Arrak’s revenge by: Brendan Palmer       31/10/2020

Johnny’s mind was barely functioning, numbed by the neurotoxin that had entered his body. His eyes glued open he watched in horror at the events unfolding before him in the living room of their house

A flashback  to the previous year sparked the realisation that the last two days were a culmination of events that began when his wife Mary had read an article from the local freesheet newspaper.

A Noble False Widow spider, the size of a two €uro coin, had been found in one of their neighbour’s gardens feeding on the flesh of their pet lizard, who was over three times the size of the spider and trapped in its huge spider web

“Listen to this” she shouted, becoming more and more freaked out as she re-read each piece out loud

“The Noble False Widow spider is a non native invasive species that is beginning to colonise the gardens around Dublin, wiping out the native spiders and while they can’t kill people, they can bite causing serious pain and for some people a dangerous allergic reaction

“And listen, listen to this”, she shrieked

“In addition to its venom possessing a powerful, vertebrate specific neurotoxin, it can produce very strong spider silk that allows it to entangle large prey. Owners are being warned to be on the lookout for these spiders as they could endanger their pets.”

“Johnny, I saw one of them in our hedge yesterday you have to get rid of it”

Johnny just laughed and said “get a life Mary, it’s only a spider, they’re more afraid of us than we are of them”

“What about Scamp” she screamed? referring to their miniature chihuahua

“OK, OK, calm down Mary, I’ll deal with it”

That was at the end of November the previous year and Johnny regularly searched his garden for signs of false widow spiders, in fact, any type of spiders, capturing them in a spider catcher he had bought online, crushing them with his foot and leaving them on the lawn for the birds

The Covid-19 lockdown the previous March placed major restrictions on people’s movement and with the huge reduction in traffic and all transportation services severely curtailed, nature exploded in the newfound cleaner environment.

For the first few weeks of lockdown, Johnny kept busy doing stuff around the house and garden but he soon got bored and began to spend more and more time in front if the television, waiting for five o’clock to come around so he could crack open his first beer.

By the time that first lockdown had finished the garden he had neglected was totally overgrown and infested with the Noble False Widow spiders. It was just about possible to keep them from infesting the house and the garden continued to be ignored.

As the summer progressed, Mary became more and more obsessed with the spiders, insisting that they were getting bigger every week and by the time mid October came around, Johnny had to admit that she was right. The last two he had caught and killed were at least twice the size of the first ones and one of them had created a web in their garage which he had great difficulty in breaking up, not only because of the strength of the web, but because the spider silk  was so adhesive he found it impossible to remove it from the knife he had used to cut it down.

A second Covid-19 level five lockdown had begun a week before Halloween and, as he did not work in an essential service job, Johnny was permanently at home again.

Bored and irritated with Mary’s continual complaints about the spiders, he went online to find out more about them and get some suggestions for dealing with them.

The first piece of information listed that caught his attention was “How false widow spiders kill their prey”, where he discovered that they pierce the skin of their prey with their fangs and then squeeze out venom, injecting the prey with enough neurotoxin to paralyze, or kill, depending on its size.

A follow on, “How spiders consume their prey” made his skin crawl. He discovered that as spiders have no internal digestive system, they inject an enzyme into the flesh of their prey to dissolve it before consuming it as a thick liquid. Sometimes larger prey, because of their size, are only paralyzed, effectively being dissolved and eaten alive.

Continued searches informed him of their prolific ability to multiply. A female false widow spider can live for up to seven years and produce one egg sac with two hundred eggs every two weeks for four months of the year. Sixteen hundred new spiders every year. By comparison, ordinary spiders in Ireland usually live for one or two years and produce thirty to fifty spiders per year.

The following day he decided to clean up the garden and went on a major hunting expedition, eliminating every spider he came across using a combination of the catcher, bug spray and a small blow torch to burn them in their webs. A few times he thought he heard a small scream as a huge spider singed and burned. He just laughed and told himself he was imagining things.

Last evening, after a traditional Irish Halloween dinner of Bacon and Colcannon, Johnny and Mary were dozing in their respective armchairs, spaced diagonally across the room from each other so they could both watch the television and converse at the same time. Scamp was curled up sleeping on Mary’s lap.

The small nest of tables beside johnny’s armchair contained his glasses and two remote controls, one for the television and one for the set top box. He always had control of the remotes when they watched television as a couple.

As he dozed, he dreamed that there was a huge False Widow Spider, bigger than anything he had seen or killed, sitting on the table between his glasses and the remote control, looking at him with eight, big, black eyes. Its mouth was moving as if speaking to him and he could hear it’s low gruff voice saying “Hello Johnny,  my name is Arrak, it’s my family you have been trying to wipe out for the last week, I am not happy”

Two more huge spiders appeared on each arm of his armchair, all staring malevolently into Johnny’s face. Arrak emitted a high pitched sound and the four spiders launched themselves onto Johnny’s neck sinking their fangs into his arteries, spraying venom into his bloodstream, causing an intense burning pain and he realised that this was not a dream. He tried raise his arm to swat them away but he couldn’t move, his arms and legs were bound to the armchair by spider silk. The bottom half of his face below his nose was also wrapped. His mouth was sealed and his eyelids were glued open.

He looked over at Mary, she stared back at him with terrified eyes. She was struggling and trying to scream but she had also been cocooned in spider silk. Bound tightly to her chair, her mouth completely sealed.

On her lap, the chihuahua was a writhing ball of black false widow spiders. The consumption of its dissolving flesh sounded like a thick milkshake being sucked through a straw.  It took them half an hour to strip it to a skeleton.

Leaving the pile of bones in her lap, they started on Mary. It was half an hour before she stopped moving and six hours before all that was left was a skeleton inside the clothes she had been wearing.

During the spider’s feast, Arrak sat on the nest of tables bedside Johnny staring intently into his terrified eyes.

Their feeding on Mary finished, the spiders crossed the room while thousands more streamed in from every gap in the house and started on Johnny.

The last thing he heard was, “You should not have tried to wipe out my family Johnny”

Epilogue

When she had not heard from Mary for three days her friend Joan called the police expressing her concern.

Breaking into the house, they found Johnny, Mary and the dog as the spiders had left them. There was no sign of the spiders but the house was covered in false widow spider webs. It was three days before the coroner gave a verdict on the probable cause and the circumstances of their deaths.

The newspapers and social media exploded with the horror of what happened and there were calls on the Government to do something about the spiders. A task force to investigate was promised but before it convened for its first meeting, reports began arriving on a daily basis from all across the city of people being attacked and killed while they slept.

The death toll from false widow spider attacks grew faster than those from the worst days of Covid-19 and people were afraid to sleep.

It’s Saturday the twenty first of December at six am.  Santa Claus stirs in his bed throws back the covers and blinks painfully as his hungover eyes get used to the light.

Except for his boots he is fully clothed in his all red suit with the white fur trim.

He rolls into a standing position beside the bed, stretches, bends forward to put on his boots and lets out an enormous fart, sniffs and smiles…. approving.

Then he notices the silence, something is wrong, it’s three days to lift off, there should be lots of noise as everyone, except the star of the show of course, should be busy getting things ready for the big day.

He goes down to the kitchen, it’s empty, no Mrs Claus and her Elf helper Sugarplum Mary who should be busy preparing the food to feed everyone for the busy day that started at five O’clock

He shouts for Shinny Upatree, his oldest most trusted Elf and leader of the Elves…. no answer

He looks into the computer room where Elf Alabaster Snowball, who manages the huge naughty or nice database works, empty, all the screens are blank

He shouts for Pepper Minstix head of elf security, nothing, complete silence

Worried now he runs to the factory at the back of his house where Elf Bushy Evergreen runs the toy making machines.The building is sound proofed to keep the noise from the machines deafening everyone outside. He throws open the door, silence. All the machines are stopped. Half made toys of all description are lying on the benches

Beads of sweat break out on his face as he runs to the stables where Elf Wunorse Openslae should be preparing the reindeer and his sleigh for the big day. The sleigh is there, no reindeer

He stands looking around a confused look on his face.  Suddenly, the sound of hammering like someone nailing pieces of wood together drifts down from the ancient forest up the hill.  He realises it’s coming from the wooden shed they used in the old days, before machinery and computers.

Puffing and blowing he starts walking in that direction. He is fifty metres from the shed when the doors burst open and out march all the Elves, flanked by the reindeer and followed by Mrs Claus. They are carrying “strike on here” placards and marching towards him, lifting their knees high and stamping the ground with each step. They march past him down the hill singing at the top of their voices

Ho ho feckin’ ho,
What a crock o’ shit,
We all work for Santa Claus,
We’ve had enough, we quit.
Cos we do all the feckin’ work while he stars in the show,
Stick yer Christmas up yer arse, ho ho feckin ho.

You don’t care about us elves,
we’ve had enough of this,
workin’ in that freezing factory, yer takin the feckin piss,
we work until we drop, with our round bits freezin’ off,
ye can stick yer Christmas up yer arse, ho ho fecking ho.

Then Rudolph screams I QUIT.
Just who does he think he is?
That little fat git sits back in the sleigh,
crackin’ that feckin’ whip.
And me stuck up the front, with these other useless gits,
Ye can stick yer Christmas up yer arse, ho ho feckin ho.

The negotiations only lasted fifteen minutes.  New heating was installed in the factory, the elves had their names painted on the sleigh, Rudolf got double rations during the Christmas rush, Mrs Clause got her own bedroom and a string of pearls and the children got their presents for Christmas

©Brendan Palmer.
Submission to The Inkslingers 500 word Christmas story competition December 2019
The verse is a version of the Monty Python song

Thirty five year old Julie Hall, owner and CEO of AIS Ltd., a hugely successful company in the Artificial Intelligence industry, was directed by her smart phone to turn off the main road.  She squinted through the windscreen of her car while driving along the ink black road, a small rutted side road with grass growing down the middle.   A stab of concern ran through her when her smart phone flashed “No GPS Signal” and the map disappeared from its screen, although she knew she was close to her destination; the screen had said ‘Two minutes to go’ before it died.  

As her car was cutting a path between overgrown hedgerows, the charging warning light on the dashboard flashed red and the headlights slowly began to dim. Just as their light disappeared completely, she spotted a gap in the hedge to her left. Pulling over, her tyres crunching on loose gravel, she catches a glimpse of an ancient-looking wrought iron gate. Sitting now in total darkness, except for the faint glow from her smart phone, a rising nervousness created a tingling sensation in her arms and legs, the car engine stalled and died. Turning the ignition key produced the click, click, click, sound of a dead battery. In the distance the sky lights up with lightening followed thirty seconds later by the sound of rolling thunder. Counting the seconds between the flash and the sound, a habit from her days studying physics, she knew the storm was ten kilometres away, sound traveling at three kilometres per second.  Resting her head on the steering wheel she thought, “Paul was right, what was I thinking!”

It had started the previous Saturday when she had swiped right for ‘Philippe De Silva’ on her Tinder App.  She had been using Tinder for some months as her busy life as a senior executive made it difficult to meet men.  They agreed to meet and for once a profile didn’t lie. Tall, lightly tanned, jet black hair, piercing blue eyes. Immaculately dressed in a light grey Italian suit, with dark tan shoes and blindingly white shirt open at the neck. His warm, firm handshake and double cheek kiss created a tingle of excitement in the pit of her stomach.

Over a glass of wine and pleasant conversation, his voice low and smooth, she smiles to herself and thinks of the Dracula movie she had watched recently on Netflix. Dracula had mesmerised his victims before drinking their blood. In the movie, the vampire drank his victim’s blood by sucking it from their neck with his incisor teeth, but Julie knew from searching the internet after watching the movie, that in fact real vampires drink the blood of their victims by cutting into an artery and allowing the blood to flow into a drinking cup. Twenty minutes into their conversation she is disappointed when his phone rang and he took the call. He apologised and said he had to go and attend to some urgent family business, but perhaps she would like to come to a Halloween party he was organising the following Wednesday? His parting hug and kisses left and right created another tingle of excitement in the pit of her stomach.

Still holding her hand, he said, “My house is difficult to find”. “it’s an old rectory in the countryside, I’ll text you the Satnav co- ordinates.” Bowing, he brushed the back of her hand with warm moist lips, a picture of Christopher Lee bending over Barbara Shelly in the nineteen sixty six version of Dracula, Prince of Darkness filled her mind as he smiled down at her and left.

The bubble of her excitement was punctured at brunch the following day when her brother Paul, a Special Tactics and Operations Command Police Officer, (the Irish Police version S.W.A.T.)  shouted, “Are you nuts?” when she told him about Philippe. Her angry reaction about minding his own business got a curt “Right, but a least give me the Satnav co-ordinates and I’ll check it out.”

Now, sitting in her car and deciding the old gates must be the entry to Philippe’s house, she pulls the phone from its cradle and presses Paul’s speed dial number. “Service not available” lights up the screen.  Sitting in ink black darkness. except for the light from the phone, her nervousness increases when the screen says, “Only five percent battery left please charge or switch to battery saving mode.” Another flash of lightening and twenty four seconds before the thunder tells her that the storm is eight kilometres away and travelling at one kilometre per minute and her bladder screams to be emptied.

Opening the car door, she risks precious battery time by shining the phone torch on the ground, revealing calf high grass and weeds, no nettles or other stinging plants. Getting out of the car, she squats and relieves herself, feeling very vulnerable, her heart thumping wildly.

She readjusts her short black party dress and standing in the pitch black darkness, risks more precious battery power to shine the light on the cast Iron gate, fixing the position in her mind. Her key fob doesn’t work because of the dead battery so she locks the car with the key and moves towards the gate, feeling her way through she risks another five seconds of phone battery to find the direction of an overgrown gravel driveway. Through the gate the temperature suddenly drops and her breath mists in the colder air. She puts this down to the rain that’s probably arriving in front of the approaching thunder storm.

She moves forward slowly, feet sliding along to make sure she is still on the gravel, happy that she had decided on low heels when she had dressed earlier, every minute feeling like an eternity, hearth thumping in her throat.

Using the phone light five more times, the battery goes to three percent just as the outline of a building appears directly ahead. She is about to use the phone light again when the clouds open and a silver moon briefly lights her surroundings presenting a scene that’s almost as bad a walking through the dark.

The old rectory, windows in total darkness, was about one hundred metres away. Before it lay a cemetery packed with ancient headstones, a small  path to the  house winding through them. Her heart was beating like a drum in her ears as she picked her way among the graves. Julie tried to shake off the dread that was creeping through her like the mist between the graves, feeling that the headstones were turning to look at her as she passed, certain she could hear a murmur of conversation. She carried on, her rational mind telling her not to be silly, the voices must be carried on the wind from the party in house…

Finally, past the graves and taking the three steps to the front door she reached up to grab the bats head shaped heavy brass knocker but, before her hand could grasp it, the door opened and Philippe De Silva stood there, dressed in a black evening suit his face chalk white with a broad smile on his crimson lips. A huge flash of lightening lit up the sky followed in five seconds by the loudest thunder clap she had ever heard, rattling the loose old sash windows

“Come in, welcome”. His silky-voiced greeting calmed her nerves a little and she returned his smile as he took her elbow in a firm grip and steered her along the hall “The party is this way”. He threw open a door at the end of the hall and stepped aside.

Entering the room, her normally analytical brain refuses to take in the scene she is presented with.

A girl, about her own age, is hanging from a trapeze  by the back of her knees, hands tied behind her back, ankles tied together and her long hair pulled back and tied to her feet creating a bow effect except for one thing; her throat is cut from ear to ear, the cut so deep her spine is visible and her head is pulled back hard displaying a wide macabre grin at her throat while her upper body is hanging straight down with her blood flowing into a large silver cauldron, around which are standing six other women, drinking the blood from the cauldron with silver soup ladles.

As the scene sinks in, a scream dies in her throat and she faints to the floor.

When she came to, she was lying on her side, naked, with a silver trapeze bar behind her knees, trussed up in the same way the as the girl hanging from the ceiling. Hands tied behind her back, ankles tied together, her hair pulled back and tied to her ankles creating a bow shape that exposed her throat. A dark grey silk handkerchief tied through her mouth turned her shouts of protest into barely audible croaks.

As she lies there, five men, dressed the same as Phillipe De Silva, walk into the room. The women lick their ladles, place them on the table and shuffle out the door, their dead eyes unseeing, skin waxy yellow, each of them with ear to ear train track scars around their necks.

Two of the men step up on the table and unhook the dead girl from the trapeze ropes. They carry her to the other end of the room, place her on a bed, untie all the ropes, lay her out in a supine corpse pose with her hands crossed over he breasts and cover her with a white sheet

Two more pick Julie up from the floor by the silver trapeze bar, another supports her shoulders and they carry her to the table. Inserting the bar into the trapeze ropes they pull a third rope and Julie slowly rises, swinging slightly above the silver cauldron. She struggles and throws her body left and right but the three men hold her tight as Philippe De Silva walks over.

Standing in front of her he smiled. “Don’t struggle Julie, it will be easier if you don’t struggle. There won’t be any pain, your brain will feel a mild sense of surprise for about ten seconds and that’s it.” Her eyes were frantic, filling with horror as she realised who Philippe De Silva really was. His smile was lascivious as he inserted a hypodermic needle into the side of her neck, the warmness of a pre-anaesthetic fluid flowed through her and her body relaxed. The stainless steel surgical scalpel glinted in the light as he placed it behind her left ear.

The room erupted with noise, the door smashed inwards off its hinges, the window shattered, glass flying in all directions. Two flash grenades explode in the room filling it with eardrum-bursting noise, blinding white light and smoke. Six S.W.A.T team members, two coming through the window and four through the door in full battle dress, fan out across the room screaming “GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR, DON’T MOVE, LIE ON YOUR FACE, HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK”, the red laser lights from their assault rifles traversing the room in a dancing matrix. They never noticed the six small black-winged creatures that flew out the door as they rushed in.

When the smoke cleared a total state of confusion reigned, the only things in the room apart from the S.W.A.T. team, was a covered body lying on a bed at the end of the room and Julie swinging gently to and fro on the trapeze bar, a small trickle of blood running down her left cheek into her hair.

Two weeks later, Paul Hall is driving a police rapid response people carrier van at high speed with the other five members of the Halloween night’s rapid response team to an armed robbery outside the city. As he takes a sharp corner, tyres screaming in protest, a bat lands on the windscreen in front of his face. Startled, his reaction causes him to lose control of the van as the road straightens and it crashes through the hedge at the side of the road, drops two metres onto the ground in front of a forest, flips over twice, smashes into a large tree and bursts into flames. There were no survivors……