Tempest gazed outside from the upstairs window of the farmhouse. No one lived up here. It was dark. Empty. Just as he was now. He sighed and tore his eyes from the window. Not literally, that would be horrific. He would have considered indulging in the peyote that Jaclyn left if he wasn’t so straight edge.
“Straight edge?” the moon said in a deep, raspy voice. “Boy, you ain’t straight edge. No one could come up wit ‘cho thoughts being sober, ‘cept if they’s clinically insane.”
Tempest smiled.
“When you’re right, you’re right!! Thanks Moon!”
“Sho thang.”
He could imagine her breath on his neck, and hear her whisper, “I want you to take this, and then eat me aliiiiiive!”
An eerie half smile pulled at the corner of his mouth as he daydreamed and took the peyote. At first, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, or maybe not suddenly, time was funny now, he moved within himself. He felt himself shrink, smaller and smaller all the way down to the floor. He felt his arms and legs disjoint and pop as they stretched. Thousands of hair follicles poked their way out of his skin, leaving stained droplets of blood on his new coat of fur. His head contorted and he could feel more hair-covered legs sprouting from where his rib cage used to be, tearing their way through what once was his skin, and is now but a shell. He felt himself scrambling with his newly formed legs, pushing his old body away from his new body. Finally, he disconnected, in every sense of the word, from his former self. Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. This was the Spider King Tempest. And he was hungry.
How they’ll abhor me now, he thought. He felt himself snarl beneath the fangs of his chelicerae. He scurried across the floorboards and up the stone wall. In doing so, he realized the farmhouse molted as well.
The moon was shining down on a spider whose entire body was a human head with a half and half face, and its legs striped dark red and a darker green, gazing out from the window of a castle. And he could hear her singing to him, even from this far away.
He gazed at it in silence, wiping blood from his legs under his chin where the spider’s abdomen should have been, or where the human’s pants may have been. He could hear her crystal clear, her high-pitched clown voice shattering the earth.
“And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky.”
His two human eyes narrowed at the movement in the distance. A man in red suspenders hopped merrily over an opening in the earth that would have swallowed him up in death if he mistimed it. The Spider King frowned and skittered out the window and down to the ground below.
He looked around in confusion as Super Mario’s theme music played from the heavens. The moon had disappeared and it was bright and pixelated. He analyzed his new form: a two dimensional fiend.
“Oh, you’re fucked now Mario!”
He dashed into the horizon at an unrealistic speed, in the direction of the man in the red suspenders.
He came upon a goomba with the face of Bert McAlroy crawling sideways across the ground. Spider King Tempest hopped, landing on top of the goomba and smashing him flat. Once he was flat, Spider King wiggled his fangs and consumed him.
He could see the red phone booth coming up to the left.
“I better take that call.”
He crawled in and gazed at the catatonic manager of the Deathwish.
“Pardon me, I’ve got Marios to kill and Princesses to devour. And I gotta save my Ragdoll. May I please take this fucking call!?”
Johnny AstroCreeper dissolved in front of the spider and the phone rang. His little spider claws stuck to the phone, but it transformed into a piranha plant, its eyeless face of teeth salivating in his face.
“Oh I gotta hurry. Jaclyn is in trouble!”
He answered in his raspy spider voice, “Hello?”
“Why did you call me a bitch?” the piranha plant whined grumpily.
Arrrrrrgh!
He dropped the piranha plant back onto the receiver and crawled away.
She’s melting on me like cotton candy.
His eyes twitched as the castle came into focus. He knew immediately what it was: the castle that crossed hemispheres. Time was funny there, too.
Wait, what the fuck was he thinking about? What castles? White castles?
Fuck, Daedalus would know. Where’s he?
That’s it! No more peyote unless Jacky was with him! This was bizarre even for him!
He climbed into the castle, following the man in the red suspenders.
Inside, the spider crawled across the floor. In the corner of one of the dungeons were the bones of a dragon, spider eggs beginning to hatch inside its cracked skull. He gazed thoughtfully, until the sound of running out of time blared throughout the land, echoing through his skull.
He could feel his heart pounding inside his head. He made his way across a platform of fallen ghosts, more dragon bones, but these were the bones of the Koopa kids, not the big guy.
Poor Bowser, he thought.
He finally entered a door. The door. He skittered in, but with caution. And there she was, the clown princess, chained to the castle wall. His heart thumped. Standing beside her, Duncan Ryder in red suspenders, and next to him, his Yoshi-like pet Raven. Its eyes were two black holes glaring back at him. Blood dripped from its claws. At the sight of the spider king, it circled to a position where it could glare at the arriving intruder. A pit of red fire separated the spider king from the man and the raven, and more importantly, Ragdoll.
“I’m here.”
Mario laughed.
“What’s funny?”
Mario laughed again. Empty, hollow eyes stared back at the spider king. Then shifted to his pet raven. For a brief moment, he could feel the man’s thoughts. He was the man in the red suspenders, the mercenary that was well-traveled. He went across the lands, claiming the castles of others. He was a parasite. A locust. The raven didn’t know him. But the spider king did.
The man in the red suspenders turned, kicking his raven into the pit of fire. The raven squawked weakly.
“A bang and a whimper,” Ragdoll said cheerfully, then honked with laughter. Mario’s laughter stopped suddenly, but the spider king giggled along with the clown princess.
“It’s the castle you want, then?” the spider king asked, asked as his laughter trailed off. His eight eyes rolled in their sockets.
Mario nodded.
“You’re in the wrong world. You take the castles for the glory, not for the thrill of battle. I’ve seen you brag and boast across the lands about all the castles you’ve held hostage. But this is my castle. And the clown princess is mine, too.”
His humongous human head spider body nodded in the direction of the clown princess. The man in the red suspenders instinctively moved closer to her.
“This is my castle,” Spider King echoed, never taking his eyes off of Duncan. “And I know it better than you do.”
He stood on his back legs, six of his eyes stuck on Duncan. The other two blinked in Ragdoll’s direction. For a moment she only stared back, and then the eyes squinted.
“Oh right!” she said. “Heeeeeeeere’s Jacky!”
She felt the chains around her wrist release and reached beneath her dress. Pulling out Aristocrat, she pointed it directly into Mario’s forehead and pulled the trigger, her hateful smile glaring into the gunfire as the blast sent him over the edge and into the pit. The spider king came back down into his crawling position, taking one of his claws off of the hidden contraption in the wall.
“Now that was a bang and a whimper!” he said and they both grinned, locking eyes. He hopped over the pit of red fire and freed Ragdoll. She squealed with joy and wrapped her arms around his head. His fangs trembled and the smile disappeared from her face.
“Hey! This is not what I meant by eating me alive!”
2 Days Later
The farm was humid, and the heat was heavy. Still, the Astro Creeps sat in the front yard of the property, hunched in their cheap chairs. Tempest was practically salivating, and his half mask was so tight it seemed that maybe it was stitched to his face. Daedalus rocked to and fro, smiling mischievously. Kosnar stood behind them both, arms folded across his chest, peering out behind his black mask. Pisces stood off to the side, in a low cut tank top and a purple skirt. They were in front of the trailer, where there was shade. Sweat glistened on all of them. Tempest held the Cross-Hemisphere Championship on his shoulder, and despite his reputation, he seemed to hold it with pride.
“Duncan… Ryder…”
He growled it, his eyes glaring forward. Daedalus continued rocking, but chuckled audibly.
“Coming for this?”
He tapped the gold plate of the leather strap on his shoulder.
“Yes, of course you are. I know your kind.”
He smiled behind the mask, petting the Cross-Hemisphere Championship. Daedalus nodded next to him.
“You collect these, don’t you? These are what you use to validate your relevance across the industry. So you can get on social media and make the latest list formulated by a casual viewer of the product. And you’re here to make a name for yourself at my expense. Have I got that right? No?”
He mimicked exaggerated pondering, tapping his finger on his chin.
“Oh! I’ve got it. You’re here to avenge Konrad Raab, your friend.”
He blurted laughter, but stopped abruptly.
“No. That’s not it, either.”
He tilted his head and smirked, tapping his fingers lightly against the plate.
“No. I know what it is. You’ve got a personal vendetta with the Global Coalition because its high society cast you out. They tossed you to the alley like a sack of garbage. And you’ll do anything to prove that they were wrong. We can… smell the desperation that seeps from your pores.”
He brought his voice down lower, just above a whisper.
“Desperation brings out the darkest traits of a human. That means you are the most dangerous of opponents. And that’s what I want. I want you scratching and clawing your way to this accolade. This. This object is what you’re here for. It doesn’t matter to you who’s holding it. But it should, Duncan. Because while you’re here for the glory, my glory will come at being able to be the one to say… I beat you. In a time where you seem to be invincible, it’ll be Tempest, no one else, who stops you in your tracks. And it won’t stop there. Suddenly, all of your success will drain from you like your blood. And it will be because of me.”
His expression turned grim.
“I’m a disease. I spread myself and feed on you, one cell at a time. I am the Spider King. I manifest inside you, and lay my eggs in the deepest recesses of your mind. Of all of your stops on your little championship tour… this one will be the one that haunts you.”
The phone rang. Tempest’s head shot up at Daedalus, who shrugged. Tempest picked up the phone.
“Jacky?”
He paused, listening closely.
“You mean, the farmhouse?”
He leaned forward in his chair.
“For how long?” he said, then inhaled deeply when he heard her response.
“Okay,” he said distantly. “I’m all yours.”
And then he hung up the phone, gazing at the rest of the Astro Creeps. A smile slowly crept to his lips.
