Chapter 10
Reality
The egg sack:
The lump grew and stretched her skin, and as it grew she could see that in the center there was a hole like where one has had an ear pierced . Under the skin she could see a rough dark mass that could be pushed back and forth, and felt fluttery to her fingers. Looking in the mirror, she tried to get her fingers to push under it and pop it, but the lump felt solid. The light in her little bathroom was dim and the mirror small. She wished that she had a good magnifying mirror with a light, and also shuddered at the thought of actually seeing this growth up close in full light, exposing its ugliness.
The next day it became so itchy she couldn’t stop scratching it. She hated the thought of touching it, but itchiness can be worse than pain, so she used a wash cloth to rub back and forth. There was also the continued tingling, fluttery feeling, like a million ants marching under her skin, like a swarm of jellyfish undulating with the waves, like someone singing low notes that vibrates the surrounding tissues. She
wanted to feel it to understand what it was, but the touch of it also scared her and made her pull her hand back quickly.
The sensations had become maddening, so she got into the hottest shower that she could stand. Cecelia went ahead and washed her hair, thinking she’d give her skin time to soften up in the water. Then she grabbed her back brush, and started scrubbing. At first it felt a relief from the itching, the heat creating a deep tingle, the brush massaging deeply.
With a pop the pressure and stretched skin felt relieved. She had only a half a moment of the good pimple popping feeling before the crawling began. It instantly spread out from the spot, up her shoulder, on her neck, down her arm, on top of her buttocks. Thousands of tiny little prick points catching her skin, spreading out like the fingers of a lightning bolt.
She looked down and saw little green spots all over her skin, but they were moving, they were crawling, they were climbing all over her body, into her hair, onto her face. She hadn’t screamed like this since she met Aurelio for the first time, she hadn’t moved this quickly since then either. Her arms flailed, afraid to touch the baby spiders, afraid to let them be. She spun around in the shower trying to wash them off while squeegeeing her body with her hands.
Little spiders went flying everywhere in the shower. They were all over the walls, in the folds of the shower curtain, down her legs, still in her hair. She pumped out shampoo and body wash indiscriminately, grabbing what was closer, and lathered herself up from head to toe. While still covered with lather, she tried to splash the shower water onto the walls to wash down the spiders.
She could only splash so much water caught in her upheld hand, so she resorted to wiping them down the walls, and trying to stomp on them. This created a little dance of her waving her hands up and down, waging her head, while jumping back and forth. She accompanied this dance with grunts and shrieks, ughs and shivers.
Feeling like she had washed the spiders down the drain, she stood under the water and turned up the heat just a little bit more. It was scalding, but she wanted to sanitize herself. She scrubbed her scalp again and ran her hand down her body from top to bottom feeling for any more baby creepers. Then she took the shower brush, which had a few drowned spiders in it. She whacked it, rinsed it, then filled it with as much liquid soap as it could hold. Then she scrubbed her shoulder, and scrubbed it till it started to bleed. She tried to get her shoulder directly under the shower head to rinse it out, to make sure no more spiders were hiding in there.
Out of the shower, twisted to see her shoulder in the mirror she found a little white flap. It looked like loose skin, so she pulled it. She could feel the tugging under her skin, feel the ripping and pulling where the silk had attached to her skin. Cecelia kept pulling the flexible but tough sheath, peeling it away from within, painfully stretching her skin like a slowly removed bandaid. A warm washcloth held tightly on her shoulder, she caught her breath and she remembered Aurelio scratching her there. Fear rose again; he would want to know where all the babies went. She couldn’t tell him, she’d had to hide that this even happened. Maybe he didn’t even have anything to do with her impregnated shoulder. She hoped.
While she finished drying herself a few surviving spiders snuck out of the bathroom. They felt the call of their father, and headed in that direction.
Cecelia starts to admit that Aurelio is evil
He had been coming to her often lately, and she expected him again that evening. Ramone delivered her dinner, always peeking around the door trying to get sight of Aurelio, a chance to worship him. Ramone had been useful, Cecelia concluded, thus he was never one for her to recruit.
“Thank you, Ramone,” cooed Aurelio, giving him a bit of the light show.
Ramone batted at the light like a cat chasing a laser, then he bowed and backed out of the room.
Cecelia went to sit at the table, but instead of her usual spot she grabbed the plate and moved it across so she was facing Aurelio. Cecelia’s practiced ease with Aurelio was now broken, she couldn’t fake it with any sense of sincerity. Aurelio reached out to put his paw on her arm, she reached up stopping his forward motion and pulled her arm back. His paw fell to the table top. He moved to stand beside her, her back stiffened and her gaze stayed with his movements. She flipped her head around like a spinning dancer to keep her sights on him when he crossed behind her.
She wore a heavy sweater even though it was hot, and when he was behind she pulled at it and fluffed it to hide the shape of her shoulders.
“How have you been, my dear Mona?”
“Mona? I haven’t heard that since, since Lorelei,” her voice cracked.
“Yes, the sweet pet name she gave you. I remember her fondly, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And we should toast to her arrival. The next life has been good to her. Raise your glass.”
Cecelia shifted in her seat to face him, glass tentatively raised.
“To Lorelei, the shining example of sacrifice.”
Cecelia sat stiff and unmoving.
“Drink. You must drink.”
She sipped and put her glass down quickly. The rest of dinner was quiet. Cecelia ate, and resisted the urge to rub the soreness in her shoulder.
Aurelio pursued her for their tryst, she moved back from him, keeping furniture between them.
“Darling, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t you want my pleasures tonight.”
“No. I’m tired.”
“Let me rub your shoulders then.”
“NO!”
“My oh my. Sweet girl, what is going on with you.” He so desperately wanted to check her shoulder, and she was blocking his every move. He didn’t know that the babies had been born, they were too small for him to see them. “Certainly I can ease your tension.” He reached out directly for that shoulder.
She jumped away, staring at him. She knew then that he was the one, he had put the eggs there, the scratch was it.
“Suit yourself,” he said, quickly turning and scuttling out of the room.
The next morning Cecelia lay awkwardly in her hammock on her side. Her marionettes hung from the post above her head. She had to inchworm and pull and wriggle to move closer to grab them. It was an clumsy affair trying to climb up the hammock while laying down. She succeeded in grabbing Charlie and the broken bride. Her finger followed the crack that went from the forehead onto the sunken eye socket, paused at the eyeball that had been shoved in and was now looking into the skull, then down the rest of the crack through the cheek into the corner of the mouth.
“You poor thing,” she said to herself.
Cecelia tried to get comfortable in the hammock, laying on her side her arms crossed in front of her. In her left hand, which was shooting skyward, Charlie hung high up with his legs dangling above the ground. The broken bride was in her right arm, which was hanging down. This put the princess in the position of squatting on the ground. Cecelia had been practicing head movements, so she pulled the bride’s head back to look up at Charlie.
They started talking as new acquaintances do, then quickly progressed to romance. Cecelia was fantasizing about love like a teen playacting their crush fantasy. Oh I love you, and do you want to be with me, my darlings, my pet, and all sorts of baby talk went back and forth between the Bride and Charlie—I will not nauseate you with all of this dribble, my dear reader. Here is where we pay attention, my friend, as we listen in on their conversation it now gets interesting.
Charlie: my pet, I want to be with you always.
Bride: How do I know that? You’ll just leave me like the others.
Charlie: Didn’t I just declare my eternal love for you?
Bride: Uhm, but everyone leaves the morning after.
Charlie: Why would I? I am not like the others.
Bride: How would I know that? All men are the same.
Charlie: I’m not everyone one else. Where have the others gone? I don’t even want to think about them, because I have declared that you are mine, but I must ask. Where did they go?
Bride: I don’t know. They’re always gone when I wake up.
Charlie: Did they at least leave a message?
Bride: One did, once…
Charlie: What did it say?
Bride: Just ‘call me’, with his number.
Charlie: Did you call?
Bride: I did. But it was like a cruel trick. I thought I could hear it ringing from below my floor. How could that be?
Charlie: Your mind was playing tricks on you? Or he was eaten. Charlie raised his arms like Frankenstein’s monster, waving them back and forth.
Bride: That’s not funny. Who would eat them?
Charlie: The spider, he said in a low whisper. Cecelia tried to make him lean forward in a threatening manner, but his legs flopped forward making this gesture look like a trip.
Bride: He doesn’t eat people. They’re too big. He eats, well, he east something smaller like rats, or maybe even cats, maybe.
Charlie: What do you think you’re here for?
Bride: He’s showing me “the deeper”.
Charlie: “The Deeper”? What does that even mean? All he ever tells you is to go out and find men to bring back?
Bride: He doesn’t do just that. He’s just kind and gives me freedom.
Charlie: Kind? Really? This is what you call kindness? Call this freedom? You’re a prisoner.
Bride: Shut up! That’s not true. I can leave at any time.
Charlie: Where would you go? You have no one to go to. You have no skills, so you can’t get a job. You don’t even know this city well enough to find your way around. Where would you go?
Bride: I don’t know. No where. There’s no where I want to go.
Charlie: You just keep telling yourself that. Think about that guy that you called: you could hear the ring echoing.
Bride: I couldn’t tell what it was, where it was coming from.
Charlie: And? Did he ever call back?
Bride: Nothing. He never called back, but every time I called it was like the phone was mocking me—that ring echoing off the floor.
Charlie: No! Think!... it was actually coming from UNDER the floor.
Bride: there’s nothing down there.
Charlie: isn’t there? Did the spider warn you not to go too far back where you’d FALL in to the crevice? “Fall” and “Crevice” means DOWN!
The broken bride was silent. She looked up at Charlie, collapsing into the floor a bit more. Cecelia realized she was crying, and she knew that she had to go look. She must find that crevice.
Bride: How do I get there? When can I go there without being caught.
Charlie: He sleeps in the late morning, but he’s almost unconscious when it’s cold. It’s already getting colder outside. Leave a window open one cold day, and see what happens.
Bride: I will. I’ll do that. I need to know.
Charlie: Yes you do, and tell me what you find when you come back. I’m here for you. I’m your friend. Your only friend, I think.
Bishop: No, I’m here too.
Cecelia looked up at the bishop still hanging from the poll. She thought, ‘these are my only friends.’ Then dread and fear filled her at the idea of going into Aurelio’s lair, into the dark, the crevasses, the cold and stench.
Cecelia’s final conversation with Aurelio
Cecelia was feeling lost and desperate. From the day that she spurned Aurelio’s advances he had kept himself hidden. She knew she would need to go out hunting soon, that this would be expected of her, however she was becoming reluctant to follow his orders. She was becoming more convinced that she was participating in something terrible. And Aurelio was punishing her again: no contact, erratic meals that were usually stale or single ingredient fare: oatmeal, bread, a fruit, a vegetable.
Her attachment to Aurelio had grown in a way that surprised her. She feared him yet felt desperate for his approval, she hated his touch yet her body craved it, she was lonely and he was the only one who she had to talk to. This being ignored, especially in the midst of the fear and confusion, was making her mad with hope of seeing him again. And she wanted to know, needed to hear from him herself, where these men were going.
“Aurelio?” she whispered into his hole. “Aurelio? Where are you?” She waited, listening for movement even though she knew he was capable of being perfectly silent. “Aurelio, won’t you come talk to me?”
“My dearest,” he called to her, his voice was faint and had a tinny echo that comes up through a tunnel. “Wait.”
She waited. After 15 minutes she called again, “Aurelio?”
“Wait.”
She waited, sitting outside his door now. Time passed: she turned around and leaned back against the wall. Time passed: she uncrossed her legs and slouched. Time passed: she considered getting up for a pillow as her back side became numb-sore on the hard floor. Time passed: she twisted around to look into the tunnel to see if she could see him coming. She whispered, “Aurelio?”
He was there, above her from her spot on the floor. “I am here. You called me. You rarely call me. In fact, I think this is the first time you’ve called me.”
“I, I uh, wanted to see you. You’ve been gone for days. I was scared.”
“Oh my dear dear girl. Why would you need to be afraid? Aren’t I here to protect you? I told you I’d always protect you.”
“Not of you. Just spiders.”
“Spiders? Not me, just other spiders?”
“Not you, little spiders.”
“How could you be afraid of them? My kin?”
Cecelia stopped, realizing that if she went down this conversation trail that it would lead to the egg sack. That conversation would be a disaster. “I mean thoughts of spiders, like spidery thoughts, like tangled webs in my head.” She thought that this was quite clever of her to say as she realized that she could now ask crazy questions without making direct accusations.
“I thought I had been giving you such clear teachings. All this time of guidance into The Deep thinking, haven’t you understood yet?”
“Yes, no...sometimes. But that’s not it. I don’t fully understand my purpose. I thought we were supposed to be getting more recruits, people to join us, and there’s no one. What’s happened….” thinking she was getting to close to the mark too quickly she stopped. “Am I bringing home the wrong people?”
“That is not your worry. Whether they stay here, or go to our other homes for instruction is of little concern.”
“We have other homes?”
“In the tunnel I can go many places.”
“But all of them? They all go somewhere else? This other home? How do they get there?”
“I take them myself.”
“Take them? How?” Her questions shot out too fast, too loud.
“Now now, don’t you worry your little childish head. I let you have your fun, don’t I?”
“How would you know? Do you watch?”
“What is it to me what you do? I know you are mine no matter what, no matter who comes here. And I take care of you, don’t I.”
“You’re like my guardian angel, a beautiful constellation of stars held together.”
He felt pride at that, and moved his abdomen into a shaft of light to reflect dabs into her vision. Stroking her cheek, “Trust me. I do what’s right for all these men, whether they’re interested in my wisdom or not. Remember that it’s you and me. We have to be strong together because the world is against us. Your father was against you, all the men have been against you, Jordi was against you. So what are these other men to you?”
“I don’t know that Jordi was really against me, he was just, I don’t know, just...And these other men, they never did anything to me. I thought we were supposed to be helping them.”
“I do help them. I do. Don’t question me,” he leaned over her, “You are only going to achieve The Deep through loyalty. Loyalty to ME!”
“I am, I do. I just didn’t understand. They all just go? Go where?”
“I take them through the tunnel to their other home. They are home there.”
“Through the tunnel? I thought it was dangerous.”
“Yes, very dangerous. You cannot go there. They can go there only because I lead them.”
“I want to be lead there? I want to know what else there is.”
“NO!”
“It’s you and me. Isn’t it you and me?”
“It is. Here. You and me here. You stay here where it is safe. Where no one can find you. Where I can protect you.”
“Are they dead?” she dared to ask him.
“What? Why would you ask that?”
“Are they dead?” she said more clearly.
“My dear, you should keep to your own business,” his proboscises were shaking like the tail of a nervous rattle snake, “Of course they’re not.”
Cecelia stared at him silently and thought, ‘You’re lying. That’s the face of a liar.’ Then she said, “Of course you wouldn’t. How could I think such a thing.” She reached out and stroked his foreleg and touched his paw. She was relieved when he left quickly.
“I’m going to come look. I need to see,” she spoke with her lips only into the void of his home.
Grumpy Day Argument
Cecelia sat cross-legged in the hammock, rocking back and forth. As she rocked she bumped Charlie.
“What the fuck! Stop hitting me,” yelled Charlie.
The bishop yelled from the other side, where he hung on the far side of the pole and wasn’t getting bumped, “My child, be calm. Be kind. Have a heart.”
“I’m not your child, and what the fuck do you know, you religious bigot,” Charlie snarled.
“Bigot? Really, why that. ….religious I can see, but bigot!?!!”
“YES! BIGOT! Just look at you, all proud with that tall glossy hat like you’re above everyone else. And do you ever swear? Your voice is so simpering and soft. Are you a man?”
“Where do I start?”
“Awe, fuck it. You don’t have anything to say for yourself.”
“O contraire, I do believe I have a lot to say for myself. My hat, dear sir, is no more silly than your hat. Why do you wear that bowler? Are you a banker? Or are you making fun of the people with money?”
“My hat, well, my hat is my hat. You must have something on your head, after all.”
“Must you? Well, Charlie, my hat is just a way of showing who I am, and yours shows us how silly of a person you are.”
“How silly I am? You think you’re better than me. I’m a man of the people, and you’re a man, if you are a man, you’re a man of your prejudice.”
“A man of the people? Isn’t that rich...and I mean that: RICH. You have so much money there’s no way a common person could approach you.”
Cecelia rocked harder as she held her head in her hands. Bumb, bump, bump went Charlie.
“Seriously, you stupid woman! Are you shitting me? Stop knocking my fucking brains out.”
Cecelia picked up both Charlie and the Bishop, walking them towards each other in a face off.
“Can’t you see she’s upset. Have a heart. She is lonely. She is lost.”
“Aren’t we all? This little shit hole is no place to live. It’s embarrassing when she brings her dates back here. What do they think of her and her little hammock.”
“I’m sorry to say that they seem to like it just fine. But she does have a way of finding the lowest of low. These men just want one thing from her.”
“Yeah! Well, she offers it doesn’t she.”
“But she’s still lonely. It doesn’t seem to work, bringing them back here and all.”
“Well, maybe she’ll find someone that’s good. Maybe there’s someone out there for her. But as long as she’s bringing them back to this shit-hole they won’t be staying long.”
“Dearest Charlie, what is she to do? She can’t leave. Either her family or her husb….that man she was at the altar with. Then what? Back to a life with no freedom.”
“And this is freedom?”
“A kind of freedom, I suppose.”
“A freedom to go?”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“Then that’s not freedom. This is a prison. A fucking, shit-hole prison.”
“There’s always something to be thankful for. The good book says…”
“The good book, my ass. What do you know of the good book?”
“Well, only what Cecelia knows, to be quite frank. I mean, I am just in her head anyways.”
“Then don’t talk about what you don’t know.”
“I know about the fleas. The fleas that those ladies were thankful for.”
“Yeah, I’d be thankful for fleas only if I was pulled out of a real shit-hole. Wash all the manure off and cover me with fleas instead. I suppose that would be better.”
“Don’t you remember, I mean, you are in her head too. That book she read when she was at the foreign school—A Hiding Person, no, it was The Hiding Place, something like that. That lady was glad they had fleas in their concentration camp barracks because it kept the German guards out. They had freedom in their prison because of the fleas.”
Cecelia stopped for a moment, listening to what she had just said. She had never thought of it like that. How could they be free and be in prison at the same time.
Charlie replied, “That’s a weird freedom, the pig sty of bunks, that’s what it was. Tons of women shoved into a bunk house to live on top of each other, no room to move or breathe, and covered with fleas.”
“But they could talk. They didn’t have anyone watching them. She told them about God.”
“As if God cared. He let them get stuck in that concentration camp hell. Why didn’t he stop that? Why didn’t he stop Cecelia from being stuck here?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Right. You’re the religious one, you’re the one who should know.”
“But, my friend, here I am hanging from a few strings, unable to do anything for myself. I am completely controlled by Cecelia.”
“You are a puppet. You’re just a puppet.”
“Yes, where can I go without her? And what can I think without her? And how can I know anything without it being in her head?”
“Ah, here you are so wise, Bishop Bigot. You have no freedom. You will never leave this place without her. She has the freedom to leave.”
The bishop choked back on Cecelia’s tears and her voice broke through, “Where? Where can I go?”
“Back into character, man. Are you the bishop or the girl?”
“I don’t know. Both, I guess, because I am nothing without her. Who is she? That is the more important question. I am 100% an extension of her mind; is she the extension of someone else’s mind? Is there someone who’s controlling her?”
“Aurelio controls her,” Charlie whispered.
“He does,” the bishop whispered back.
“But why?”
“Because she fell into his trap.”
“It was a trap wasn’t it.”
“Yes, he said he was saving her, but he wasn’t.”
“Right, and we know what happened to the old lady. She wasn’t ever transformed, was she.”
“No.”
“What did he really do with her? He said she died of old age, but I don’t think that’s what really happened.”
“He ate her. He’s just evil even though he says he’s her protector.” The bishop shook his head, and then dropped down to the floor.
“He’s evil.”
Popping his head back up, waving back and forth on the string, the bishop replied, “Yes. We have to admit that to ourselves. HE IS EVIL.”
“And here you are telling me that we need to be thankful like that lady with fleas.”
The bishop, with his face fallen back on the floor mumbled, “I don’t know how that works. It’s just a story.”
“A true story, though, right? Didn’t you say it was true?”
“Yep”
Charlie turned to Cecelia, “Pick him up off the floor, I can’t understand him.”
Cecelia stared at Charlie, laughing at herself, and the bishop now upright replied again, “Yes! Yes, it was a true story.”
“If she could do it with the Nazi’s then we can do it here.”
“OK, then what do we have to be thankful for? Not much, I dare say,” snarled the bishop.
“Well, now who’s the pot calling the kettle black! I dare say, I’m preaching to you, preacher! HA!” retorted Charlie.
“This place is dismal, and there is no God here.”
“Cecelia ate today, she had plenty of food.”
“Yeah, and it was pretty tasty too.”
“There aren’t any fleas here. No bugs at all, actually.”
“We live with a spider, you ass!”
“Dear Bishop, watch your language! But at that I laugh, and am thankful. Even you are human.”
“As much as a puppet could be. If my nose starts growing, then maybe I can turn into a real boy. But I’m mixing my fairy tales, and this is not that fairy tale.”
“No, we’re in our own fairy tale. Who are we? The mice in Cinderella?”
“Cecelia’s too clean to be Cinderella. Maybe Doncella Teodor getting educated.”
“Hah! Cecelia’s too dumb to be her.”
“That’s wasn’t nice at all. Besides, isn’t she like a slave?”
“More like a damsel that’s been sacrificed. Like The Flea of Giambattista Basile. That flea grew to enormous size.”
“Is this a house of bones? Is she forced to feed on human flesh?”
“Maybe, maybe. Little do we know. But wouldn’t be better if we were in Saint George and the Dragon, perhaps. Then Cecelia could be rescued by her prince.”
“I don’t know WHAT story we’re in. I’m just sick of it, and I want out. Don’t you?”
The planning: Cecelia tried to figure out how to get into Aurelio’s lair
Cecelia bought a notebook, and picked out a pretty pen with flowers on it. She hadn’t written in a long time, but now she was back in planning mode. She didn’t know if Aurelio could read, but suspected that he could, so she wrote in her secret language again.
Instead of wasting her time with shopping, she now went to the library and researched spiders. Aurelio may have started as a mirror spider, but he had become something else. As he had grown in size and pride he had morphed into a grotesque version of this cute little spider. He was like the old woman who was permanently wrinkled with a down turned mouth and frown: deformed by anger. She recognized this now in comparison to the pictures she saw. His fangs were twisted and pointed in different directions, his legs were now constantly bent as if in defense. And his eyes were no longer bright, but had a permanent haze to them. The one that he was missing was caved in deeply, the pit filled with a crackled black scar.
How cold would it need to be to put Aurelio to sleep was her main bit of research. She had a hard time finding that information, but did find out that they sleep through winter. She looked at life cycles, diet, mating; anything she could learn. He had far outlived his normal life cycle, and size for that matter. Diet: meat. Recently alive meat. They kill, they eat.
She had to know. She had to find out if this was what was really happening. The newspaper, yes the library still had papers, was predicting a medicane that had been spinning and blustering in the Mediterranean might be heading right there way. This was her chance, tomorrow.
She sat in the Plaça del Pi with her notebook and wrote out her plans. She wrote in her secret code. The notebook fell from her bag when she left. She thought little of it, searching when she got home. It was no big deal to her, she had it all in her head. It was a huge deal to Jordi when he found it and recognized her special writing.