With and Without Class

by David Fleming

  He felt lightheaded as he walked upstairs to put on clothes. It had really happened; he was sure of it. He wasn’t just under stress. But weird things happened. Drill Sergeant Mavers from Basic had killed himself two years ago in a hotel and nobody knew why. Maybe this was how it started. You think you see things. He looked down at the scratches on his legs and a tear in his boxers. That thing did it. It was a spider. A White-Daddy? That kid said something like that. Was there some local folklore surrounding that thing? He put on his t-shirt and jeans and shoes. He didn’t know anyone in town who could help him and telling others might not be a good idea if he ever expected to sell the house.

  He grabbed a shotgun and shells out of his bedroom closet. The box of shells looked like it had been wet and the paper of the .410 cartridges were a variety of dark reds. He unlatched the breach and stared down barrels with the help of the flashlight. Sergeant Mavers always shouted during rifle inspections, “Your weapon is your life, Mets! Guard your life!” He inspected the hammers and triggers before loading each barrel.

  It wasn’t just the scratches on his legs. There had been signs all over if he’d only put it together. Those deflated possum corpses. That’s how spiders ate; they paralyzed you with their fangs, dissolved your insides and sucked you out. That hole near the back of the flue in the basement: that was where it came from. It came from the caves in those bluffs behind the house. Casey stuffed his pocket with shells, grabbed his laptop. He’d wait the thing out in the kitchen. His Gladiator DVD would keep his mind busy, even if he had to wait all night. It probably only came out at night.

  He ran the DVD with the sound off and poured a coffee mug half-full with Grey Goose, wishing he had vermouth. It was all right to drink now that this had happened. The two other kitchen doors were closed so it couldn’t get past. He opened the cellar door slowly, peering inside with the flashlight and the shotgun. Nothing.

  The chair was hard with the drink sharp and pungent in the dirty mug and the shotgun resting over the wooden table with hammers cocked. The flashlight pointed at the black doorway and his finger rested against the trigger guard. He divided attention between the screen and the doorway, sipping vodka. He could figure this out. Figure out what he was up against. It was fast. And when he touched it, it was hot. He didn’t expect spiders to be hot. But this was an enormous spider.

  In his engineering classes, systems didn’t always work as well when you scaled them up. Especially thermal systems. It was a surface-area to volume thing. Bigger things weren’t always as thermally efficient. And spiders didn’t have sweat glands or tongues to pant with to cool themselves. So maybe they’d lived in the caves before. Nobody knew how extensive and deep those caves were. Maybe they lived down there to regulate their temperatures.

  He used the glow from the computer screen to read his watch: 2:18. It was quiet outside; no crickets, no owls. The kitchen window had been broken and nailed over with particle board, letting moonlight slivers streak across his back onto the counter and cupboards to his right. The card shuffling sound came from somewhere down there.

  It seemed too coincidental that he’d seen one of these things and nobody else really knew of them. Something must have changed recently. Like the farmers drained the aquifer that fed streams in their caves. Screwed up their ecosystem. Starved them out of their natural habitat. Made them come out into the heat.

  On the computer, Casey watched Russell Crowe and Richard Harris discuss the future of Rome as his eyes grew heavy. He looked to the doorway. Maybe the light scared it. He turned off the flashlight and waited for his eyes to adjust. He could just see the doorframe and the floor. It was enough. He looked to the screen and whispered, “And what is Rome, Maximus?”

  He checked his watch again. Thirty minutes had passed. He thought maybe he had dozed off for a minute or two so he slapped his cheek and blinked. It seemed the spider’s white legs pawed the lower ledge of the doorway, but they weren’t.

  It had attacked him earlier. Totally unprovoked. Spiders didn’t do that. Did they? Animal lovers on nature shows talked about how snakes and tarantulas were noble creatures, only attacking when provoked. But that was bullshit. Spiders were carnivores; hunters. Every animal on this planet had developed an understanding, a suite of instincts toward every other animal, based on one thing: size. This spider didn’t just pop-up on the scene overnight. It evolved over millions of years, side-by-side with humans, testing its limits, apparently, successfully since no one seemed to know of them.

  It knew it was on equal footing. It would come upstairs.

  He thought about how hard he had worked during the day. Now he couldn’t sleep because of this. It seemed unreal. He wished he was in a nice soft hotel bed in Boston. The Hilton. A king-sized bed at the Hilton. He smiled as he eyed the black doorway.

  Casey jerked his head up. Something was different. His computer screen was blurry and he couldn’t see the doorway. His eyes focused on his watch: 3:40. The doorway was empty. Silence. A sensation shot through his spine as neck hairs prickled. He spun, knocking the chair, jarring the table and pointed the flashlight, clicking the switch. Nothing. He clicked it again, and again. Darkness. He tried to make out counters behind the streaks of moonlight separating the room. The clicking sound came from the far side.

  He stepped backward into the cellar door, slamming it close. “Gotcha.” His barrel rose as he walked toward moonlight in the center of the room.

  It ran the perimeter, springing from counter to floor like a pile of deformed bones tumbling and twitching around a shell body that seemed to roll over waves. Casey followed the card-shuffling with his barrel, spinning circles until he wasn’t sure what direction it moved. The shuffling of two-clawed legs over tiles quickened. Dangling bristles flashed past in the moonlight and he spun to where it had been. It ran behind him as he spun. It came forward, curling-finger palps quivering around fangs, wet eyes glinting. The barrel rose. The hammer clicked. Misfire. It darted to the right and scurried behind him. Casey spun, head dizzy as he pictured the deflated possums on his lawn. He turned the shotgun over like a club with the tangle of white bristly legs lunging. The stock crashed onto its back, thin legs prodding and pushing him about like swords. A bang issued, his leg burning furious pain as he fell and the spider dashed and leapt onto the sink.

  “It shot me!” Casey cried, crawling toward the kitchen’s back door, dragging the shotgun. He staggered onto his good leg, bursting through the door.

  The thing had shot him. As if it had known the second cartridge wasn’t rain-soaked and had deliberately crammed its leg inside the trigger guard. He stumbled across the dining room into the family room and waited with his back against the front door, his hand warm with blood. The buckshot had grazed the outside of his right thigh. He unlatched the barrel, ejecting shells. The room spun and his pulse beat his neck. His hand dug into his pocket, shaking shells onto the floor. He clenched a shell and fumbled in the darkness to stuff it into the breach as shuffling came from the dining room, darting about chaotically.

  Casey opened the front door and closed it behind him, dropping the open-breached shotgun in the grass near the Porsche. He found the magnetic key compartment under the wheel well, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “The morning. Wait till the morning.” The woods seemed so still. There had to be a way to kill that thing. He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t force the idea out of his mind that it had shot him. It didn’t matter and there was no way it could get inside the car. Still, he checked to make sure the doors were locked before resting his eyes.

  He awoke to a hand tapping the windshield. The man wore a white terrycloth bathrobe. As Casey tilted his head, he noticed a white robe wrapped around his bare shoulders as well. He got out of the car and recognized Sergeant Mavers’ broad strong features but the sergeant’s hair was long and wet, his thick neck was flushed and beaded with water like he’d just finished a shower.

  “Sergeant Mavers?” Casey looked around at the woods and the house, bew
ildered. “Why are we wearing Holiday Inn bathrobes?”

  Mavers stared at the full silver moon and the brown and silver ridges of limestone bluffs. “Not much time left before sunrise.”

  Casey walked closer to Mavers but something stopped him. He felt brimming strength within Mavers. As if he might swell up and fill the sky. “Sergeant… what happened to your hair?”

  “You’ve got a job to finish. Don’t you, Mets?” Mavers looked at him. His pupils dilated, flooding fear and wonder into the pit of Casey’s stomach.

  Casey flinched and steadied himself on the hood of the Porsche. His leg burned and blood from his thigh soaked through white terrycloth. “It shot me, Sergeant.” His lips trembled. “It’s smart.” He clenched his eyes.

  “This is bigger than you, Mets. You’ve got obligations. Did you forget, Mets? Did you think I would let you forget? Obligations: To Country. To men, Mets. That thing in your house is an abomination. It’s gone against God. The God we both love!”

  Casey shrunk closer to the car. “I—”

  Mavers raised a clenched fist. His voice boomed like thunder, stealing into the depths of Casey’s heart and lifting up on low shimmering soot clouds. “Genesis 1:26… God said, ‘I made man in my image so he shall have dominion and rule over all creatures!”

  His starry eyes fixed on the Sergeant, mouth gaping. “Dominion…” he said while in the Sergeant’s starry-eyed trance as he pushed from the car and blinked.

  Mavers went to him, his face full of fake sympathy, corners of his mouth fighting a grin. “Don’t you love this country God’s given us? Don’t you want to be a man? Don’t you deserve that house?”

  Casey touched the blood of his leg and looked to dry skin resting over a possum’s ribcage. Mavers grabbed his head and turned it away. “Don’t look at that!”

  “It’s my house,” Casey said. “Not the bugs’.” His head drooped to the ground. “I could get help in the morning. There could be someone in town who knows how to take care of it.”

  Mavers looked irritated, like his time was being wasted. “Mets. What’s your best weapon? What’s your best weapon, Mets?”

  “My mind.”

  “Use it. We both know damn well this house ain’t selling to anybody out of town. But that’s okay. Hill-jacks got money. It spends just the same. You let word out in Shukley’s there’s a White-Daddy running loose on your property—you’ll never sell that house.”

  “Gotta sell the house.”

  “That’s right, Mets. Gotta sell it.” Mavers led him to the other side of the car. He walked to the shotgun lying in the grass. “What’s this?” He picked up the gun and his face flashed red. “You let your weapon get away from you?” He snapped the breach close.

  “It’s a hundred-years-old, Sergeant.”

  He held the shotgun out toward Casey. “BULL-SPIT! She’s a sweet lady. She’ll clean house like a Mexican.”

  Casey limped over, took the gun and examined it. He looked behind his shoulder to Mavers walking toward the woods. “Where you going, Sergeant?”

  “We’ve both got things to do, Mets. It’s checkout time for me but you’ve still got twenty minutes before sunrise and you’re getting blood all over that ridiculous car you love so much.”

  Casey arched his neck, mumbling, “Sunrise… sunrise. Before sunrise.” His eyes opened and his watch showed 4:22. His thigh didn’t seem to be bleeding but it burned as he climbed out of the car.

  The shotgun rested in the grass and he pulled five shells out of his pocket, holding them to the moonlight, dropping darker red casings into the grass. It was quiet outside as he hobbled and grunted up the porch stairs with the barrel bouncing in front.

  The door swung inward with a creak and Casey peered inside at darkness. Listening for the scuttling, he cocked hammers and tried to make out folds in the drop cloth he knew draped over a couch in the middle of the room.

  Casey crossed the threshold and pulled the door close against his back. It was dark except for rectangular grids of moonlight cast over the left side of the room by windows. He limped away from the door, listening. It was quiet. He heard his breaths and slowed them as he fanned the barrel slowly across the room. He stepped toward the center, feeling it in there. It had its white legs folded up in a ball somewhere. The air stirred. Smooth fangs scraped his shooting hand. The thing was soundless. One of the hammers fell with a click. Another misfire and he pushed his arm out, dropping the gun, pushing underneath the slick head as bristly legs beat over his face and back. Its legs shuffled and he fell to his hands and knees. Groping for the gun. Waiting for fangs in the back of his neck. His fingers found the rifle stock and the shuffling began in erratic fits and starts. He stood, limping backward just outside the light of the windows.

  It grew quiet as he rested his finger on the unspent trigger. He wondered about the toxicity of its venom and felt over his shooting hand, unsure if its fangs had broken skin. His neck muscles burned. It was so quiet. It waited. He wished he could see his hand. His finger and wrist seemed tight and his heart pounded against his chest as sweat crept into his eyes. Contours and shapes were almost visible in the darkness. He pointed the barrel at them and groaned, needing to switch hands—shoot with his left before the venom cramped up his right. It was waiting. He stomped his foot. “I’m here! Right here.” Shuffling within the darkness moved it closer, closer—farther, maybe.

  If it paralyzed him, it could devour him slowly. Clock-like movements as it loomed. Dead inhuman eyes. His deflated corpse tugged slowly into the lawn.

  The smiling crescent of eyes bounced as it rushed him and he stepped into the rectangular moonlight of window casements. He passed the shotgun to his left hand, stumbling on his right leg, falling backward, finger squeezing along the unspent trigger.

  It turned sideways, running along the wall as Casey kicked backward into the corner and propped the gun over his knee. White legs pattered along window panes like a gale of raindrops. Casey followed the welded BB at the end of the barrel as it wobbled toward the white flurry, pulling the trigger with the muzzle flashing red as the stock kicked into his bicep. Buckshot punched a tennis-ball-sized hole where the head fused with the thorax. Its right legs collapsed, bringing it to the floor as legs kicked and bounced it randomly, clear fluid spewing, flapping chunks of white shell around the hole.

  Palps buzzed and motionless eyes glared as it dragged toward him with one front leg while the rest went berserk like discordant arms. They stopped suddenly while the last leg pulled closer, staring. Casey brought his heel down on the leg, cracking and bursting its hot fluid, seeping through jeans and sock. He looked into its huge wet eyes. Inside its simple mind, it still crawled toward him. It had won somewhere deep inside there.

  He laughed forcefully, rolling his head between windowpanes and feeding eyes, laughing until his throat hurt and tears rolled over his cheeks.

  His palms pressed over the walls as he stood, then he kicked the carcass along the floor. It was heavy. He considered jumping with both feet onto the soft hairy abdomen and bursting it but he didn’t want the memory of what it would feel and sound like burned into his brain. Casey opened the front door and kicked it several times, bouncing its lifeless legs before getting it over the threshold and onto the porch. “Get out, bug!”

  He inspected his right hand in the moonlight. The fangs hadn’t broken skin, only scratched the surface in a red streak.

  Casey was surprised to find himself tired. He had to get a few things set right before trying for a couple hours sleep. Like closing that cellar door, reloading his shotgun, inspecting the wound in his leg; he’d at least need to put some iodine on it, eventually. He pulled the curtain off and took a short watchful shower.

  The bedroom door closed behind him. He slept on his side, facing the door with the shotgun. Casey closed his eyes and thought about throwing cement in the hole in the basement. Then he could finish the repairs and get the hell out of Shuckley’s. With some white paint, new
carpet, a new toilet, he could show the house to a real-estate agent. But a notion occurred to him that seemed half-inspired by stubborn pride. The house had a certain feel to it that he was beginning to like. Maybe he wouldn’t sell it after all. Maybe he needed to slow down for a while and enjoy the country. Hell, it was his house after all; not the bugs’

  The Natural Celebrity

  Roy wasn’t a big guy. That was the mystery of it. How could something so big come out of a 145 pound guy with a black crew-cut and skinny bird-like hands? Sure, in the duration of his thirty-four years, he’d looked into the stool from time to time, thinking, “Hey? that’s really big,” but he never thought it could take him anywhere. He’d grown to accept his mediocrity, his failures. I mean, after the divorce, being fired from dry-walling and the dishonorable discharge from the army for insubordination, he understood he was the guy that worked the telemarketing job, the one that wanted to leave the mobile homes but would die in them like his father had, regardless.

  Until his friend sent him an email. It had a link to a listing of websites of the world’s strangest competitions and there were thousands. How could that be, right? Thousands. But there were the kind-of weird ones: grape-eating, professional videogame playing, and the sadistic ones: finger-cutting, lifting stuff with parts of your body, and the supernatural ones: mind reading, vampire dueling. Towards the bottom, something caught Roy’s eye: 14th Annual International Stooley Tournament. It was hard for Roy to believe at first: an international competition with prize money in the hundreds of thousands where the winner only had to have a stool outweighing all others? Roy’s first thought was there was finally and definitely much too many people on this world. His second thought was maybe… just maybe. He found an eight-hundred number at the bottom of the Stooley webpage and dialed.