by Will Madden
Bubo tilted his head. “Wait, you are that Ariadne?”
“Well, I’m not Ariadne Grande,” she muttered. “Maiden, that faker has no power here. Do you consent then to my offer? Do you free yourself forever from his Church and swear yourself to me?”
Jorza raised her head and met Ariadne’s eyes, forcing out two words through the blood congealed upon her sewn lips: I do.
A large gray spider landed heavily on the dagger, knocking it from her hands. Then it leaped and hugged her face, where it sprayed a dark liquid at her eyes and nose. Somewhere in her throat, a scream echoed as spiders swarmed and bound her body tightly in a cocoon.
Not a minute had passed before they were dragging her away.
“She will be well cared for!” said Ariadne, her chelicerae chittering as she spoke. She turned then to Bubo as if this too were his best chance to surrender.
“You can’t be a spider,” he said incredulously. “I spoke to you on the phone. You sounded like a leggy blonde.”
Ariadne seemed to shrug. “I know right? Sometimes we record phone calls for employee training purposes. When I listen to them, I’m like, Whoa, is that my voice? Crazy! I sound like Dolores from HR, not a three-thousand-year-old matriarch who challenged a goddess and forced her to bless me.”
“You said that on the phone too. I thought you were joking. You seem to say that a lot.”
“It is a legitimately impressive qualification.”
“You mean that you challenged Athena at the loom? Because I’m a warrior. Women’s work is of no interest to me, so—”
“You couldn’t beat Hermes in a farting contest!” The hairs on her body bristled with rage. “You came to my house to steal the work of my daughters because without it you would have been killed today a thousand times over! On your idiotic ‘man’-paign.”
Bubo snarled. “Oh, I am so sick of this word! You wouldn’t call Genghis Khan a man-paigner.”
“I called him worse to his face! How dare you cast shade on what we do here. Your entire church couldn’t match an hour of labor we do here in a lifetime. Yet all the slaughter you’ve accomplished today, know that my daughters and I could kill twice as many again before morning!”
“But . . . you are not going to, right?” inquired Victor.
“Can it, pizza breath,” she scolded before turning back to Bubo. “You had your whole adventure planned so perfectly—only one tiny detail overlooked: how you were going to get out of the Euphorium with your prizes? In other words, you had no plan at all. This is a den of spiders! It is, by definition, a trap! Even if your maidens managed to overpower the Lavender Leek here, what then? What did you plan to do about us millions of deadly hunters watching your every step?”
“For you all,” Bubo said smugly, “I have a rolled up newspaper.”
“Onions aren’t even a pizza topping, really,” Victor interjected.
“On a good veggie slice, yes, people put onions!” snapped Ariadne.
“But for you, my dear Ariadne,” said Bubo, “I have something special.”
“How special can it be? Until five minutes ago you thought I was a leggy blonde.”
Bubo tsk-tsked. “Smart remarks like that are why you’ve been a spinster for three millennia.”
All eight of her eyes rolled. “I’m a spinster because I challenged a goddess and forced her to bless me! And you wonder why I say it so many fucking times!”
Bubo’s spurs jangled as he walked toward her on the catwalk. “You have eight legs, Ariadne. I suggest you start using some of them to run.”
Thousands of spiders chittered as they prepared to defend their queen.
“Stand down, my daughters. As the beefy bro in the movies says: I have got this.”
Bubo tossed back his cape and removed something from his belt. “Behold the Axe of Spider Kill. Thus dubbed and anointed by the Arch-patriarch of the CKE.” It sorta looked like a big scalloped Twinkie on a skewer.
“Oh, here comes the lictor!” cried Ariadne. “Think I haven’t seen that before? Your angry-little-man toy has no power over me.”
“Is that so? I propose an experiment.”
With a backhand, Bubo brought the axehead down with all his weight on Ariadne’s head. She didn’t even flinch.
You know how when you have a spider in your kitchen and you clump up a paper towel and smash it for all you’re worth? Got it! You must have because it disappeared. But then you check inside and there’s no spider in there. So you look around the counter and—hey, there it is, making a dash for it! So you smash it again. You do this like ten times, each time exactly the same, and you are like, What the fuck, how have you not died already?
Nothing happened to Ariadne. The axe didn’t bounce off, it didn’t pass through, it didn’t miss. It just didn’t work. I don’t even know what to tell you, it’s just one of those things.
“Is it my turn yet?” Ariadne said, rubbing her palps together.
Bubo backed away in horror.
“Ah, good!” She spat at him.
Bubo screamed and dropped the axe. He turned and ran until he smashed his face into a wall, then he turned back with his hands raised and screamed some more.
A full cannonade of spinnerets stared him down. “No,” he managed to cry before a diarrhea of webbing exploded at him from every direction, encasing him in a sticky mess, all except his head. He was pinned helplessly to the wall.
Ariadne skittered up to Bubo. “Say something disgusting to me,” she said softly, caressing his cheek with one of her long forelegs. “I desire it very much.”
Bubo stopped struggling. At her touch, he began to weep.
Sure, that’s one way to do it, thought Victor. Be a meter long horror, juicy-full of glue and poison, and they cry like babies. But where’s the art, I ask.
“What are you going to do to me?” sobbed Bubo.
“Me?” said Ariadne. “Nothing.”
A large blue spider with a red splotch on its back descended slowly from the ceiling. It stopped in front of Bubo’s face, glowing slightly with bioluminescence, as if radioactive.
“Lady Ariadne, do you mind if I record a brief statement before you continue?” Victor asked. “It’s kind of my thing.”
“Sorry, Violet Storm,” said Ariadne. “The biomagnetic fields created by this many spiders will jam any digital equipment. Besides, your audience won’t have the stomach for what we are about to witness.”
Bubo’s complexion paled a few shades.
“Are you sure?” said Victor. “Dodoville’s into some pretty gruesome shit. I tried to skeeve them out once or twice, but it didn’t even faze them.”
Ariadne turned sharply. “You are a guest in my house! Now have some manners and enjoy the entertainment!”
“A good host might bring out a chair,” he said, as if to nobody. “Maybe a refreshment.”
Ariadne ignored him.
“Please, my Queen,” stammered Sir Bubo. “We at the CKE always meant to pay you. Whatever price you name, you’ll get it. We just need the silks now. Accept a down payment. Please.”
“This is all the payment we require. For the silks you already stole!”
“How did they get those exactly,” asked Victor, “if security here is as tight as you say?”
“You are going to feel a pinch,” Ariadne informed Bubo.
The glowy blue spider stabbed a foreleg into Bubo’s right cheek. The flesh convulsed in pain. Gradually, the twitching subsided as that side of his face entered paralysis. The jaw locked, fastening that corner of his mouth open at a few centimeters. On the other side of his face, the eye opened in terror as Bubo whimpered for mercy.
Ariadne turned to Victor.
“The Elizabethans used to say, if you see the spider in your cup before you swallow, you shall surely die. It sounds like superstition but . . . Do you want to know why they believed that?”
“Pleathe,” blubbered Bubo, his tongue thick from the neurotoxin. “The Church will be your thlaveth. We’ll w
orthip you as the one true god. Harthur? Who’th that guy? He thoundth made up!”
The blue-glowing spider stabbed a foreleg into the other cheek, injecting another dose of poison. Once again half of Bubo’s face twitched violently and then came to complete rest, like a bug zapped by roach spray.
The only animate part left of Bubo was the eyeballs, which watched the spider’s egg-shaped body intently.
Using its eight legs like cranes, it lowered its body into Bubo’s frozen jaw. The Onion thought he could hear the metallic hairs of the legs scraping against Bubo’s teeth. The hairy body rose several times in and out of Bubo’s mouth as if it was scratching it’s back on the tongue.
“What’s it doing?” asked Victor.
“I’m not giving you the Animal Planet narration!”
“Seriously, though.”
“Stimulating the salivary glands.”
“Ew. Why?”
“You have eyes enough to watch!”
The two rearmost legs stabbed under the jaw. The throat began to contract repeatedly. Slowly, one joint a time, the legs followed the body into the maw. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the eyelids fluttered open and Bubo’s breath caught. The twitch in the neck continued. Victor could see the bulge of the spider in the throat as Bubo choked. Then the passageway cleared and the knight again drew breath.
“How do you train your soldier to do that?” Victor asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What incentive did you give that spider to sacrifice herself like that? I’m not judging, just curious.”
“Nothing, actually,” said Ariadne. “That’s just how spiders are. They see a human orifice—a mouth, a nostril, a butthole—their instinct is to crawl right in and die there.”
“No.”
“Any hole at all. Even an open wound! Can hardly resist. Usually, though, we wait till you’re asleep.”
“Funny,” Victor said, “but not that funny.”
“I mean, even I feel the lure,” she said, a drop of venom falling from her palps. “Think of the cost to me. For millennia, I have been pursuing a plan for global power. All that time and energy, accumulating knowledge and influence, waiting for the right opportunities. But then I take one look at you . . .”
“Stop!”
“Listen. I’m a big girl,” she said teasingly, “but I can fit myself in some tight spaces. Maybe after this, we can get a drink or two, and later if we’re having a good time—”
“You’re trying to make me uncomfortable.”
Ariadne made a non-committal noise, brushing her cephalothorax “accidentally” against him. “Watch now, darling. It’s starting.”
Suddenly, Bubo retched. Up came a mess of grape cola and corn chips.
“Gross,” said Victor, indulgently.
Vomiting was a typical part of the lacrimation ritual, it had never bothered him, but he wanted to seem polite.
A dribble of blood appeared on Bubo’s lip and poured out in a thin cascade. It blackened as it flowed.
“Do you like tripe?” the spider asked inquisitively.
The chunks came in spurts, covered in dark blood.
“That’s . . . not partially digested food.”
Ariadne’s drool hit the catwalk with a hiss. “No. Do you like tripe?” she repeated.
“No, and I don’t like sweetbreads either!”
Ariadne’s surprisingly musical laugh rang out.
“Wrigglety, jiggelty, tickledy spider!” she sang.
“You have a beautiful voice.”
“Of course I do. You can’t weave for three thousand years without a way to make the time pass. ‘Who can say why-der he swallowed the spider? He’s not even a fy-der!’”
Something dark and spongy fell out of the mouth and hit the catwalk with a wet plop.
“There’s your sweetbread, my treat!”
Victor watched in fascination. “What does this? What did you inject him with?”
“Inject?”
“Chemical. Enzyme, neurotransmitter. To cause this reaction.”
Ariadne shook her head. “No chemicals. Just plain old howling fantods.”
“Who?”
“Skeevies. Creepies. Fear, dread, gross-out yuck. It’s a reflex.”
“How can it be a reflex? Surely he’s dead by now?”
“Don’t be dull. Once the body crosses a threshold of agony it becomes impossible for it to die for a while. I promise you he feels all of this.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s heart.”
“Could be. Anyways, bones last.”
“What do you mean, ‘Bones last’?” cried Victor. “There’d be nothing to force them out if only bones were left!”
“‘Bones last’ is what I mean ‘bones last!’ Anyhow, let’s away. Unless you want to watch a man spit up his own skull?”
She was asking. It was an honest question.
“Not if I can’t have video footage, no.”
Ariadne laughed again. “Biomagnetic interference! You are such a dumbass.”
“Oh come on! I suffered severe science-related trauma as a child!”
“I have to trick you somehow. Here you are in my lair, a highly trained warrior in invincible and incredibly skintight body armor. You are welcome by the way.”
“That reminds me, I’d really like to know—”
“And also, thank you,” said Ariadne, leering out of at least six of her eight eyes.
“—how the Pestilence got enough silk for four horses. I had to sell a fleet of traffic helicopters to pay for mine.”
“Leave a girl her secrets, won’t you?” she giggled, wiggling her opisthosoma at the pedicel.
“I really could have used video of a confession from Bubo. To show the wicked of Dodoville what happens when I’m outnumbered eight to one.”
“Wasn’t your very public triumph at the joust enough?”
“For today, yes. But sometimes a vigilante has a slow streak. Plus it’s the least you could have done after I cleaned out your . . . infestation.”
“I owe you no debt, vigilante! The Violet Storm exists at my pleasure.”
“I could say Ariadne the Weaver now exists at mine! It’s not as you say. You would not have had as easy a time with those shieldmaidens as you had with Bubo Skymole.”
“So you say. Yet I did rescue you, vigilante. So I hope you don’t intend to leave tonight without giving me a thank you kiss.”
Victor eyed the spider, trying to gauge if she was serious.
“I’m not sure I’d want to—”
Ariadne stiffened. “Watch how you finish that sentence if you like your innards on the inside.”
“Compromise my identity.”
“Take that mask off, Victor Cumin,” she said, stroking his hip with her tarsus. “You have no secrets from me.”
“But cameras do work in here. I don’t want to be blackmailed tomorrow.”
She seemed to smile at him. “After all the dangers you faced today, you fear the desire of a . . . needful woman?”
“This is a spider’s den,” said Victor. “As you said before, it is by definition a trap.”
Ariadne giggled. “Which is only fun if you let yourself get caught in it. Listen, there’s nothing I can do to you that I need your permission for. But I’m asking your consent. Just a regular girl who wants a taste of your affection. Don’t I deserve it? After all, I fought for you, I protected you, and for heaven’s sake, I dressed you! Besides. Aren’t I the most beautiful of my kind?”
In truth, Victor supposed he had never seen eyes so large, so purple, so . . . quantinous on a woman before.
“You want to know how the Pestilence got those silks?” asked Ariadne teasingly. “Well, have you thought about how hard it is to get you here? We weave you a miracle material, and you send that stuffy old skiapod to pick it up. We don’t even get to take your measurements. My daughters and I offer free tailoring services!”
“I hope you’re not suggesting . . . Many pe
ople died today!”
“The atrocities which these spiteful knights committed, they had been planning for nearly a century: it was only ever a matter of time. But today, you not only defeated them, you humiliated them and destroyed any pretense they had to honorable intent.”
Victor thought about this. It made a modicum of sense, but . . .
“And you looked really cool doing it,” Ariadne continued. “Flying through the sky. Riding your motorbike. Rocking that ssssexy jumpsuit.”
“How pathetic you sound!” Victor spat. “All that carnage today just so you could . . . could . . .”
Ariadne sighed. “See, this is why you should have let us measure you. The skiapod sewed your underpants too tight: that’s why you can’t enjoy an otherwise perfect ego-stroking moment. No, it wasn’t just to flirt with you. As the matriarch of the arachnids, I don’t have the luxury of being quite that selfish. But yes, today was just for you. Your various escapades around town—you have just produced, starred in, and are about to distribute internationally the most compelling advertisement for the featherweight, invincible armor my daughters and I make here. And when resources begin flowing in from around the world, the humans who rule Dodoville shall know they do so at my pleasure.”
The glistening spider took four steps forward toward the Purple Onion, (which was basically one step but with a lot more bristling of spines) and whispered.
“And today, my pleasure will be a kiss from the handsome man who defended me from the naughty-waughty knight who twied to steal my pwetty cwothes!”
She swayed and hummed seductively. The melody seemed just beyond the threshold of recognition as if he could almost but not quite put words to it.
Wrigglety, jiggelty, tickledy.
One by one, Bubo’s ribs were rising out of his mouth in fluid motion. Kind of hypnotic to watch in its way.
Down on the factory floor, someone was still axing away at the loom.
EPISODE SEVEN: The Howling at Home
IN THE OBSERVATORY atop Davy Castle’s west tower, Victor Cumin sat at his desk, reading the morning papers. His literal-goddamn-everything hurt. Even for the Violet Storm, the previous day had been particularly fight-intensive. He’d nearly been struck by a missile, too.
