The lesser well known cousin of the Black Widow Spider, the Red Widow, has one of the deadliest bites in the world. An estimated 10 to 25% more potent than a rattlesnake’s, this spider’s venom will inject a neurotoxin within its victim’s body, which can cause high blood pressure, sweating, vomiting, muscle spasm, and seizures. However, rare is the singular red widow bite that can kill.
As he let the small insect crawl between his fingers, a small chuckle left Larkin’s lips. Funnily enough, the arachnid reminded him of his sister. Merlin knows how violent she can be when angered, how much pain she could cause. His brother, however, was more like one of those deadly snakes that could strike at any moment. Much like the Indian Taipan, who’s drop of venom can kill 100 men, Jae is a killer. A master of the Avada Kedavra Curse, he bit into death just as easily as his sister ravished torture.
Larkin, however, thought that striking such a curse was too easy. No, he liked the foreplay that came with homicide. The game that one could play with his victims. The web that he could draw his prey into, like a delusional puppet master that secretly rules the world. If anything, the youngest Mulciber was the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis; the zombie-ant fungus. Akin to the Imperius curse, this parasite will infiltrate one’s body, controlling its behavior until done with it, and bursting out of his head. Larkin liked control, and he liked the power rush that came out of having one’s mind completely bare in his hand.
If the world is full of cloth puppets, then Mary McDonald is a porcelain doll, too beautiful and delicate for him to dare touch their strings. He would be unable to tell which of them fell into the other’s enchantment, perhaps it was both at once. They were the gracefulness and sweetness of the White Tern, the fierceness of the Siberian Tiger, and the beauty of a Monarch Butterfly. More intriguing to him than the deadliest of scorpions, the time he spent with them filled his empty heart with the greatest of pleasures, filling areas of him he wasn’t aware were bare. He could’ve stayed in this forbidden bliss until the end of the world, were it not for that snarky Persephone. How hypocritical of him was it to hate the witch when he himself had done worse to those he deemed traitors to blood purity? But he didn’t care, he wanted to be selfish and keep Mary, but he knew the second Persephone walked into the picture the sanctity of their relationship was broken.
He’d been faced with challenges in his lifetime, but none displeased him as much as this one. As the spider crept further upon his hand, up to his wrist, attempting to sneak into his sleeve, he gently redirected it to his left hand, raising it to his face, observing the creature closer. Such a tiny little thing was capable of such pain, how interesting Nature was. He’d always found its physique bizarre. The red legs felt foreign to its deep dark body, adorned with scarlet spots. It looked like some freak accident, like a Frankenstein-ish crossbred creature that had no business existing in the wild. But wasn’t that what he and Mary were? An oddity of the world, according to most not meant to be. Larkin knew what he had to do, but he just wanted to travel in ignorance for a while longer; tomorrow he would have to say goodbye to Mary forever.
Placing the arachnid on the table he was sitting at, he watched it scatter along the pages of an open book. Walking across the words, jumping along the detailed pictures of whatever magical creature it was depicting, rubbing its little legs against each other. Larkin waved his fingers, whispering slowly within the silence of the library. As soon as it was done, he heard the creature enunciate a small whimper, as it made its way off of the book, this time sitting still on the open surface, its eyes directed at Larkin, as if looking straight back at him. Neither made a movement for a while, the boy directing each and every thought that the spider could have. Then, Larkin simply continued staring at it. His gaze touched the spider in silence for a minute, then for two, until he finally raised one delicate hand. Slowly glancing at his lean fingers, he closed them around his palm. Then, in a sudden and unexpected move, he slammed his punch against the surface in front of him, leaving nothing of what had previously been one of the most poisonous creatures known to man.
Oh how he wished that spider had been Persephone.
