BRB

The thing was an enigma.
It was black, clearly, and sometimes it stood on the walls, at times on the ceiling, pretzel on top of the fridge too. It didn't quite have a face, but a remnant of one, as if from another time when distinct faces weren't as popular perhaps I could say. The thing was long, had legs, had arms, had a few sets of each. Eight or nine big round eyes, red, maybe, but black as well. If it caught the light just right I could see the tiny broom bristles of eyelashes dotting its lids.
And it blinked. Oh, did it blink. Staring. Greedy with its eyes. As if something were wrong with me instead of it. I could ask why it was in my house, why this wasn't quite my house anymore, but it stole my mouth, my thoughts, my words.
I didn't like the kitchen very much.
I didn't eat in there. No, sir, I lived on munchies from the corner store, bags of them, scattered around my living room. A few days ago I had summoned the courage and managed to staple a blanket to the door frame connecting the kitchen and the only room I trusted in my whole house so that it wouldn't look at me, dangle on by, waltzing, curtsying to the wind, serenading, preaching, horrifying.
Perhaps it was a peaceful creature, but I would never know; neither did I care to know, or know at all, or want to know.
There was a rat-tat-tat on the door, a subtle calling of my name. Silence. Loud pounding on the wooden door, the rusted metallic six falling from it with the hammering, leaving its comrades number two and five hung. I knew because it fell every time someone knocked. Jingle of the mechanism on the knob, damn, she found the key beneath the mat.
“What the hell have you been doing up here, John? You keep flaking on me. We were supposed to meet at the movies an hour ago, John. An hour. What has gotten into you?”
“Strange feelings. Fear. Contempt.” I blinked. “Anxiety.”
She planted her hand on her hip, her lovely shaped hip, and huffed. “Have you been taking your pills?”
“No.”
“That's probably why, Johnathan.”
“Sit with me.” I told her as she stood at the doorway, seemingly repulsed at the trash littering my living quarters, swishing her ruby hair as she normally did.
“This is ridiculous, baby,” she mumbled, surveying further before hopping over a pizza box, “I was trying to help you.”
“Was?”
“Am. I meant am,” she said, timidly sitting beside me on the worn couch as the pendulum swung on the big brown clock and it was nine o'clock on the dot.
“I'm sorry.”
“Are you?” she stated, staring at me with those cat eyes of hers that seemed to burst at the very sight of me, “Look at you. You're dirty. When was the last time you showered? Brushed your teeth? All I smell from you is cheese puffs.”
“The bathroom. There's something wrong with it.” I said as I readjusted my housecoat. Pat down the good ol' brown hair.
“What, like your plumbing? It's broken?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“The kitchen is in the way.”
“In the way of...”
“The bathroom.”
“And what's wrong with the kitchen? Why is it that you can't get to the bathroom?”
I turned to her, rotating like a ferris wheel, no – like a merry-go-round, the shining eyes of stallions acting captains of my face.
Two words set her off the most, made her writhe, scream, livid with red hot hate and anger and stormy thoughts. Crackling knuckles, fast like lightning strikes, conniving, grinding jaw, screeching teeth. Two words were her enemy, her loathsome trauma: “It's back.”
“Fuck, John! Fuck!” she shrieked, shooting up like a mad rocket from her place on the couch, “You are ridiculous! You are fucking ridiculous!”
She scrambled around the room, knocking down my telephone, my lamp, my boxes, tables, glasses and television. She threw a mug full of Coke Zero against the wall. It wasn't quite hard enough to break the mug itself but it did leave a hefty dent on the tan paint, along with a streak the colour of drippy chocolate. She tore down the curtains, threw them as far as she could which wasn't really far enough, they landed on her head, she screamed again and ripped them off.
“Want me to get my fucking shoe, John? Hm? Want me to squish it? Be your mommy? Take care of you when a wittle spider-wider wants to eat you?”
“Don't yell at me. The doctor told you not to yell at me.”
“Advanced arachnophobia my ass. You're just a pussy.”
“The doctor told you not to call me names.”
“Fuck you, John.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, you – you fucking douche canoe,” she said, sniffling, her eye makeup leaking from her face. And then a horrible grin spread across her ruby red lips like the Cheshire cat had suddenly possessed her. “I think the two of you should start over. Maybe you had a... bad first impression.”
“What?”
“I'll be right back.”
“What?”
“Be right back, John. BRB,” she huffed, rolling her eyes, “I'm going to go make you a new little friend to keep you company after I'm gone.”
“Gone?”
“Fuck you, John.”
She fought with the stapled blanket, tearing at it weakly, groaning, moaning, ripping it down after a few moments' worth of bantam muscle.
“No! Don't go in there!”
“Watch me, fuck-nugget.”
She waltzed in, so alike to the thing that I curled away. I could hear her summoning it, calling, teasing, but you don't tease the thing. You can't tease the thing, the little big black thing, the thing of darkness, of misery, of ugly.
It would wrap its web of horror around her and it would squeeze and consume.
Well, I wouldn't go near it. I didn't tell her to go in there and I perfectly warned her. It'd be her fault, the damn brat, if she died. When she died.
“Hey Johnny-Boy, I'm shakin' in my boots!”
Dainty steps, slid on the broken tile in front of the stove.
“Damn, John, this place is a wreck.”
Stopped.
“Aw, there he is! That little guy! He's a cutie, that one,” she exclaimed loudly, so loud it rang in my ears.
“Don't call it cute! Don't address it as a being!”
“Well you're just quite the looker, aren't ya fella? Think we could go to dinner some time? I'll buy, as long as you're better than my fuck-head ex-boyfriend Johnathan.”
“It'll fucking kill you.”
“What was that, Johnny? I can't quite hear you all the way in here, in the kitchen, dear – ”
She had that kind of piercing scream when she was startled, not her generic mad scream as heard before. I could hear her tittering, shuffling, “John? John? John, what the fuck?” and “John, it won't fucking get off of me!” and bumping into my table, scratching the walls, the rummy sound of the utensil drawer clanging open, oh, found the knife, alright now can you kill it before it kills you?
“Ow! John, it's fast! I cut my hand... Johnathan, I need your help! It's... It's bigger now!”
“I can't hear you all the way in the kitchen, dear.”
“John! Fuck you! Fu – ”
Momentary silence, the sound of feelers touching skin, feeling as they do, growing maybe, probably, and that spin of white string, that sticky nuisance of a thing, encompassing you into a cocoon, right? The stick of teeth. The gargle, gurgle, the sound accommodating the warmth spilling onto my kitchen floor. The legs holding you tight like a lover, deadly, lovely love.
The thump of your body hitting tile, forget the web, just fall and crack your head open.
“BRB? You're a dirty liar, dear.”