He began to cry. He put his face over his hands and began to sob uncontrollably. He couldn’t hurt Lorna, no matter what she had done. He didn’t have it in him. All his anger was turning into hatred, not for her and not even for the meat head, but for himself. He had allowed himself to become everything he hated in life. He had become a bad husband, he had become a drunk who was ready to throw it all away just so he could have his next fix. In short, he had become his father. His sobs began to slow, until he was able to lower his hands and rest them on the table. He looked up at the window and saw that it was beginning to get dark. The kitchen had taken on a gloomy ambience that made him feel even more uneasy. He stood up and clicked on the light and then went over to the window so he could close the blind. He caught sight of his reflection in the window. His eyes looked swollen and blotchy. He needed a good wash and a shave, that was for certain. It was no wonder that Lorna wanted to fuck someone else if this is what she had to come home to, a grubby crybaby with a limp dick and beer on his breath. He looked at the sorry reflection for another moment and then he dropped the blind. He decided right there and then that he was going to get the truth from Lorna and then he was going to win her back. He dumped the rest of his beer down the sink and snapped the kettle on, ready to make himself a strong coffee. Whilst the kettle was beginning to grumble he went out of the kitchen and up the stairs. He had a shower, shaved the four-day growth of beard off his face and out on clean clothes. Just before he left the bathroom he pulled open the medicine cupboard and grabbed the bottle of aftershave that Lorna had bought him around two years ago for his birthday. He seldom wore it, but today was a special occasion. He dripped some into his hands, rubbed them together and slapped it onto his smooth skin. It burned for a moment and then cooled. He checked himself in the mirror. He wasn’t looking too shabby, other than his bloodshot eyes. He was just on his way back downstairs when he heard Lorna’s key in the front door. He felt his heart jolt a little, this was going to be it. This was going to be the first day of the rest of his life.
3.
Senior Consultant Doctor James Benchley was not having the day that he had hoped for. He just wanted to have a regular day with no dramas and no special cases, but no, it hadn’t been allowed to happen. It was almost as if the gods of medical practice knew that he had some annual leave booked and it was due to start the moment he finished his shift. Of course, today they had a special and he had had to stay until the experts arrived and assessed his patient. He was already two hours over his finishing time and his patience was starting to wear a little thin. He had his plans for this evening so he could begin his two weeks off with a little style. There was three hours to go before he was due to meet a girl by the name of Naomi. Naomi had promised that he was going to have a night that he would never forget. He was going to be taken to the dizzy heights of pleasure, the likes of which he had never known in all his born days. Benchley was no slouch, he knew that they all said those kinds of things, but when he had been looking at her picture on his laptop he could well and truly believe at least some of the things that she was saying. She said that she was nineteen years old, but he could tell that she was closer to thirty. Not that it mattered, not that any of it mattered because Naomi was just another in a long line of escorts that Benchley had hired over the last several months. Naomi was looking like a treat. In her picture she had that perfect olive skin, breasts that were bursting out of her black lacey bra and a firm and very squeezable arse buried in a pair of figure hugging panties. He had booked her for tonight with the intention of taking her into town for a few hours for dinner and drinks and then he was going to bring her home and get rid of all of his frustration and energy whilst she writhed underneath him. He was particularly looking forwards to this one because she looked so much like Nurse Bradshaw that worked in his department. He had his eye on Bradshaw for a long time, even before his wife upped and left him. His wife had caught him masturbating over a pornographic magazine whilst lying in the bath. It had been the only time in his life that he had ever forgotten to lock the door behind him and it was the only time his wife had ever wanted to come into the bathroom to talk things over. She had breezed through the door, saw what he was up to and she had screamed loud enough to set off the dog that lived at the Harrisons three doors down. Benchley’s magazine had flown up in the air and at least four of the pages had come loose from the staples. The loose pages had dropped into the soapy water and the rest of the magazine had dropped on top of Benchley’s stiffened member temporarily hiding it from view. His wife had stood looking at him for a moment, looking at the soaking pages of young twenty-something girls showing their most intimate parts to their reader, and then she had called him a sicko and slammed the door on him. Their marriage hadn’t been the best one on earth to begin with, and after that it had died a slow and painful death. He had come home from the hospital one day and just found her gone. There was no note, no ‘fuck you I’m outta here’ nothing. He had wandered around the house looking at all the empty cupboard space that she had left behind feeling almost dazed. After about an hour and a half he had booked in his first escort to come and visit him in his home. His hands had been shaking like crazy when he had been punching the keys on the laptop. He didn’t even care what the woman was like as long as she came round and did his bidding. She had arrived and she had been tall, blonde and probably on the dark side of fifty, but he didn’t care. He had paid her for a topless handjob and she had obliged. It had only taken a couple of strokes before he had ejaculated, but again, it didn’t matter. Once she had gone he had begun to laugh at his new found freedom, a life without that oppressive bitch, a life where he could do what he wanted and perhaps even win over Nurse Bradshaw. But there was always a fly in the ointment and that came in the shape of Bradshaw’s dorky boyfriend. He was the most unlikely guy in the world to score with a girl as good looking as her, but at the end of every shift, he would be there with flowers or some other shitty gift for her, and she would giggle and squeeze his bony arse and off they went leaving Benchley to continue his fantasy land within his own mind. So he kept on with the escorts, hoping that one day the goofball would be history and he could make his move, but it hadn’t happened and it continued not to happen. Benchley had pretty much become addicted to the escorts. He had to start rationing himself to weekends only when he found that his pretty substantial wage was running out long before his next pay day was due. At least it gave him something to look forward to at the end of a long week. Tonight he was getting Naomi and that would round his generally shitty day off just nicely.
The firefighter had been brought into the hospital at around ten that morning. The paramedics had said that he had been bitten by an unidentified spider. His body had been paralyzed ever since. When they wheeled him in on the stretcher his left hand had been poking up in the air. There were two large blisters on the web of skin between the thumb and the forefinger which Benchley assumed was the site of the spider bite. The outstretched hand had been shaking as if it had been exposed to a period of extreme cold. The skin on the man’s body had taken on a sinister dark colour, almost as if it was dying off and beginning to rot off his bones as he still breathed. Benchley recommended that he be put in a private room just in case there was a remote chance of contamination. They hooked him up to a heart monitor and drips to keep his fluids up and took some blood samples to try and find out what sort of poison was coursing through the veins of the sick man. The results came back unknown, they didn’t have a damn clue. It wasn’t from any kind of spider that they had encountered before. Benchley had almost lost his cool when he heard the news and that there was a television crew setting up outside of the hospital trying to get the lowdown on the man that had been bitten. It was becoming more obvious that somebody had been talking to the press and trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame out of the whole thing.
The firefighter was finally identified as Gordon Lewis and he had been sent into the house of a hysterical woman who had been screaming
about a monster spider in her bedroom. She had called every single one of the emergency services out to her home. It was poor old Gordon that had been given the charge of going to investigate. After five minutes without a response from Gordon, two more of the crew had gone in and found Gordon lying on the floor of the bedroom, unable to move or even speak. One of them managed to capture a picture of the monster spider which, by this time had been sitting on the dressing table in the bedroom. The picture had found its way onto the internet and that’s when the media interest began to grow. Benchley listened to this story, as told by D.C.I Coleman and shook his head. The whole thing had sounded like utter nonsense to him, but he had a patient and he had to care for them, the media would have to wait.
Gordon was stable. He showed no signs of getting any worse, but his paralysis was showing no signs of letting up. He called Nurse Bradshaw into the room.
“Stay with him, check his signs every ten minutes. If anything changes, you let me know straight away,” said Benchley.
“Yes Mr. Benchley,” she said smiling.
“Thank you. Could you check his signs now before I go please,” said Benchley.
Bradshaw nodded and went over to Gordon. She took a small torch from her top pocket and looked into Gordon’s eyes. Benchley stepped back whilst Bradshaw went to work and allowed his gaze to fall onto the seat of Bradshaw’s blue nurses uniform. It was probably a size too big, but it fitted well enough to allow Benchley a good look at her firm round buttocks as they pressed against the material. He began to think of his escort and how he was going to get her on all fours. He was going to imagine Bradshaw as he was barreling into her. He was going to imagine what it would feel like with Bradshaw. He was….
He snapped out of the daydream and averted his gaze just as Bradshaw turned to get the blood pressure monitor. He felt himself beginning to blush and hoped upon hope that Bradshaw wouldn’t see the red creeping out of his collar and up the slightly grizzled cheeks of his face. He cleared his throat.
“I’m going to go and do the rounds. Keep me up to date please,” he said.
“Yes Mr. Benchley,” she said again.
He gritted his teeth and walked out of the room praying that he would be able to go home soon so he could get rid of his frustrations.
He had only been out of the room for two minutes and thirty-three seconds when all fucking hell broke loose.
4.
It hadn’t taken long for Laurence’s life to come right apart at the seams. Lorna hadn’t even taken her coat off when Laurence had asked her if she was seeing someone else. Her automatic response was going to kick in and tell him not to be so silly, but this time it didn’t. this time she had actually gone and told him the truth. She had said the words with her back to him, perhaps so she couldn’t see his heart breaking in front of her eyes. There was still a great big part of her that loved him very much, despite the fact that she had seldom seen him sober in the last few years. The other part of her resented him deeply. It resented him for not being the man that she wanted him to be, for not being the one that was going to make her life joyful and happy and to make her feel like a princess every day of her life. But none of it made her want to hurt him, she just wasn’t that sort of a person. She turned slowly around and saw the look on his face. His mouth was open and his bottom jaw was trembling as if the room had dropped twenty degrees. Tears were starting to spill from his eyes and roll lazily down his cheeks. He actually looked clean for once and he didn’t smell like a combination of old beer and dried piss. He had actually made an effort for the end of their marriage, even though his bloodshot eyes told her that he very likely had an early start on the devil’s brew.
“Why?.....why?....” was all he could say right now.
Lorna let out a sigh. “Laurence, you know why. Look at us, look at our marriage. It doesn’t even exist anymore.”
“I thought we were happy,” said Laurence.
“Happy?” Lorna shouted suddenly. “Do you call this happy? I spend most of my time on my own whilst you are our pissing our money up the fucking wall. Then you come home, demand feeding and fucking and then you pass out and snore all fucking night. Do you really think that’s what makes me happy? Do you really think that’s what I want from a marriage? How long did you think I would put up with it Laurence? How long has it even been since you made me a cup of tea, or held me and told me everything was going to be alright, or shown me any kind of affection which didn’t involve your dick. How long has it even been since you made me come? Do you even know? Do you have any fucking idea?”
She stopped and turned away. She walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Laurence hesitated in the hallway for a moment. The walls still seemed to be reverberating from the verbal tirade that Lorna had just unleashed. He was gob smacked by the fact that she was the one that was cheating and she had the nerve to shout at him. He walked slowly into the kitchen. His temper was beginning to rise and his hands were balling up into fists. He took a few deep breaths and tried to muster as much self-control as he could.
“Who is he?” said Laurence in a voice that was as calm as he could possibly make it.
“What sort of a question is that?” said Lorna, her voice slightly husky from her shouting.
“You are obviously fucking someone else, so are you going to tell me who it is? Or do I have to start guessing.”
Lorna turned her head towards him and the words she was about to say died right there in her mouth. He looked like a beaten man. He looked like there was nothing left for him to give. Why would she even bother to try and save this utter sham of a marriage? It was time. It was time for her to come clean.
“It’s Deak Jones,” she said in a meek voice.
Laurence’s eyes clouded over and darted around their sockets as he tried to work out who she was talking about. “Who the fuck is….”
“The gym. He’s my personal trainer at the gym,” said Lorna.
Laurence felt a horrible sensation in his guts. He felt like someone and slugged him square in the solar plexus.. Suddenly there was no air in the room and Laurence felt his head begin to swim. He staggered to the other side of the table and crashed down into the seat. Lorna was watching his every move. She was coiled, ready to bolt if Laurence turned nasty. He wasn’t really the type but she didn’t want to take any chances. It wasn’t every day that he got handed a piece of news quite like this one. There was silence in the room. The air was filled with an uneasy tension. Laurence was trying to find the right words to say. The urge to just scream at her to get the fuck out was overwhelming, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of such an easy exit from their life together. The urge for another drink was almost too much to bear. His mouth and throat were so dry that he couldn’t even swallow. He took a few more deep breaths and then he finally spoke.
“Do you love him?” he said.
“Oh for Christ’s sake…” mumbled Lorna.
“Do you fucking love him?” roared Laurence suddenly. His voice had begun to break up because of the desert in his throat. Lorna jumped as if she had been electrocuted. She jerked in her seat and uttered a little yelp of surprise. There was silence in the room again. Laurence had his eyes fixed on her and his bottom lip was trembling with fury. Lorna planted her feet underneath the table, ready to make a run for it. She had to tell him the truth, it was about time. Living a life with secrets was not really her style and it was draining her. The truth, as the old saying would say, was going to set her free.
Dawn of the Spiders: Special Edition Page 2
