Fragile ch 6
@personostient Moved this chapter to new post because the other one was getting really long. 1-5 are [here] --- Ch.6
Morning light filtered in through the living room window and Webb cracked open an eyelid.
He chuckled softly at what he saw.
“Well isn't this a familiar sight?” he said, voice rough with sleep.
The spider creature’s eyes flew open and it got to its many feet with a startled hiss.
Webb laughed.
“Sorry. Sorry. Didn't mean to spook you,” he said.
He raised a slowly raised a hand, making sure his movements were clearly visible, and reached towards the spider, pausing when it leaned away from him.
“It's alright,” he assured.
The spider tentatively relaxed again, allowing Webb to touch it.
He ran his hand along what served as its back, marveling at the strange sensation. A shifting jumble of smooth chitin and bushy setae, firm like the bristles of a toothbrush.
He smiled as the spider leaned into his touch, rubbing its body against his hand in what he hoped was intended as an affectionate gesture.
He glanced at his watch.
6am.
Later than he usually got up, but not by much. Even without an alarm, he was hard wired to be an early riser after years of getting up at the crack of dawn for work.
He yawned.
The motion seemed to startle the spider creature and it bolted off of his chest and back up the wall to the corner of the ceiling.
“Jeez, you, uh, work fast, huh?” Webb noted, looking at the woven structure that now took up a large portion of his ceiling.
He tilted his head. The shape seemed familiar to him in some way.
Fishing his phone out of his pocket, he typed “tunnel spider web”.
His search results filled with images of similar webs and the name “funnel web spiders”. Scrolling through, he saw a number of different types of spiders, but mostly a black tarantula looking spider with a reddish underbelly.
The spider, seeming to have decided his yawn was not any kind of threat display, had crawled back down the wall and up onto the couch, staring at him.
“Is this you? A funnel web spider?” Webb asked, holding up his phone screen to the creature. “One that fell in radioactive waste or something? Because I gotta tell you, with my last name, I'd never live down being Spider-Man.”
The creature stared at the phone for a long time and Webb began to wonder if, perhaps, its eyes couldn't make out the screen.
Then its form rippled, legs curling in on each other, eyes melting together, the formless mass condensing and solidifying until the shape of the same spider on the screen formed out of the shifting darkness.
Uh. More or less.
It was significantly larger than the real thing, and extra limbs still branched out in every direction, surrounding the now far more spider-like spider, as if it was surrounded by a web of its own body.
“…wow,” Webb said, amazed.
He pulled back his phone and hastily typed in another query.
“What about this? Could you look like one of these?”
He held up a page full of images of black widows.
Again the spider studied the images. This time, it was easier to tell what it was looking at, given the more defined shape.
Again its body writhed and twisted before settling on a familiar shape of a black widow, though, again, not all of it was contained in the neat package.
“That's incredible…” Webb breathed. “Is it just spiders, then? Or could you look like anything?”
The spider just stared at him for a long time.
Webb was about to accept he was getting no answer when, once more, the shape of the spider began to change.
Features stretched and interwove, its entire form coming together to try to form something clearly larger than the two arachnids it had copied.
Legs tangled into smooth, shiny limbs, two -clawed feet split into five thin, pointed digits. The head grew rounder, the mouth disappearing and the eyes bunching together until something was almost recognizable about the shape in a way that made Webb's heart skip a beat.
Then, all at once, the form collapsed in a heap.
The spider let out hiss like a huff of exhaustion as it slowly drew itself back together like a sponge absorbing a puddle.
“Ah, takes a little too much energy for all that, huh?” Webb noted. “Sorry. That's quite the parlor trick, though.”
He took a deep breath and stretched, causing the spider the flinch back, but not flee completely.
“Speaking of energy. I'm going to start a pot of coffee and see if I have any food that isn't expired. Probably not…”
Webb got to his feet and headed to the kitchen section of the apartment.
The spider scurried along to follow him, climbing up on the counter and tapping, insistently, on the counter top.
Webb looked to where it was tapping and saw two bundles of silk that clearly contained some kind of insectoid corpses.
“Ah, for me? That's sweet, but uh, I think I'll stick to coffee,” he said.
The spider hastily ate its attempted offerings, no offense seeming to have been taken at the rejection.
Webb rooted through the cabinets in search of unspoiled food stuffs with a minimal ratio of ant to food.
He noted there seemed to be far fewer of his unwelcome insect roommates than the previous night, however. It seemed that his new house guest had been making itself useful already.
With a defeated sigh, Webb closed the cabinet doors.
It was very rare that he cooked at home. Take out and hospital cafeteria food formed the majority of his meals. The few he didn't replace with coffee and the occasional ibuprofen, that was.
Interestingly, he didn't really feel the need for any pain medication this morning. Odd, given the fact that, the day before, he almost died and was stitched up by what may or may not be a radioactive or otherwise unnatural spider creature. Even with his wounds sealed, he had still been bruised and battered. He should feel like he'd…well, like he'd fallen through the floor, down a story, and into a concrete basement.
Instead, he felt…fine, really.
Which was an “anomaly” at the least.
That's probably fine, Webb, a man who graduated from medical school, decided.
“I guess I should take a shower, while this is brewing,” he announced. “Don't touch the coffee pot while I'm gone. It's hot.”
The spider eyed the coffee maker, warily, jumping when it made a sudden noise.
Webb grabbed the splint cover he’d been given and made his way to the bathroom. Luckily, the hospital had had some replacement clothes for him, so he hadn’t had to wear his torn up and bloodied clothes home, but he still had blood caked to his skin in places.
He turned on the water. It took a while for the water to start warming up sometimes, thanks to the unreliable water heater, so he often turned it on before he got out of his clothes. That way, he wasn’t just sitting, naked, in his bathroom, for several minutes.
This proved to be a good thing, as a wriggling black form squeezed itself under the door, apparently uncomfortable with being left alone with the coffee maker.
“It’s polite to knock, you know,” Webb said. “I’m gonna want some privacy here, in a minute.”
The spider eyed the shower with obvious distrust, slowly skittering towards it, a few inches at a time.
“It’s safe,” Webb explained. “It’s just water, see?”
He held his hand under the shower head, letting the still chilly water run over his palm.
The spider crawled up the side of the tub, leaning over the edge to get a better look.
“Be careful, though, it might be a little slip—”
Webb’s warning came too late as, leaning just a bit too far forward, the spider’s legs lost traction on the wet ceramic and it slid down into the tub and under the spray.
With a panicked screech, it flailed its countless limbs, flinging water across the entire bathroom before managing to get enough footing to launch itself out of the tub and against the far wall.
Webb doubled over, laughing.
“Sorry. Sorry. You okay, little guy?”
The spider shook itself off, form rippling in agitation but seemingly no worse for wear. It hissed at the shower, then scrambled back down the wall and under the door.
Chuckling to himself, Webb checked the water again. Getting warm enough, now.
He whistled the tune to “itsy bitsy spider” as he pulled off his shirt.
