Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Bobby Vee – The Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Curtis has never cheated on a girlfriend, it’s just that his partner, Alyssa, has been too busy for him lately. And what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right? It seems the woman he’s been talking to has a few secrets of her own, however, and what Curtis doesn’t know could definitely hurt him.

======

Curtis bent over the steering wheel and studied his phone. His mouth felt dry, heart throbbing with excitement. Guilt added a strange flavour, making it all somehow more thrilling. The thrill of doing something wrong, dangerous even. He’d never cheated before, not on Alyssa, not on any girlfriend.

‘Are you coming or what? I can’t wait any longer!’ the most recent message said.

‘OMW!’ he tapped back.

‘I’m so wet, if you don’t get here soon I’m going to take care of it myself…’ the response came back almost instantly.

Light rain misted the windshield and windows. It was dark outside, there were no streetlamps in this part of town where Curtis had pulled the car over. He’d suffered a sudden attack of conscience. He shouldn’t be doing this, Alyssa had always been good to him. He’d been cheated on once and it really messed him up for a while. But like an addict he’d returned to the chat app he’d kept hidden on his phone. Scrolling up, through the messages, he stopped at the last picture Charlotte had sent him. Lit by candlelight, she pushed one arm across her breasts. Her other hand slid down the flat plane of her stomach, exploring. Most of her face had been cut out but a sickle of a smile, red, red lips, teased from the top edge of the pic. His resolve, among other things, hardened.

Curtis swiped to his GPS again. Charlotte had sent him the name of a housing community, Weaver Estates, and a street address. The estates didn’t appear on the map but the address did. He left the phone on the seat next to him and checked the screen every once in a while to make sure he was going in the right direction. She lived well outside of town. Maybe that was a good thing, less chance that someone he knew might see his car parked outside her place. He squinted into the darkness though, not seeing any light around the upcoming turnoff.

“Oh, I see, it must be new,” Curtis said. “Like, a new suburb.”

Headlamps fell across a sign on the side of the road, a stone block as long as a bus which read ‘Weaver Estates’. None of the landscaping had been filled in around the sign, however, no lawn, no gardens, leaving raw and upturned earth. A nearby billboard announced ‘Display Homes OPEN NOW!’ Curtis pulled past both signs, down the main drive of the housing estate.

Steering his way through the winding arteries of newly paved streets, Curtis still couldn’t see any lights. He saw many more houses that appeared to be under construction. Dumpsters and piles of construction materials lined the streets. Others homes looked complete, largely identical one and two story homes, but like the entrance to the estate their landscaping hadn’t been finished. Instead of lush, green, suburban lawns every yard was filled with dirt and bits of equipment or construction debris.

Curtis didn’t see any other cars. Not only were there no streetlights but he realised he couldn’t see lights in any of the houses either. Not a single porchlight or lit window. Everything was dark and felt empty and abandoned as he passed street after street of newly complete or unfinished houses. Actually, the word abandoned suggested a place that had once been occupied and then left behind. This place felt pre-bandoned, fresh out of the box, untouched. It was a ridiculous thought, obviously during the day the estate would have been a hive of activity with construction workers, real estate agents, and prospective homeowners coming and going. But somehow at night it felt like some strangely shaped natural phenomenon or an oasis that had never been seen by humans before. Well, there must have been at least some humans here. Unless Charlotte was leading him to the middle of nowhere as some kind of prank or test. It was always possible that Charlotte was really Alyssa or one of her friends, catfishing him to test his loyalty.

Curtis shook his head and tried to laugh. No, impossible, Alyssa was too tied up in her medical residency for any of that. When he first downloaded the chat app he’d told himself he was just looking for someone to talk to and a safe place to vent since she’d been preoccupied lately. That was what he told himself anyway, he’d always quietly known that he wanted more. But even then he’d only been hoping for some dirty talk and pictures, he genuinely hadn’t expected to go as far as meeting someone else in person. Now, he didn’t know what he wanted to come of this. A one-time thing? An affair?

With a jolt, Curtis realised he’d reached the address Charlotte had given him. Another anonymous two story house on a dead end street near the edge of the new suburb. Its yard was churned up dirt but there was light flickering behind the windows at least. He turned around and parked near the end of the driveway. The rain was dying off. His heart pounded harder as he picked up his phone. Charlotte had sent him another photo. It took him a moment to recognise the lower curve of her stomach, just above her hips. Her fingers probed toward a dark tuft of hair, the cleft beneath it, the promise. If he had any last minute reservations it was enough to dispel them.

Climbing out of the car, Curtis immediately noticed the silence. No traffic, no muffled televisions or music, no sounds of people, no dogs barking. No sounds from the nearby woods either, no owls or bats or insects. This was an in-between place, not human, not natural. Lifeless and strange. As empty as it appeared, he got the prickling sense that he was being watched. Probably it was just paranoia about what he was doing but he turned on his heels and scanned his surroundings in a full circle.

A black shape hunched on a nearby rooftop. Curtis jumped. There was little light but he could see an almost human shape, almost, shadowed against the sky. Stumbling backward, his foot hit the edge of the gutter and caused his ankle to twist. He almost fell before catching his balance with windmilling arms.

In his stumble, Curtis lost sight of the shadowy figure. When he looked back, it was gone. He wiped his eyes and swept his gaze across the other houses. It had disappeared. Maybe he’d imagined it. It had been perched on the rooftop and vaguely humanoid but monstrous, wrong. In his mind’s eye, he saw what must have been eyes, too many eyes, glittering like chips of glass. Maybe he really shouldn’t be doing this, he thought. Consciously, he felt excited but he must have been pretty guilty on some level if his subconscious was conjuring demons to haunt him.

Curtis thought about getting back in the car but the front door of Charlotte’s house opened. The ratcheting noise of its handle was very loud in the stillness. A slinky female silhouette filled the doorway.

“Hey? I heard your car pull up, what are you doing out here?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Curtis hurried up the driveway, his ankle lightly throbbing. “Charlotte?”

“Of course!” She laughed as she stepped back through the doorway. “Step into my parlour.”

Charlotte said it like a joke but if she was quoting something then Curtis didn’t get it. He’d been anticipating moving on her hard and fast, no words, just taking charge and hoping she’d be impressed by that, but now he felt out of rhythm. He felt like there were a thousand eyes on his back as he moved inside.

Candlelight filled the entryway. There was no furniture, instead the candles were set up on a nearby staircase. Charlotte beckoned him toward a living room where more candlelight danced across the walls. Following her, he nearly walked straight into a streamer of greyish material that drifted from the ceiling. A spiderweb. He jerked his head back and batted it out of the air but tried to play it off as he saw Charlotte watching.

“I just moved in, we don’t even have power turned on yet,” Charlotte said.

“Seriously?” Curtis said.

“It was why I was looking for people to chat to, because I don’t know anyone in the area.”

“You didn’t mention that.”

“You must have noticed how quiet it is out there. There’s not a lot of us in the neighbourhood just yet.”

“Of course.” Curtis shucked off his jacket and looked for somewhere to put it.

Charlotte was obviously telling the truth about having just moved in. There was hardly any furniture. A futon-style couch rested against the wall across from the entryway. A naked mattress had been dropped in the opposite corner. A single cardboard box sat against another wall. Candles had been set up on the floor in places, their wax dripping onto the newly installed floor. Several lined the alcove of an inbuilt shelf near the futon. They filled the air with a vaguely perfumed scent. The place didn’t look like it had been properly cleaned before she moved in, he thought. In a couple of corners of the room, he could see more spiderwebs.

“You don’t even have a TV?” Curtis said.

Charlotte laughed. “Do you need one?”

Curtis really looked Charlotte up and down for the first time in the candlelight. She wore a diaphanous pink robe with very little underneath. He’d seen pictures of course of what could be found under that wrapping. Her heavy breasts capped with dark nipples. The neatly trimmed thatch between her shapely thighs. He’d studied them at some length. He was hungry to learn her body in person. The photos had only been an appetiser and here was the feast. Black hair spilled down the sides of her throat and across her shoulders, so lustrous it almost seemed to shine with its own dark light.

Her face, Curtis knew what she looked like but she hadn’t taken as many pictures showing it as she had the rest of her body. Objectively, he wasn’t sure if he could call her face as attractive as the rest of her. Her features were striking but genuinely he couldn’t pick an angle that he could decisively call attractive or not. Her cheekbones were high and sharp, her forehead steep and sloping to a set of dark, severe eyebrows. There was something vampish and predatory about the way her features came together.

He’d been staring too long. Curtis recognised his chance to recapture the momentum. Stepping in, he slipped one hand around the side of Charlotte’s throat. Fingertips combed through her silky hair. He leaned in to kiss her and she gave him a crooked smile of consent.

Something skittered directly over Curtis’ head. Tiny feet, maybe claws, on a hardwood floor, or at least that’s what it sounded like. It broke his concentration and he grazed the corner of her mouth before jerking upright.

“What was that?”

“What was what?” Charlotte’s eyes narrowed.

“That noise? Are we by ourselves, no kids? No pets?”

“No, I told you I don’t have any children.”

“I heard something up there.”

“It’s a new house, it’s settling,” Charlotte said. “Come here.”

Fingers knotted Curtis’ jacket and drew him forward with surprising strength. Her mouth locked onto his and she kissed him so hard it hurt. Turning, she pulled him toward the futon. Curtis heard another skittering sound overhead, making him flinch, but he tried to ignore it. She pushed herself into his chest.

Curtis massaged the side of Charlotte’s neck as he kissed her back. A virtual stranger, he was making out with a virtual stranger. He’d never done anything like this before. Over the phone, he’d found Charlotte easy and fun to talk to. They’d exchanged pictures. But he didn’t really know her.

Curtis’ hand slipped under her robe. He ran his fingers over the curve of her shoulder, sliding across her silken skin toward her breast. Suddenly, something jabbed him. For a second, he thought he’d caught a needle in the palm of his hand. He pulled his hand back and yelped.

“What?” Charlotte looked annoyed for a moment before smothering it.

Charlotte adjusted her robe back into place. Before she did, Curtis saw several long, black hairs bristling from her shoulder. It was like she had an unplucked mole or something but they didn’t look like normal hairs. They were so thick they stood out like the quills of a cactus and one of them had jabbed him hard enough to sting.

“What are those?” Curtis said, unable to help himself.

“What, these?”

Charlotte took Curtis’ hands and forced them onto her breasts. It was so blunt and cheesy and unexpected that it took him a few moments to even process. Through the thin film of her clothing, her breasts were heavy and full and warm as they molded to his hands. He almost forgot the hairs but then something made that skittering sound overhead again. Even with the breasts filling his hands, nipples hard against his palms, he began to get a sick feeling about all of this. Maybe it was guilt, subconscious guilt, but it felt wrong.

Something drew Curtis’ attention to the entryway. More of that spiderweb material clung to one of the corners. Through the doorway, he could see the stairs leading to the second level. The corridor and the stairway were dark. Behind the railing, however, Curtis sensed a living presence. A shadow among shadows but vaguely humanoid and with glassy, glittering eyes.

“What the fuck?” Curtis spat.

Charlotte was halfway into his lap again, kissing his jawline. He shoved her away and shot to his feet. The staring shadow with too many eyes disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, he didn’t even see it move. The feeling of being watched, however, burned more fiercely than ever. The same feeling he’d had outside, surrounded by emptiness but with eyes all over him.

“What?” Charlotte said.

“I don’t know what’s going on but-, something, something is going on!” Curtis said. “I can’t be here anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I have to go.”

Charlotte grabbed Curtis from behind but he shrugged her off. He kept his eyes on the stairwell as he crossed to the entryway then backed up toward the front door. Candlelight snapped and flickered as he pulled the door open and another streamer of spiderweb material drifted through the air. Charlotte followed, pulling her robe across her body, but didn’t try to stop him again.

Arousal curdled in Curtis’ stomach, laying heavy in his midsection. Hurrying down the driveway, he tried to look in all directions at once. Charlotte lingered in the doorway, not angry, not upset, almost as if she was waiting for something. Clouds had peeled away from the moon, letting more light into the world. As Curtis got closer to his car, he sensed something wrong. The first thing his eyes fell on was a couple of parallel lines scarred into the side of the vehicle, starting halfway across his driver’s side door and then raking back toward the tail. He staggered then swept the rest of the vehicle. It seemed to be resting at an odd lean. Both of the tyres facing him were cratered with multiple punctures, he realised. The car sat lower, both wheels completely flat.

“What the fuck?”

Curtis circled and found both wheels on the other side of the car were flat as well. Another pair of scratches zagged across the back door. Rags of rubber bristled, frayed, from the punctures. Gripping the sides of his head, he couldn’t process what he was seeing.

“What is happening?”

“Is everything alright?” Charlotte’s voice came from the house, infuriatingly neutral.

Curtis turned on her. “Did you have something to do with this?”

“What?” Charlotte came closer. “Oh, your car, someone damaged it?”

“You don’t know anything about this?”

“There’s been some kids hanging around the neighbourhood. Most of the houses are still empty so they’ve been breaking into them and I think they’ve damaged some cars. I’m sorry, I should have warned you.”

“Seriously? I was in there for five minutes! You’re telling me they did this in five minutes?”

“Do you want to come back inside?”

“What? Why would I come back inside?”

“To call someone, the police, or a tow truck?”

“Yes, yeah, alright, that makes sense.”

Curtis hesitated, overwhelmed. He thought about how he was going to explain this to Alyssa. He didn’t want to call the police, that might leave too much of a record. He might have to end up explaining where he was and why to her. But he was going to have to get a tow truck or something, he couldn’t drive on four flat tyres. He’d have to tell her he went out to get something to eat and got into an accident or something. Unless she already knew. Unless she was in on it, her and her friends setting this whole thing up to lure him out here, damage his car, and move all her stuff out of their apartment while he was stuck. That really didn’t seem like Alyssa, she was too calm, too in control, revenge didn’t really seem like her style. And if that was the case, would Charlotte really be inviting him back inside? None of this made any sense.

Curtis followed Charlotte back into the house, his head spinning. “You really didn’t have anything to do with that?” he asked.

“No, of course not, do you need to make a call?”

“I guess so. You said it was kids, you’ve seen these kids around?”

“Well, I’ve heard them. I’ve seen them running around out there after dark.”

Curtis thought of the strange figure on the roof of the house next door when he first pulled up. The figure he thought he’d seen on Charlotte’s staircase, that he’d been trying to convince himself he’d imagined. He started to get the sinking feeling he’d walked right into the second act of a horror movie. Charlotte seemed to be living in some kind of nightmare and she didn’t even realise it. He tried to think if she’d mentioned anything off to him in their chats but he couldn’t recall any examples. He wondered if, in this horror movie, he was a hero or an easy kill to raise the threat level. Unfortunately, he thought he might know the answer.

“You have a car, right?” Curtis asked.

“No, I don’t,” Charlotte replied.

“Seriously? How did you move here? There’s nothing else around!”

“A friend helped me.”

“Fuck, I think we need to get out of here.”

“You were going to stay the night, right? Why not stay and then worry about your car in the morning?”

Curtis realised Charlotte was watching him with hooded eyes. In spite of him storming out and accusing her of being involved in vandalising his car, she still wanted to have sex with him. He felt vaguely repulsed. Even more so when he looked down and happened to spot several more thick, black hairs sprouting from her left forearm. They looked almost as long and pointed as quills and he didn’t know how he’d missed them before. Her face seemed to have shifted as well. Before, he at least thought she had a striking quality about her. He wasn’t sure how to qualify her attractiveness but he hadn’t thought of her as ugly. Now, however, he found something unsettling about her. Her face was too long, too pointed, too predatory.

“Are you serious?”

Charlotte grabbed Curtis suddenly and with shocking strength. Clawed fingers dug into his shoulder. She pushed him against the wall near the base of the stairwell. His eyes shot to the steps, worried they were being watched, but he didn’t see anything there. Distracted, he let Charlotte kiss him. The force of it rocked his head backward.

“What are you doing? Get off of me!” Curtis tried to pull his face away, lips mashed against his teeth.

“Don’t be such a tease,” she hissed.

Charlotte kissed him again and ran a hand down the front of his jeans. Her fingers felt sharp but Curtis’ body responded. He started to kiss her back but then felt something else wrong. Something shifted and pinched inside of her mouth. He let out a muffled sound of surprise. Before he could pull away, his lip caught on something and was sliced open.

“Fuck!” Curtis jerked back, one hand going to his mouth. “What was that?”

Charlotte grinned and Curtis saw blood staining her teeth. His blood. He reached for his lip and felt another flash of pain.

“What the fuck?”

Charlotte opened her jaw wide, wider, too wide for a normal human being. Splicing mouthparts fidgeted and meshed behind her teeth. They almost looked like spider legs. Before Curtis could get over the shock of that, two new eyes peeled open on the woman’s forehead. Another two opened above them. Then two more on her temples. Eight eyes spread across her face, all human at first but then the blackness of their pupils started to leak and stain their irises and white jelly.

“Get away from me!”

Curtis shoved her away but Charlotte held on with incredible strength. Her fingers, growing into actual claws, gouged his biceps. He looked down and saw more black hairs sprouting the lengths of her arms. And that wasn’t all, a kind of split ran across the backs of both of her hands then up her forearms to the elbows. They opened wider, showing space between them, turning her two arms into four.

With all the strength that Curtis could find within himself, he punched the monstrous spider-woman in the face. Something in her jaw made a cracking sound. She stumbled for a moment and he managed to kick her backward. As she staggered away from him, however, he heard that skittering sound overhead. More and more noises, multiplied. Glancing toward the stairwell, he saw not one but two shadowy figures crouched on the landing at the top of the steps. Black and bristly with too many limbs, heads misshapen and crowded with both eyes and huge, terrible mouths. Some kind of humanoid spiders like Charlotte was clearly morphing into. Demons, monsters, he had no idea what he was looking at but they were terrifying and dangerous.

“No!” Curtis yelled and struck out, shoving Charlotte into the opposite wall.

The other two spider creatures scuttled down the stairway. Curtis launched himself across the entryway and tore at the front door, flinging it open. With the spider creatures behind him, he took off into the night.

For a moment, Curtis thought about locking himself in his car. But with the wheels as ravaged as they were, the vehicle wasn’t going to move and then he’d be trapped. Reaching the end of the driveway, he spun and took off running down the street. It was a dead end so he only had one direction to move. He took off the way he’d originally come, into the grid of empty streets.

“Help! Help!”

Curtis’ voice echoed into the darkness. There was no one to respond, nothing but empty houses and the shells of those under construction. Charlotte claimed she’d just moved in but she appeared to have no neighbours at all. Probably, she and her fellow creatures were only squatting at the completed house and using its address to lure victims like him. Given the fact that most of the housing estate was under construction and apparently had no power, it was likely no one was even allowed to move in yet.

“Help!” Curtis had to attempt it anyway.

There were no streetlamps and no lights in any of the houses, as Curtis had observed before. Now, he didn’t have the advantage of headlights. His eyes adjusted to the moonlight as best they could. The road was at least smooth, freshly paved, gently curving, damp from the earlier rain. The main road where he might find another person was a long way away though. And the empty estate, its winding roads, felt like a labyrinth.

Something clattered off to Curtis’ left. He turned and saw one of the spider creatures leaping from one rooftop to the next. Against the sky, it was black and chimplike. With four legs splitting off from the hips and four arms extending from its shoulders, it sprang an extraordinary distance and landed easily on one of the peaked roofs, impossibly light and fast.

“Fuck, fuck, shit!”

Curtis fished his phone out of his pocket. His feet pounded the asphalt, running as hard as he could, as he unlocked the phone. He felt an urge to call Alyssa and confess everything. Part of him thought this was all a punishment and if he could admit what he’d done and seek forgiveness then maybe it would all go away. He knew he should call the cops instead but hesitated over what to tell them.

Something snagged Curtis by the foot. As fast as he was running, he tripped and flew forward. The phone shot out of his hand and spiralled into darkness. When it hit the road, it bounced and spun across the asphalt even further out of reach.

Crying out in pain, Curtis reached for his foot. It was tangled in some kind of sticky white rope that stretched across the road as a tripwire. Webbing, he realised. Like a spiderweb but thick and plaited. He looked up and saw one of the spider people scrabbling toward him like an ape. Eight eyes glittered above a set of slathering jaws, two monstrous fangs jutting from the corners of its mouth.

“Fuck!”

Curtis kicked and managed to free his foot from its sneaker. The shoe he left behind, bouncing on the tangled length of webbing. His ankle throbbed, twisted. He had no choice but to ignore it and climb back to his feet.

The spider creature launched itself at Curtis. Three clawed fingers curved from the ends of each of its four arms. He avoided them as best he could, stepping in and sweeping around with a haymaker punch. His fist collided with the side of the spider-thing’s mouth. One of its taloned hands knifed him in the side, slashing him across the ribs. Both fell away from one another, Curtis stumbling and almost falling.

Curtis clamped a hand to his side and lurched away from the spider creature. It hesitated to follow but a pack of monsters were coming up behind him. Leaping from house to house, yard to yard. One of them he recognised as Charlotte by its flapping pink robe. In spite of the pain, and his missing shoe, he took off running again as fast as he could manage. He was half a street away before he remembered his dropped phone but it was too late to go back and get it.

Windows of empty houses stared after Curtis like eyes. As he ran, he saw more windows missing glass and doorways missing doors. Houses, in various levels of construction, lined both sides of the road. Blood ran down his hip and leg. He couldn’t keep running forever so he veered toward one of the half-completed houses. It was only a partial shell of a home, with floors and a second level and a roof but with large gaps where entire walls were still missing. He stumbled up the drive, leaving blood droplets behind him, and disappeared inside.

It was dark in the uncompleted house. Curtis had the vague idea that the layout was identical to what he’d seen of Charlotte’s house. Or the house where she was squatting. Without thinking, he stumbled up the steps in front of him to the second level. As he reached the landing, however, he heard something crash on the roof directly overhead. He heard skittering, scrabbling, on the outer walls.

“Please!” Curtis shouted. “Please, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done anything! I’m sorry, please leave me alone!”

There was no response. He heard the creatures climbing the walls and rattling across the rooftop. Soon, they would be inside the house as well. Twisting and turning, he tried to run. In the darkness, the upper story of the house felt like a maze.

Curtis came to what must have been the main bedroom. One wall, facing the next house in the row, was missing. He stayed away from the gap, afraid of being snatched. Noises came from behind him, however, as spider creatures negotiated their way through the house. A couple of hairy shapes filled the doorway, talons raised, fangs dripping, eyes glittering in the low light.

“Leave me alone!”

The only way out was the open wall. Curtis chanced it, moving to the edge and peering down. Between the house he was in and the next one were piles of lumber and construction materials. Even with his bleeding side, he thought he could make the jump to the highest of the stacks. He took a few steps backward and then ran up to the edge before leaping.

Curtis fell, flailing, but hit something before he could land. Soft, pliable, he bounced back and forth like he’d landed on a trampoline. It was a much kinder landing than the one he’d been anticipating but it didn’t make sense. He seemed to be hanging in mid-air. A spiderweb, he realised. A giant spiderweb. It had been invisible in the moonlight but stretched between the two half-constructed houses.

“No, no!”

Curtis tried to pull his arms free but couldn’t. Another line glued itself to his face. As he writhed and tried to fight, he found himself more and more stuck. The webbing was impossibly sticky and impossibly strong.

After a few long moments, Curtis felt the weight of something joining him on the web. He managed to look back and saw one of the spiders, the one in the pink robe, picking its way across the near-invisible strands of webbing.

“No! Leave me alone!”

Curtis was spreadeagled and helpless. He tried to kick but couldn’t really move. Charlotte seized one of his legs and bit him on the calf, right through his jeans. Fangs sank deep into the meat. The pain was intense, like a couple of drill bits being driven into his leg. Worse though was the numbness he felt rapidly spreading through the muscle and then climbing his leg. It felt like death. His body spasmed, eyes rolling back in his skull, and he passed out.

xXx

When Curtis came back around it was dark. Candlelight flickered at the edges of his vision. For a moment he was relieved, he’d thought he was dead, but he quickly realised he was back in Charlotte’s home. Dead or alive, he couldn’t move. His arms were bound to his sides and his legs were wrapped together. He was covered in more of the spider people’s webbing, almost cocooned in it. He could only breathe through his nostrils as the lower half of his face was bound. Webbing held his head uncomfortably upright, his body stuck to a wall in a standing position.

Curtis heard more skittering, in the walls, across the floor, all around him. He tried to look around but his movements were restricted, he could only move his eyeballs. Several hunched and hairy shapes sat across the room from him.

“You’re awake,” a voice hissed.

One of the creatures crawled toward Curtis, making its way around sheaths and sacks of webbing that hung from the ceiling. As his eyes adjusted, he recognised the contents of the sleeping bag-sized sacks as corpses, dessicated human corpses, their faces hollow, skin tattered but bloodless. He tried to scream but couldn’t make a noise.

The spider creature’s voice was muffled by its two enormous fangs. Curtis recognised the tatters of the pink robe that Charlotte had been wearing.

“I have a confession to make, I told you a small lie,” Charlotte said. “When you asked if I had any children, I told you I didn’t.”

The skittering increased. Curtis felt something, many things, pricking his legs and his back and parts of his body he couldn’t see. He shrieked against his spiderweb gag. Screamed until his throat was torn and raw, eyes bulging and terrified.

“Actually, I have thousands. And they’re all very hungry.”

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Sean: Thinking of putting together a collection of stories specifically that will teach morals to good Christian boys. This can be part of a section called, ‘Loose Women Are Literal Monsters’ along with Come a Little Bit Closer and maybe Jolene.

Another section can be all about the sin of masturbation with Horny MILFs in Your Area, Siren, and Polyester Girl.

I’m serious about this now, okay maybe not that theme exactly, but it’s honestly made me think about putting some anthologies together! Maybe with a few unpublished stories for good measure. I suppose to keep up with that if you’re interested, you can watch the website or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.   

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