Fist of the Spider Woman (4 page)

I hold Elfy tight to my chest, but it doesn't help. Something is weird about him. I hold him so he's facing me and stare into his eyes. “What is wrong with you?” He stares back hard and cold. He's never looked at me like that before.

I stash him in the closet and close the door, but immediately feel guilty. Whatever is going on with Elfy right now, it's not his fault. He's probably as confused as I am. I wish there was someone I could talk to about this. Everyone would think I'm crazy. I open the closet door and take him back out, stare in his eyes again. I look over at my typewriter, where I usually bare my soul in order to make myself feel better, but I can't say this, even in a zine. My stuffed bear has been possessed by the government? I need some sleep.

I tie a bandana around Elfy's eyes, apologize to him, and climb back into bed, pulling him close to my chest. It's 7:30 a.m., and the sun is glaring off the snow outside, exploding through the cracks around the slatted blinds. I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I've been at the copy shop for two hours now, finishing up the new issue of my zine so I can send it out. It's getting harder these days to steal photocopies, but luckily I know a code for the machine because I used to have a friend who worked here. The zine is fat, hard to fold, impossible to staple. I am proud and nervous about putting this out into the world. I have tried to stay true, even though the circumstances of the world have gotten so much harder since this regime stole the election. I put the zine up to my nose and sniff, taking in that fresh copy smell. So many memories. We used to come in big groups, idealistic punks believing nothing could stop us. Now I come alone. Nobody my age wants to do things like this anymore. The younger people are too busy on their computers; this wouldn't even occur to them.

The sun is long gone by the time I leave the copy shop, undetected, my bag heavy with secrets. I have to be home by six p.m. to start work. I've been getting a lot of calls lately, my mind is a fog of simulated sex. I clank down the street, grateful that most of these people see me as a teenage boy. I don't want the attention of men. I rub the stubble on my chin with satisfaction.

The phone is ringing as I walk in the door. It's not even six yet.

“Hello?” I say in my normal voice, expecting the dispatcher.

“Heya.” It's Hugh, my new regular. “I was hoping you would be home.”

“Oh, hey,” I say, as if I'm glad to hear from him, softening into my girly voice. “I just got home from school.”

“I didn't know you were in school,” he says with interest.

“What are you studying?”

“History,” I choose something close enough to what I actually care about, hoping he won't ask too many questions.

“A very important subject,” he says. “The founding of this great nation, all that good stuff.”

“Totally,” I say, clenching my jaw in order to avoid mentioning genocide and slavery. “Is your cock hard, daddy?”

“Oh, you know it is baby.” His breath comes out in a shivering gasp. “I've been saving it for you. Ever since I got home from work I've been hard, trying to hide it from my wife.”

“You don't want to have sex with her?” I undo the strap on my brace and take it off, leaning it against the arm of the couch, rubbing my knee, which is swollen and sore from all the walking I had to do today.

He laughs. “No, she's an old hag. I never get hard for her.”

“I see.” I'm supposed to be flattered.

“You like that?”

“Sure,” I say, feeling gross for conspiring against another woman. I buy time by breathing and going “mmm” into the receiver, thinking about what to say next. “I want you to save it all for me.”

“Oh, you know I will, baby girl. I got a big load for you tonight.”

I giggle.

“You know I've been spying on you, every night, I've been watching you in your bedroom when you think you're all alone.”

“You have?” My body goes cold. I hate this fantasy.

“I've been peeking in your door when it's not all the way closed, and one night when it was closed tight I went around the house and stood in the bushes outside your window. I could see you from a perfect angle, your little hand between your legs while you played with yourself.”

My moans are automatic. I quietly unzip my bag and pull out the stack of zines.
Conspiracy of Fuckers,
they read across the top, juxtaposed with a photocopy of barbed wire. I smirk, remembering the way it scratched up the surface of the photocopier.

“I'm glad nobody caught me jerking off in front of your window, that sure would have been embarrassing.” He laughs.

“Yeah, totally.” I giggle. I hope he's not catching on that I'm not really paying attention. I reach into my bag for a pen and pull a stack of yellow envelopes from under the coffee table.

“I can't believe you've been watching me touch myself. I'm so embarrassed,” I say, playing along with his creepy game. I take a pain pill and wait for it to hit me, to take off the rough hard edges.

Forty-five minutes later he comes, and I get off the phone, dinging my bell to clear the air. I call the dispatcher to make sure she knows how long we went.

“You just did a call with Hugh Billings? I didn't authorize that.”

“Are you kidding me?” The life drains out of me and I feel nauseous.

“I told him you weren't signed on yet.”

“I just did an hour long call with him.”

“Look, you should never do a call unless I authorize it first,” she scolds.

Rage rises up in my body. I want to point out that it was her awesome idea to give him my phone number, instead of the other way around, like we do with most clients. I stay calm, stammering through my explanation. I need her to pay me for this call.

“I'll try to work it out,” she says, and we hang up the phone. I stuff envelopes and write addresses on them, trying not to want to die.

A few minutes later, the phone rings again.

“Hello?” I expect to hear the dispatcher's voice.

“Boy, you just got me in a shit load of trouble. Thanks a lot.”

It's him. There's a pushy, controlling edge to his voice.

“You're not supposed to call me unless you get authorization from dispatch first.”

“That bitch just called my house and my wife answered,” he says, as if I'm supposed to feel bad about it.

“Did you pay for this call? Because the dispatcher should have called me first.”

“No, I'm not calling to get you off again, you little slut, I'm calling to scold you for getting me into a big pile of steaming shit.” There is no way I am taking this role play into an actual relationship with him.

“That's not my problem,” I say, and hang up quickly. I'm shaking. I go in the bedroom and grab Elfy. He seems to have gone back to normal in the past week; I don't know what was wrong with me the night he seemed possessed. Holding him close, I pick up the phone to call the dispatcher.

“Hugh Billings just called me again,” I tell her.

“You didn't do the call, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Okay, well, he's cut off now.”

“I'm afraid to answer the phone. What if he calls again?”

“Don't you have caller ID?”

“No.”

“What age are you living in?”

“The government uses caller ID to monitor our calls.”

“You're crazy, that doesn't even make sense.”

I hang up feeling defeated and terrified. I take another pain pill, smoke a bowl, and snuggle up on my couch in my robe with a baseball bat next to me to make me feel more secure. Every time the phone rings I expect to hear his voice, but it's just the dispatcher. I get four more calls before the end of my shift and go to bed in a haze of blended realities.

CASE #10442289073628MDM84667

UPDATE: Engaged in theft of photocopies to reproduced booklets of incendiary materials, with intent to disseminate.
(Conspiracy of F**kers,
see attached copy.) Earned several hundred dollars in unclaimed income. Purchased marijuana and counterfeit prescription narcotics. Enacted incestuous pedophile role-play fantasies in the employ of Gentle Tones.

ASSESSMENT: A solid case has been built on the basis of drug trafficking, theft, sexual deviancy, and potential anti-government/anti-commerce terrorist activity.

RISK: Low. Suspect is weak and will be easy to neutralize. Begin process of neutralization ASAP .

Ring!

“No!” I bolt out of my sleep, sitting straight up in bed. My heart is racing, and all I can hear is the blood pumping in my head. I look at the clock next to my bed. It's three a.m. After six rings, the voicemail picks up. I sit alert in the dark, attuned to every noise in the apartment: a creak from the living room, a scurrying sound in the corner.

A minute later, it begins to ring again. Six rings, then silence.

And then again.

I get out of bed and go out into the living room where the phone is. The room is pitch black, but I am afraid to turn on the light. I feel a presence around me and don't want to be seen.

I wrack my brain trying to think of someone I can call for help. I want to call my recent ex, but that doesn't seem like a good idea. Nobody else comes to mind. Just acquaintances, a couple girls I've slept with, and people I haven't seen in months.

After the phone has been silent for a minute, I pick it up, put it to my ear, and begin dialling. But there is no dial tone.

“Hello?” I say suspiciously.

“You think you can hide from me?” His voice is right there, waiting for me, slithering into my ear like a parasite. I slam the phone down quickly. I lift it again and tap the lever, trying to get a dial tone.

“I'm still here, you little slut, you think you can fuck with me like this and I'm just gonna take it? Fuck you, whore.”

I hold down the receiver and count to thirty before picking it up. As I get to twenty-nine, the phone starts ringing again. I'm approaching a max-out point where it all starts to be funny. Is this real?

“Leave me the fuck alone, I'm calling the police!” This is an ironic threat, coming from me, but hopefully he'll take it seriously.

“I'm watching you, slut. I know where you live.”

“Fuck OFF!” I scream into the phone, slamming it down hard. I pick it up again and slam it back down, over and over again—seven, eight times—until, finally, I get a dial tone. I dial the only number that knows how to come out of me: My ex, Josiah Bird.

“Hello?” his voice is all sleepy, and I picture him in his comfy bed.

“Oh thank god.”

“What do you want,” he asks in a flat tone. But I know he will come over if I really need him. And I really do.

“Are you doing okay, like, in general? Have you eaten? Are you sleeping? How much pot have you been smoking?” It's just like Josiah to try to approach the problem like it's a matter of health.

“Look, Josiah. I don't know.” I say the words slowly and deliberately. Can't he see that I'm completely consumed with terror right now? “This guy won't leave me alone; I feel like he knows exactly what I'm doing, like he really is right outside my window looking in.”

Josiah walks to the door, opens it, and looks outside. I cringe.

“There's nobody there.” He comes back over to me, takes my hand and pulls me off the couch. “Let's go see what you've got in the kitchen. You hungry?”

“I don't know,” I follow him in and watch him boil a pot of water and pour oatmeal into it. He slices up an apple and adds a few shakes of cinnamon. This was one of the best things about dating Josiah. He's magic with food. This oatmeal is perfect, not a glop of gruel, but delicately textured, perfectly softened individual grains, warm and smooth and sweet. I savour each spoonful as I swallow it down, and feel my body relax into the moment. Things start to feel familiar again.

The first thing Josiah did when he got here was turn off the ringer on my phone. The second thing he did was call the police, which I begged him not to do. “They won't come here, Reggie, I promise, I've done this before. They just take a report over the phone, and if he keeps calling they can track it.”

The sun starts to come up. “I really need to get some sleep,” he says.

“Okay.” I guess it feels safe now.

“I can sleep here on the couch.”

“Oh.” I look down at the floor. “You can sleep in my bed if you want.”

We stare into each other's eyes. There is warmth there, and defensiveness.

“All right,” he says, heaving himself off the couch. “But I gotta get some sleep, okay? No funny business!”

“What? Me?” I laugh, and it feels good, loosening the constricted feeling in my ribcage. “I'll try to restrain myself.”

We climb under the covers and each roll to our separate sides of the bed. For the first time in a week I fall into a deep sleep, with no bad dreams. No dreams at all.

I wake up on fire. Hot, heavy breathing in my ear, Josiah's body pressed up against me, rubbing relentlessly. My body is involved before my brain knows what is going on, returning his grinding motions, reaching back and around his head to hold him close, breathing hard into his hair. I turn toward him slowly, feeling the intensity building inside me without even being touched. My heart feels huge and open, desperately reaching out toward his for connection.

His leg slips between mine, and I feel his little cock grinding against my thigh through his boxers, all hard and swollen. My whole body shudders at the feel of it, and I wonder if he can feel my clit, too. It's not as big as his, but I have been using a clit pump to try to make it bigger and more sensitive. He bites my neck and growls as I run my hands down his back and up under his shirt. He rolls on top of me and for the first time we look at each other, our hips still moving. I pull his shirt up and touch his now-unfamiliar chest with my hand. His new scars are fresh, pink, and raised. He had surgery right after we broke up. I thought I would never get to feel this body.