Kudzu, Chapter 24

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book 4, chapter 24, kudzu, novel, spiders

Unfortunately, my brain has yet to have clued me in on the true nature of the title for Book IV. It’s sure to relent one of these days, at which point I’ll update this. For now, alas, we must proceed without. Suffice to say that Book IV begins here, and now, despite its unwillingness to divulge its true name.

Kudzu, a Novel

Book IV: As Yet To Be Titled

Chapter 24

“Something is crawling in my hair.” Kevyn’s voice shook as they felt their way through the low, earthen tunnel. The floor was slightly damp, and the feathery fingers of roots protruding from the walls brushed their faces as they passed.

“Quit complaining,” Murphy said. “At least you’re getting out of jail. I’m totally screwed if I go back to work. I can’t even pick up my last paycheck.”

Kevyn pulled up short; Murphy collided with her.

“Oh, fuck,” Kevyn said. “We’re fugitives. I can’t go home. Who’s going to water my plants?”

“Your plants? I’ve lost my job, conspired with felons, assisted a jail break, contributed to arming a psychopath, and now I’m on the run with a crazy man and a whiner. I don’t give a fuck what happens to your plants. Who’s going to feed my cats?”

Sir Reginald said, “The Outer Planetary Exploratory Vehicles were first proposed as part of—”

“What?”

“If we’re going to be dealing with a threat from outer space, it’s important to have a little background, don’t you think?”

“We’re in a tunnel, breaking out of jail — which I wouldn’t have been in if not for you, thank you very much. Do you really think this is the right time for a history lesson?”

“Would you rather spend the time obsessing about theoretical spiders in your hair?” He cleared his throat. “Right. Then, where were we? Ah, yes. The beginning. The Outer Planetary Exploratory Vehicles were first proposed as part of an international and inter-corporate program to assess the resources available throughout the Solar System, and to allocate rights. Predictably, bickering over who would theoretically receive what scuttled the project before they even had a clue what they were theorizing about. At that point each nation or corporation capable of mounting an expedition did so on its own, all under the auspices of the original project.”

“Please tell me why I should care,” Murphy said.

Sir Reginald ignored the guard. “In all, there were nine expeditions that reached the production stage. Nine ships, all built to the same specifications, before the lawsuits over intellectual property rights for the technology incorporated into the ships stopped the project. Seven of those ships launched. One was disassembled immediately upon completion. The ninth was warehoused and forgotten.”

“If this was a story,” Kevyn said, “the editor would cut all this crap.”

“It’s important background.”

“It’s exposition, it’s boring, and it happened a million years ago. What does any of this have to do with us?”

“Sixty-five years is hardly a million. It’s not even half that. Where was I? Ah, the Beagle, yes. The OPEV Beagle was the first of two U.S. expeditions to the outer planets. The Beagle disappeared halfway through its mission, stranding a handful of the crew on the surface of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon. They discovered the shuttle buried in the ice covering Triton’s surface. There were no survivors, and those at the base died of starvation years before another ship was able to get there.”

“Great,” Murphy said. “First you kidnap me, and now you’re telling stories of trapped people dying of starvation — while we’re in a creepy, pitch-black tunnel that makes a century-old prison smell like a fresh breeze?”

“Seriously,” Kevyn said. “What is that smell? Raw sewage?”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘dirt,’ with perhaps a bit of mildew. That’s the problem with kids today: they live their lives indoors and never spend any time with their hands in the soil. The mildew is likely not terribly good for your lungs, but it’s not like we’re going to set up housekeeping here. I hope.”

“You hope?”

“Yes, well, I appear to have become rather vague, haven’t I? Best not to dwell on that, and just push on. We’re certain to come up somewhere interesting. Though I would suggest we pick up the pace. These sorts of tunnels are liable to collapse at any time.”

“I hate you,” Kevyn said.

“Indeed,” Sir Reginald said. “I have always suspected as much. The Triton castaways—”

“Oh, God.”

“Ahem. The Triton castaways left some records behind. There had been some sort of incident that caused substantial damage to the ship. They were unable to raise the Beagle on radio, and feared all personnel on the ship had been killed. After about a month, the Beagle broke orbit using only maneuvering rockets, and disappeared into the darkness of space. They were never seen again.”

“Until this week,” Kevyn said.

“Wait,” Murphy said. “Are you talking about the mystery ship that was on the news the other day?”

“Yes, Ms. Murphy, that self-same spaceship is the subject of our current verbal perambulations.”

“I thought it was from Mars. That’s what they said on T.V.”

“Did you know that at one time, journalism was a noble art? Ah, it doesn’t matter. The world goes its own ways, indifferent to those who would see it follow a different, perhaps better, path. Yes, the ship we spied through the looking glass was the OPEV Beagle, missing these many years and presumed lost in the infinite emptiness of space. Returned home, only to find home vastly changed, filled with news anchors who can hardly remember the previous night, much less a tragic tale from over half a century ago.”

Kevyn stopped again. “Okay, I see how you’re tying all this together, but what are we supposed to do about any of this? I mean, really?”

“Keep moving,” Murphy said.

“Ow,” said Kevyn. “You can’t do that. We’re not in prison anymore.”

“Every time you stop, that’s more time I’m stuck down here listening to two crazy people in the dark. So just keep moving. Please.”

“Yeah, okay. Sorry.” Kevyn shuffled off down the tunnel. “But seriously, what does any of this have to do with us?”

“I’m not certain,” Sir Reginald said. “I… I simply have a bad feeling about all this. I can feel it in the hollow of my chest, under my ribs. The last time I felt like this was when Astrid showed me her grand experiment. I ignored it then. Ran away from it, really. And look how that turned out.”

“Oof!” Kevyn said. “I’ve run out of tunnel.”

“Try going up,” Murphy said.

“Good idea—”

The light was blinding.

They climbed out into kudzu, blinking in the soft, green glow filtering through the leaves. Murphy waved away a cloud of gnats. Small white butterflies flitted between the clusters of kudzu flowers sprinkling the cavernous space.

“Hmm,” Sir Reginald said, looking at Kevyn. He brushed the top of her head with an open hand, and when he pulled it away, a huge black and yellow spider danced in his palm, clearly agitated. “It seems you did have a spider in your hair.”

He set it on one of the kudzu leaves, and it scuttled away.

“Did I mention I hate you?” Kevyn asked.

Murphy looked at the trap door they had come through. Now that it had been opened, kudzu vines had already started growing down into the darkness of the tunnel, back toward the prison.

“Now what?” she asked.

Sir Reginald looked at the vines twisting all around them and scratched his chin.

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

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Intermission

Tags

character sketches, kudzu

Well, November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which is not the reason why we’re taking a break from Kudzu this week. When I worked retail, December was the busiest month of the year, but since I’ve stopped, it’s been November. It’s like everything that needs to get done before the end of the year has to be done in November (perhaps because December gets busy?). Maybe all the NaNoWriMo folks have the time to write 50,000 words in a month. Me? I’m lucky just to get through to the other side.

So, Kudzu is taking a break between chapters to give me a chance to catch up. We’ll be back with Chapter 24 next Sunday. In the meantime, I’ll give you some of Linda’s preliminary character sketches.

Enjoy, and we’ll see you next week!

Colleen Byrne

Michael Cobbs

Ash Hendricksson

Susan Kernighan

 

 

 

 

Kudzu, Interlude 1 – A Secret History of Trust, by Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII

Tags

erotica, kudzu, novel, Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII, spiders, trust

Interlude

The Secret History of Trust

by Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII

Unique among Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII’s mysterious and eccentric writings, A Secret History of Trust is perhaps the only story which has no secret history, or at least, only a relatively insignificant one. According to Sir Reginald’s notes, this story was inspired by his unexpected encounter with one Kevyn Vaughan in the women’s bathing facilities of Haviland Penitentiary. The circumstances surrounding Ms. Vaughan’s incarceration and escape remain a mystery, as she appears to have no arrest record, but is noted in the prison documents as having escaped with the aid of a prison guard. Of course, it goes without saying that Sir Reginald could not possibly have been in the correctional facility’s shower. We must, therefore, conclude that the encounter was entirely a matter of Sir Reginald’s overactive imagination — a product, as it were, of his “condition,” a matter upon which he, and those within his circle, remain obstinately silent.

The Secret History of Trust

by Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII

 

It was the perfect place, before the monster came.

She built her home there, between the glassy cliffs and the swaying folds of densely woven fibers, under the white sky and the rusty bar. Here there was protection, from the rain, from dangerous animals who would kill her without a thought. From rivals.

And there was food.

Oh yes, there was food. Moths and flies and mosquitoes, silverfish and centipedes. They fell from the hole in the sky that let in the sun to scurry around the pond — dry but for the soft dripping of the spring — just waiting to be fetched out by a helpful arachnid.

And then, the monster came.

~

When the monster came, it came singing monstrous songs. The melody of it vibrated her web, but the monster paid no heed. Instead, it flung its horrible limbs about itself in time with its horrible song.

She didn’t know whether to run and hide or stand and challenge. Whether to make herself look big, or become very small. She chose instead to remain perfectly still.

Maybe the monster would just go away.

It didn’t.

Instead, it shoved its hand right through her web, snapping strands, destroying the perfect symmetry of her home, before bellowing and yanking its hand back. The tattered web shook.

She hung on for dear life. She stayed very still.

It didn’t help. The monster’s hideous face loomed over her.

It spoke then, more softly than it had before. Still, the force of the creature’s breath shook the web.

“Oh, aren’t you lovely?”

Lovely? As in, a lovely snack? She ran. She let go of her web and dropped, lowering herself to the floor as fast as she could. There was no hope for her, not against something like that, but if she could lead the thing away from the egg sack…

Something massive hovered over her, then slammed down, too fast to avoid.

She was… still alive. The monster had trapped her, imprisoned her, presumably saving her for a future meal. The walls of her prison were textured but non-porous, and translucent. The monster raised her up, and then… oh. No.

It reached for the egg sack.

She battered herself against the wall of her prison, to no avail.

The monster loomed close.

“Trust me,” it said, in its shattering voice. “I know a perfect place for you.”

~

The monster had not lied. It released her in a sheltered place thick with prey. She could have lived on the mosquitoes alone, but there was so much more. Gnats for mid-day snacks, and fruit flies, pill bugs and daddy long-legs. Even a nice, succulent yellow jacket that was kind enough to offer itself to her.

This was paradise.

Even better, the creature had placed her egg sack next to her. She carefully carried it into the upper reaches of her new web, safe from mice and other ravenous creatures. And every day, she told the story of the monster that brought them to paradise.

When the eggs hatched and the tiny spiders floated away on silk threads, she was long dead, a dried husk hanging from a tattered web.

But they did not forget, and when the creature came to walk among them, they strove to dazzle it with their magnificent webs.

And when it was their time, they laid their eggs and told the tale, over and over, of the monster who brought them to paradise.

~

There are monsters, and there are monsters.

Two of the creatures came late one night, unimaginably huge, blundering through webs. They forced open the portal the spiders guarded, the portal to the lair of the monster who had delivered Grandmother Spider to paradise. They remained within for only a short time, punctuated by the sounds of a tremendous battle, massive blows that could flatten a dozen spiders or more, crashes, and screams.

When the two monsters left, they carried with them several bags. One appeared to be injured.

The portal into the monster’s home remained open. One of the spiders ventured within. And then, hearing her report, more followed.

The monster — their monster — lay on the floor, unmoving but for the soft swell and ebb of its chest. And the pulsing flow of blood from its body. The spiders did not know much of the monster’s species, but they knew one thing: when the inside of any creature was visible through a break in its exoskeleton, that creature would most likely die.

They conferred. It was hopeless; their monster was dying. But they owed their lives to the thing. They had to try.

They flowed over it like a carpet.

~

Should I tell you of the measures they took to keep their monster alive? It would read like a laundry list, or a television medical drama gone horribly astray. They did what they knew. They did what they could do. They spun.

Fearing accidental destruction should the creature awake in a panic, they affixed its limbs where they lay. Silk bonds encircled it, stretched to floors, stair rails, chairs, and walls. Held it motionless.

Others lay soft silk across wounds, to staunch the bleeding.

Yet others wove sacks of silk to catch dew from the morning leaves and carry it inside, to drizzle between the creature’s lips.

When at last the creature woke, it did panic, struggling feebly against the silk bonds that held it motionless. But the spiders spoke.

“Trust us,” one of them said. And then more of them: “Trust us.” Until the whole host of spiders were chanting it, loud enough that the creature had to hear. The creature stopped struggling, and then relaxed.

“Okay,” it said. “I trust you.”

~

There is a tale they tell of a woman with spiders in her hair, who lives in a house of webs in an enclave deep in the kudzu. Grandmother Spider, they call her, though she is not so old as all that. Or wasn’t, when I last saw her.

They say she talks to the spiders, or talks with the spiders. That she lives with them, and eats with them. That she sleeps with them.

Of that last bit, I can say without hesitation: it is true.

She came to one of my infrequent readings and sat in the back. When the audience retired to the pub next door, she remained.

She had spiders in her hair. Orb weavers, black and yellow, massive and beautiful, and, quite frankly, a bit terrifying. When she spoke, she sounded nervous, as if she hadn’t spoken much to people. Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper.

“There’s something I’d like to show you,” she said, with no introduction. “I think you’d understand.”

“I’m expected to join the others at the pub,” I said. “I’m sorry, Ms….”

She didn’t give me her name. Instead: “I need someone to understand.”

She turned and limped away, without another word. She carried a canvas grocery bag, containing a box. I’d been so fixated on the spiders in her hair that I hadn’t noticed.

The box buzzed.

I followed.

We came to a house of webs. Just a regular house, really, but one upon which spiders’ webs had grown like kudzu. She ducked and wove through them with ease; I quickly had a face full of silk.

I trailed her into her bedroom.

If I thought there had been a proliferation of spiders before, I was sadly misunderstanding the word proliferation.

We hadn’t spoken since the reading. I considered running.

I wasn’t sure running would work.

Grandmother Spider cautiously slipped her shirt over her head, and removed her skirt. Naked, she turned to face me.

From the scars I could tell she had been stabbed several times. Her left leg was disfigured — a fractured tibia that had protruded from the skin, until the tissue had grown over it. No wonder she limped.

“There is a game we play,” she said, laying down on the bed. “It’s called Trust.” She patted the mattress next to her. “Please, sit with me. Trust us.”

I sat. She took my hand. She spread her legs.

The spiders descended.

As they crawled up her thighs, she shivered. As they climbed the swell of her breasts, she trembled. Even I can’t imagine the feeling of thousands of tiny legs, thousands of loving pin-pricks tickling nerve endings, all over one’s body. Her breath came in short gasps, whistling over the bodies of the weavers that paced the lengths of her lips, that dangled from silk threads clamber across her teeth and tickle her tongue. She tightened her grip on my hand, and did not move. Did not spit mouthfuls of chitin, or crush them between her teeth.

Her pubis was a mound of spiders, a writhing mass of black and yellow chitin, their long legs catching and pulling apart the soft flesh of her lips. Dancing on her clit.

Sweat beaded her upper lip. Her eyelids fluttered. Her toes curled, and her body tensed, every muscle straining.

Each exhale blew streamers of silk, left behind by weavers who had come to dance, and then moved on to give others a chance.

Her fingernails dug into my palm, drawing blood.

Other than that, she remained perfectly still as the orgasm washed over her.

As her body relaxed, the spiders flowed from her, from the bed. They avoided me. She waited until the last of them had returned to its web before she moved. She sat up carefully, watching to ensure that she did not inadvertently harm any of her lovers. She wiped the silk streamers from her lips, rolled them between thumb and forefinger, and popped the little silk ball into her mouth. Then she rose quickly and put on her skirt. She donned her shirt more slowly, careful not to harm the spiders in her hair.

She hadn’t looked at me since her orgasm.

“Thank you for trusting me with this,” I said. “It was beautiful.”

She whirled, studied me with suspicion, then relaxed. “You do understand,” she said. “I’m so glad. I worried about having you feed us–them–if you didn’t.”

“Feed?” It had not occurred to me to be worried. A spider, even one as massive as the orb weavers, was little danger to a human. But thousands of spiders, swarming… Terrifying. But also, I must admit after what I had seen, slightly arousing.

Grandmother Spider bent, then approached to place a box in my hands. It buzzed, vibrating gently. I had forgotten about the box. “They get hungry after sex,” she said.

“Ah,” I said.

She glanced at the box.

I opened the lid and held the box up above my head.

And like manna rising into heaven, the air was full of food.

Kudzu, Chapter 23

Tags

book 3, chapter 23, kudzu, novel

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 23

 

Sir Reginald surveyed the walls of the laundry room. “Ah, there. Damn, I’m clever. Kevyn, help me move these dryers, if you would.”

Kevyn was doubled over, gasping for breath, holding her hand to her side. “Give me a minute.”

“You really must get into better shape, Ms. Vaughan.” He turned to Murphy, who was chewing her lip. “Kids today, and all that. Ms. Murphy, would you be so kind as to assist?”

“No.”

“What?”

“Do you have any idea how irresponsible it is to let that woman get her hands on a gun? She’s a psychopath! She will kill someone. I’m surprised I haven’t heard shots already.”

“I’m not,” Sir Reginald said. “You don’t think I’d give her bullets, do you? That would be highly irresponsible.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve heard it said, Ms. Murphy, that one should never point a loaded gun at anyone you weren’t willing to kill. I was never willing to kill you, especially not after the kindness you showed to my friend here. Now, then. Shall we get these dryers moved? And then we’ll be on our way, and we’ll leave you trussed up enough that you look like you had no choice in the matter.”

The dryers were industrial sized monstrosities — the sort an unlucky inmate might inadvertently fall into if she crossed the wrong people — and bolted together. In the end, it took all three of them to move them.

Sir Reginald tapped at the plaster. It was cold, and sounded like it had been laid over something solid. He continued until his taps rang hollow. A single kick shattered the plaster, and it fell in sheets. In the darkness behind it, the cinder block wall that lay behind the rest of the wall opened up into a small enclave, just big enough to fit Sir Reginald.

Murphy studied a piece of the plaster. A tight grid had been impressed in the back, as if there had at one point been a mesh backing. Whatever it had been was long gone, though.

“Interesting,” Sir Reginald said, looking over her shoulder. He shoved a piece of it into a coat pocket. “Kevyn, you go first, then Ms. Murphy. I suggest you hurry.”

A rope ladder was rolled up in the back of the hole. Kevyn released the catches, letting it drop into the darkness.

“The last time I followed you into a dark place,” she said, “I ended up in jail.”

“Fittingly, this time I’ll follow you into a dark place, and you’ll end up leaving jail.”

“You two suck at hurrying,” Murphy said.

“Fine, I’m hurrying,” Kevyn said.

She stepped across to the rope ladder and disappeared into darkness. When she got to the bottom, Murphy followed. As she descended, Sir Reginald felt around the inside of the opening. His fingers found something that felt like paper — real paper, not pulped kudzu — taped to the cinderblock above.

He tore the envelope open and glanced at the note within. His own handwriting, of course, though he had no memory of having written it. He read it through once, then again, to make sure he remembered the instructions. He frowned when he got to the last line, then folded it and stuck it in his pocket, next to the plaster sample.

Murphy reached the bottom. Sir Reginald followed.

~

The instructions were rather specific. Turn to face Kevyn’s voice. Walk until you bang your shin. Turn left forty-five degrees and take twenty-seven strides.

And so on.

They passed through a door into a lit corridor. The door clicked locked behind them. Sir Reginald led, striding purposefully at a clip that kept the women hurrying behind him.

“When are you going to let me go?” Murphy asked.

“My informant tells me that we will be in need of your services until we’re free of this facility.”

“You have an informant?”

Sir Reginald ignored the question. He pulled up short at a heavy, metal door. It was locked.

Kevyn pulled out Murphy’s key ring.

The sound of pursuit came from behind them.

Kevyn frowned at the mass of keys. “Which one?” she asked.

“Ms. Murphy?”

“Fine, fine.” Murphy touched one of the keys. “Try that one. That works on most of the storage areas.”

The key fit and turned, and Kevyn pushed the door open. She fumbled for the light switch. They closed the door behind them, and Kevyn locked it.

There were more voices behind them. The sound of running feet.

Sir Reginald looked at the instructions again, then pressed a finger into an indentation in the floor. With a click, a piece of the flooring dropped and slid to the side.

“Again with the darkness,” Kevyn said.

“Again with the we-have-no-time-for-this,” Sir Reginald responded.

“There’s no ladder.”

“Then it’s probably not very deep.”

Kevyn sighed. She lowered herself into the pit.

“I can close it behind you,” Murphy said. “If you leave me free enough to push the button.”

“I wanted to show you something,” Sir Reginald said. He handed her the folded paper.

“What’s this?”

“Instructions I left for myself. Read them. Kevyn? You get to the bottom yet?”

“Yes. It’s not far. You’re probably tall enough to lower yourself down without jumping. There’s a tunnel, but it’s not very tall.”

“Good,” he said. “Move out of the way.”

“Wait,” Murphy said. “What does this mean? ‘Bring the Murphy woman.'”

“Yes, about that…” Sir Reginald grasped Murphy by the waist and lifted her over the hole. He lowered her as far as he could manage before letting her drop. “I’m very sorry, and please move out of the way with utmost haste.”

Sir Reginald pressed the indentation in the floor again, and, as the floor began to slide back into place, he leaped down into the pit.

The drop was both farther and shorter than he expected, and his legs gave out under him when he hit. He sat heavily, and his chin banged against his knees.

“Oof,” he said.

A light flared in his eyes.

Murphy. She’d found the flashlight. Of course. He’d given her the letter, which told exactly where it was. It was a battery-free flashlight; he could hear her cranking the handle to generate power.

“You lied to me,” she said.

“I think I bit my tongue,” he said.

“You fucking lied to me!”

“That’s a matter of interpretation, and intention, and knowledge, and a bit of omission,” Sir Reginald said. “Something perhaps best discussed over tea, rather than—”

Kevyn squeaked. “Something’s on me,” she whimpered.

Sir Reginald grabbed the flashlight out of Murphy’s hand and illuminated Kevyn.

Spiders. There were spiders on her head, in her hair. The light wasn’t good enough to see how many, or what type, but certainly more than could be dealt with reasonably in the dark, cramped tunnel. Trying to brush them off would be messy at best, with spiders smeared into Kevyn’s hair. And there was always a possibility of one or more painful bites.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just, let’s go. Let’s get out of here. Just follow the tunnel until it ends.”

“We could go back up.” Murphy’s voice sounded faint.

“How would you open the door?”

“I don’t know. I’d… I don’t know.” Murphy sighed. “God, I can’t believe this is happening to me. This is the worst day ever.”

“No,” said Sir Reginald, who still remembered those devastating weeks when kudzu overran the Earth, and half the world’s population died. “I think it is not. Let’s go.”