Ad Nauseam

WIDOW



Dang it!

Susan swatted the back of her neck, responding to the sudden, searing pain. Her hand squashed something crunchy and soft. Sticky guts squirted between her fingers, causing her stomach to lurch. She slowly brought her hand up before her eyes.

Not a spider, anything but a spider, she thought.

She examined the crumpled black body and green gobs of insides stuck to her fingers. It was indeed a spider. Susan shuddered, repeatedly wiping her hand on a cardboard box to remove the mess.

The back of her neck still stinging, Susan slumped onto a nearby box. Tears filled her eyes.

I can’t even clean the basement without drama! she thought. Oh how Bill would chuckle at me if he could see this, crying over a spider bite.

Waves of revulsion and self-pity sent shivers through her body. Bill didn’t understand. He would never get it. He wasn’t a mother.

“It’s a clear cut case of Empty Nest Syndrome.” Bill had asserted in a smug tone that made Susan want to kick him in the shin. He’d been the first to notice the signs of depression as they had taken their toll on Susan, and he was quick to diagnose, as well. “You should find a hobby.”

For over twenty years, Susan had dedicated her life to the raising of their two children. Bill made enough money for her to stay home. Twenty-two years of cooking for, cleaning up after, and doing laundry for those children. Soccer games and dance classes, parent teacher conferences and school performances. She had wiped every nose, every tear, and their little butts when they were babies. Broken bones, first periods, first dates and first broken hearts had all been her domain.

Bill had dealt with none of it.

Their youngest daughter had followed in her sister’s footsteps and left for college a few months ago, leaving Susan with nothing to do and too much time on her hands. The big house and all its silence echoed faintly with memories. Her kids had been her whole life, and now she felt as empty as the house. She had nothing.

No purpose.

It became her mission. What will you do with yourself today, Susan? What is your purpose?

Bill had his purpose in every day life. Oh, sure he did. He had his job to go to five days a week with meetings and phone conversations. He had his football games on the weekends, which he watched while propped in his armchair relaxing after such a hard work week. He had his drinking as well, empty beer bottles and the occasional pint of hard stuff taking up more space in the garbage can lately. Of course, he also had that little slut at the office. The one he had been having an affair with for years.

Susan had known for a while now. The many nights that he worked late, only to come home smelling of perfume. Credit card receipts for mystery gifts that had never shown up under the Christmas tree. She hadn’t considered divorcing him. The embarrassment for both her and the girls would be too much to bear; besides, she was comfortable where she was.

She had everything she could possibly want, except a purpose.

***

Bill lay snoring next to her when Susan awoke late in the night, her body soaked in sweat and wracked with chills. Her head pounded fiercely and waves of fever washed over her. The muscles spasmed in her neck, clenching into knots, as she scurried to the bathroom. She barely made it in time before heaving her dinner into the toilet, then further suffering an attack of diarrhea like she had never known.

Please let me die, she thought as she sat on the pot with her face in the garbage can, losing fluids from both ends simultaneously.

After several minutes, the vomiting seemed to subside and there was nothing left within her to excrete, so Susan drew a warm bath. Weak and thoroughly spent, she climbed over the edge of the antique, claw-foot tub into the tepid water and settled in slowly. When the back of her neck touched the edge of the tub, she sat back up with a gasp.

Ouch!

Susan fingered the tender lump on her neck. The spider bite had swollen into a large, hard boil, throbbing beneath the skin. Careful not to slip, she got out of the tub and found her makeup mirror. Angling it so she could see her back reflected in the larger one above the sink, she examined the lump. It was an angry red around the edges, with a head of festering puss that looked as though it may burst at any moment, the skin stretched thin like the surface of an overinflated balloon.

Hmmmm, Susan thought. All this from a silly spider bite? I think I’m going to have to get this looked at by a doctor in the morning.

Some time during the early hours of morning, the boil on Susan’s neck burst, leaking foul yellow pus onto the ivory sheets. As the wound oozed, her fever broke and she traded in the fitful slumber of illness for a much more restful sleep.

***

Susan slept through the rustling of the sheets and the sound of Bill’s electric razor as he started his morning. She even slept through a full hour of her alarm’s blare later, before it finally gave up and shut itself off. It wasn’t until after lunch that Susan awoke, feeling, not groggy, but as refreshed as if she had just returned home from a long trip to the spa.

Her depression seemed to have lifted, as well. With a renewed energy and vitality that she hadn’t felt since her twenties, she got out of bed humming the tune of Whistle While You Work, a song from her daughter’s childhood that she hadn’t thought about in years, as she tucked the sheet corners under the mattress and smoothed the rumples in the blankets on the bed. And best of all, the pain her neck was gone.

Susan attacked the house with manic energy, cleaning and cooking at an almost frenzied pace. She busied herself with chores that she had put off for too long, things that weren’t part of her every week routine such as washing curtains and organizing closets. Then she baked muffins and cookies and breads, enjoying the task more than caring who would eat them. She felt a satisfaction in the work that had been missing for some time.

When Bill returned from work, late that evening, she met him at the door eagerly.

Ha! Work indeed! she thought, as she caught the scent of soap on his skin. She could detect the musk of another woman as well. It was faint, but she could still smell it, and she felt her anger glow hot. She hadn’t cared about the affairs for a long time now, but tonight she wanted to rip his head off.

Bill stopped short when he saw the fury in her eyes. “What’s going on, Hon?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Susan forced a civil tone and tight smile. “I made your favorite dinner, stroganoff. Hurry, it’s getting cold.”

Dinner was a quiet affair, Bill complimenting Susan on a delicious meal, while she stared back across the table, her look inscrutable. Her appetite was gone. Come to think of it, she hadn’t eaten anything all day. It was of no concern, she wasn’t even hungry. Susan stood to clear the table and load the dishwasher.

“Good Christ Susan! What happened to your neck?” Bill grabbed her shoulder and leaned in for a closer look.

Susan clapped a hand across the wound. “Nothing. It’s just a spider bite, that’s all.” She turned so he couldn’t see. “It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

“Well, you need to go to a doctor tomorrow. It looks awful!”

Susan knew Bill was right; but, she wouldn’t be going to see any doctor. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt oddly defensive of her spider bite. She should’ve been more disturbed by the fact that the crater had doubled in size, now big enough to admit the tip of her pinky finger, its edges grey and withered. But the flesh around it had turned a mottled black and green that she found strangely beautiful.

“All right,” she said at last, humoring him. “I’ll call first thing in the morning.”

***

The next day Susan ate a fly.

One moment, it was just flying around, and the next it was crunching between her teeth, bitter guts bursting on her tongue. She hadn’t even realized her own intentions when she plucked it out of the air and popped it into her mouth. She waited in horror for the nausea to come, but it never did. Instead, to her amazement, her stomach growled and her appetite returned with a vengeance.

What at odd development, she thought, though she felt no real alarm. Indeed, her nerves seemed more steady with every hour that ticked by. So what if she had enjoyed eating the fly. Many cultures ate insects as a staple of their diet. She had read about African villages where kids carried around enormous roasted grasshoppers on sticks, licking and crunching them like lollipops. She spent much of the remainder of that afternoon hunting and consuming bugs with the same vigor that she had cleaned the house the day before.

She searched every corner of the house for insects, looking in all of the dark places that they liked to hide, even eating the dusty remains of long-dead moths, littering the window-sills. The dead ones were tasteless, but fresh moths had a wonderful plumpness to them, their guts sweet and gritty in her mouth.

The next day, some of Susan’s teeth fell out. Just the top canines, but it was still a bit frightening at first. They came out bloodless, replaced by sharp, dark fangs curving out from her gums, which excited her for reasons she still didn’t understand. She found that if she concentrated really hard, she could make a clear fluid shoot out of them. When she bit her tongue, it went numb and functionless for over an hour.

Fascinating!

The changes came fast over the next few weeks, but Susan was able to hide them from Bill with ease. He was spending more time at work everyday, and though they still slept in the same bed, they no longer made love. This absence of intimacy allowed Susan to hide the changes to her body by sleeping in her housecoat. She grew more detached from her old life as the days passed. She found herself hurrying off the phone whenever one of her daughters would call. Only a few short weeks ago these same calls would have been the highlight of her day.

Susan knew she should be afraid of the changes, should be seeking help for the uncontrollable shift in her nature, but she had a hard time feeling anything but joy and excitement. The sheer exhilaration that she felt overshadowed the lesser feelings of anxiety and concern. A curious detachment, supplementing the joy, made it impossible for her to worry about such things.

She found she just couldn’t be bothered by the more mundane aspects of life. All Susan wanted to do was lay in the empty tub, naked, and stroke her changing abdomen, giddy with excitement when she first felt the hard ridges wriggling beneath the skin, waiting to emerge. The foreign parts hiding beneath the surface of her skin, felt sharp and restless, eager to complete the metamorphosis. Her skin was becoming transparent, allowing hints of black to show through as the appendages pressed against her flesh from the inside.

Her new legs emerged early one evening. The skin of her abdomen had stretched tight and shiny, before it split with a sound like cloth tearing. It was extremely painful, but Susan was brave, clenching her teeth as well as she could around the oversized fangs in her mouth. She barely made a sound as each pair of black, chitinous legs erupted from her sides. There was no blood, only shriveled flaps of white skin left hanging like streamers.

She was becoming complete. She knew the transformation was almost at an end. She felt it in some primitive part of her brain that had been dormant before.

Yes! So close!

The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place nicely, and she could almost see the complete picture. Almost knew what it was that she had to do. Susan pulled an armchair into a shadowy corner of the living room and waited patiently for her husband to return.

Bill staggered in the house, well after midnight, smelling strongly of liquor and sex; he hadn’t even bothered to shower this time. Hearing her heavy breathing, he turned towards the corner where she sat, unable to make out more than her shape in the gloom. She looked different, her figure not the soft matronly one that he had gotten used to over the last many years.

Bill felt apprehensive, but he dismissed it. It was just poor, sweet, dumpy Susan. Nothing to be scared of.

“Everything okay, Babe?” His speech was slurred and unsteady.

When she spoke, her voice was strange. A small amount of light from the kitchen pierced the darkness of the room, reflecting off glittery black eyes that seemed both too small and too bright to belong to his wife.

Fear turned knots in Bill’s stomach as he tried to push it down.

“Go to bed you cheating son of a bitch.”

The accusation startled Bill. He opened his mouth to deny it, and then slammed it shut when he thought about how alien her voice sounded. His usually humble wife had never spoken to him like that. He always suspected that she knew about his infidelity, but just ignored it. He was also certain that she would rather die than bring about that sort of embarrassment on their daughters and extended families. She had been behaving so oddly over the last few days. Tomorrow he would call someone. Clearly, Susan needed help. Though he wasn’t the sort of man that allowed his wife to order him around, Bill was afraid. Something was very wrong with Susan, and he wasn’t sure he was prepared to deal with it tonight. He quietly went to bed.

Susan waited until she was sure that Bill was asleep, then crept into their room and lay on the bed beside her husband. Her new legs were not yet fully grown, and she was still able to hide them beneath the robe, but her rage was a different matter entirely.

She lay there, listening to him snore loudly, her anger swelling with each noisy inhale and exhale. His snoring was always at its worst when he drank, and tonight was no exception. She allowed her rage to build until she could stand it no longer. For too many years she had lain beside this man, faithful when he was not, caring when he was indifferent, loving when he was undeserving. Tonight he would get his. She would give him everything he deserved.

With a speed she hadn’t known she possessed, Susan flung off her robe and jumped atop Bill.

She sank her teeth into the meaty part of his shoulder. Her new fangs pierced the skin effortlessly and plunged deep into the tissue. She felt an electric tingle run through her facial muscles as she produced thick venom in secret glands, preparing to inject it.

Her husband came awake with a wail and began to struggle, bucking beneath his wife in an effort to dislodge her mouth. The pain was excruciating. He was a strong man, but it was no use. Susan held fast, pinning him to the mattress with superior force. She was so much stronger now. How did she get so strong?

She held him as she focused all her concentration on her new teeth, willing herself to pump the venom in fast and deep. She continued to hold him, still injecting the poison, until he quieted and went still. Only when he could move no more, did she finally stop, sitting up to survey the damage.

Bill lay on his back on the bed, unable to move due to the paralytic effects of Susan’s venom. He looked like he was dead, the only thing that betrayed this effect were his eyes, which still tracked Susan’s movements, and the soft gurgles that emerged intermittently from his throat. Susan absently stroked one of her new legs, enjoying the smooth feel of the appendage under her hand, as she stared vacantly at his flaccid crotch. The fight had excited her.

She wanted to mate.

Unable to close his drying eyes, Bill looked at the ceiling through a layer of filmy tears as the monster that used to be his wife, employed the tricks she had learned during years of marriage to make his body betray him. He watched in helpless horror while, with patience and practice, she managed to get him erect, a triumphant squeal escaping her misshapen mouth as she mounted him. Rocking her way to release, she coaxed his body into a reluctant climax; a pathetic bubbling sound in his throat was Bill’s only acknowledgement of his finish though he longed to cry out.

Her own orgasm followed swiftly, her body pounding his furiously with mindless abandon. Never before had she experienced such sexual pleasure. It washed over her in waves, causing her to cry out her joy, the sound terrifying and alien. Overcome by her own excitement, Susan began to chew furiously.

Moments later, as her sexual high ebbed and Susan regained what little of her senses that remained; she realized that Bill was dead.

She had eaten most of his face.

The wreck that remained no longer resembled her husband at all. With her head tilted curiously to one side, she studied the bloody mess of him. She knew on some level that she should be horrified by what she had done, but she remained calm and emotionless. She poked an inquisitive finger into the empty socket that used to be his eye. It felt warm and squishy in there. She liked the feeling. She liked the coppery taste in her mouth as well.

Soon her big house would be full again. The sounds of her children scuttling about would ring joyfully throughout the place. Susan glanced at the body that had been Bill one more time. Maybe she would eat the rest later. Right now, she had work to do. She had finally found her purpose. After all, the egg sac wouldn’t build itself.

As she worked, Susan thought about her daughters. She hadn’t seen either girl in a while so she decided to call them both and invite them to come home for a weekend soon. She would schedule it for after the eggs hatched. She hoped the girls would be as excited to meet their new siblings as the babies would be to meet them.