olivia moved closer on the loveseat. Emily moved more tightly against the arm to give Olivia room. Olivia turned her glass up and then moved closer still, leaving Emily nowhere further to move. Olivia leaned towards Emily, and Emily could feel blood rushing to her cheeks. She stood up. “I'm really tired,” she said. “Where can I sleep?”

  Olivia frowned, but her face quickly smoothed out. “Follow me, the bed's all made up.” So the bed was the only place in the house to sleep. After what had just happened, did she want to sleep in the same bed as Olivia? She'd brought a blanket with her, she could sleep on the floor. Having slept on the floor before, though, she knew it wasn't something she wanted to repeat. Olivia walked down the hallway in front of her. Was she shaking her rear more than a person normally would? It's not often that you see a person in a lace thong walking in front of you, so it's hard to say what's normal when the situation itself isn't normal, especially when you've had two glasses of wine.

  Is it ok to sleep in the same bed as a married woman who is wearing lingerie and appears to want to press her exposed flesh against you? No doubt you have asked yourself that question many times, and Emily was asking herself that now. She wasn't attracted to women, not even when influenced by alcohol, so surely there wasn't anything wrong with it. It might lead to a frustrating situation for Olivia, and it was probably unfair for her, but at least Emily would get some sleep. So she continued following Olivia's more or less bare buttocks down the hallway.

  Olivia opened a door on the left and gestured for Emily to go in. Emily hesitated in the doorway, and Olivia gave her a playful slap on the butt. She turned around and stared at Olivia, unsure of what to say. She decided to say nothing, and went into the room. She was so tired.

  “This is the guest bedroom.” Olivia sounded like a chorus of angels to Emily as she delivered that news. “You can sleep in here. Just let me know if you need anything.” With a smile and a flash of bare breast – hadn't she been wearing a bra before? – Olivia went into a doorway on the right and then Emily was alone. Thank God for that. She'd been thinking it was probably worth it just to let Olivia have her way with her if only she could get some sleep afterwards. She dropped onto the bed like a box of irregularly shaped rocks and was soon asleep.

  Emily stirred in her sleep. She opened her eyes and saw by the bedside clock that she had only been asleep about 45 minutes. Something was tickling the back of her thigh. She was sick of this dream. The clock was a brass analog model of the type a character in Clue could use to bludgeon another character, and she picked it up. A spider of any size couldn't do much with a head smashed in by a clock. She flipped over in bed faster than the spider could react, and raised the clock up ready to smash it down on... on Olivia's face, which was very close to her crotch now that she had turned over. This was not a dream. She was definitely awake, and her eyes screamed at her to close them.

  “Olivia—”

  Olivia put her finger to her lips and smiled behind it. “Shhh.”

  “I'm tired. Please go out.”

  She looked at Emily, then up at the clock still raised in the air. She silently withdrew from the room. Emily noticed she had been wearing even less than before, which was an impressive feat. She placed the clock back on the bedside table and sighed. Getting back to sleep seemed impossible now. The door couldn't lock, and there was nothing to move in front of it to block it. For the next 30 minutes, she lay there with her tired eyes wide open. At last, she decided that the real Olivia was worse than the dreamed spider, and got out of bed. She put her clothes on, and left the house as quietly as possible – if Olivia was asleep, she wanted her to stay that way.

   

  Her own house seemed to envelop her in its warmth, silence, and peace. Nobody here was going to sexually harass her. She could close her eyes and never open them again if she chose. She turned out the light, crawled under the covers, and let sleep take her.

  It was morning
when she woke up. The sun was dimmed by clouds, but it was light enough to see. She hadn't dreamed at all – the first time that had happened in the new house. It felt like a fresh start. She had been looking forward to going to her parents' house the next day, back to the protection of their arms, but now it didn't seem necessary. She had resisted Olivia, she had come back to her house on her own, she had beaten the dream. She felt like she could do anything. She stretched out her arms. Or at least she tried to. She couldn't move her arms. They weren't numbed by sleep, because she could wiggle her fingers a little. Her breathing quickened. Something was around her. Wrapped all around her. It wasn't clouds that dimmed the light, but the material which wrapped around her head and stuck to her face. She felt a tickling sensation at her feet, like ants. When the biting started, she realized it wasn't ants. When the screaming started, she knew that it was far too late for anyone to help, but she couldn't stop. When the thousand newly hatched spiders had finished, she would never dream again. She hadn’t been having good dreams lately, so it was probably for the best.

  THE END

   

   

  This story is based on a recurring nightmare I have, a nightmare which feels real even when I wake up. To date, however, I have not been eaten by a giant spider. As long as I continue to release books and stories, you can be sure I'm still alive. Either that, or the spider is writing using my name as a pseudonym. If it got you to read this far, though, she's probably a decent enough writer, so I guess you've got nothing to complain about, really.

  You can email me any time of day or night at jonathandavidjacksonwrites@gmail.com, I'd love to hear from you!

  My website is jonathandavidjacksonwrites.com. There I write short fiction and non-fiction and complain about how the state of the universe has changed since I was a lad.

  You can also find me on Facebook at facebook.com/jonathandavidjacksonwrites, but who even uses Facebook these days? (I do.)

  Books by me:

  The Quest for Juice (free!)

  The Quest for Truth

  The Quest for Nothing in Particular