A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,36

dodged between a few small ones at once, then bolted to a free section of wall where it began a large web of the spiraling variety. It spent more time on this one, round and round, cutting across every now and then with connectors.

I became dizzy, watching this. The room spun in conjunction with it. My stance faltered, and I swam back – catching myself, but it did little good as I would have named the wall as what was under my feet. Then it pitched again, and I stumbled further, tipped overboard. But there was a tug at my finger, a small sense of anchorage. I drew it up in confusion as I stumbled about, and found that the bandage wrapping my fingerprint had a long tether that strung me to the wall, to the web that was morphing there. I hadn't noticed it before, but I was stuck fast, shackled to this frightening transformation overtaking the kitchen.

I couldn't get out.

Would it overtake me too?

The next instant, I buckled, and the floor was quick to introduce itself. My head cracked against a patch of concrete. Everything steadied, then, but my vision began to grow dark-skinned. A trickle of blood pooled past my eye, tickling my lashes. It was warm and inviting, and my eyelids fluttered progressively closed as the kitchen was overrun completely by sheets of web.

When it was all finished, there was a terrible stillness. The webs had gone limp, the crystal-texture of their prime decaying and drifting down like ash to coat the floor as if years' worth of dust. What was left was only a room full of cobwebs, and my blood making a trail through the dust.

But also making a trail through the dust: a set of fingerprints, as if from a pair of invisible fingers, tip-toeing through, slowly, so slowly, making their taunting way toward my body.

T w e l v e –

Fever Chains

“Avante?”

The word was a chiming echo in my head, drawing me out of the place I was sinking into. My eyes swam dizzily open, searching. I saw only a room pitched on its side at first, covered in draping, swaying webs. Then I saw him: Dashsund. A faint guise of him pushing through the web toward me.

No, he wasn't pushing through it. He was walking through it, as if it didn't exist at all. I saw the strands strain against his body and snap, fragile wisps that drifted to broken compliance in his wake, but he did not seem to know they were there.

The soft steps of his boots pounded on the ground as he approached, reverberating in my head, and I clenched my eyes closed again, an ocean of stars and vertigo swirling sickly inside me. The lump on my head pounded in rhythm with his steps, continuing even as he stopped and crouched by my side. It grew louder, wetter – a heartbeat in my head, thwapping against my skull.

Then, abruptly, the cobweb tether pricking my finger went taut and strong, and jerked me senselessly out of proportion. My shoulder cracked from its socket as I was whipped around and reeled across the room, and deliberately rammed head-first into the cabinets there.

And it was then that the deed of rendering me completely unconscious was fulfilled.

*

I had feverish dreams of spinning and playing with puppets, then weaving spider webs out of the puppet strings. I became a master web-spinner, a possessed puppeteer going wild with the strings, putting on a great drama in front of nothing but a wall for an audience, where the story manifested in scads and scads of webs splashed across the wallpaper. The little crosses of wood clacked in my hands, soaring and swooping, as I danced like a ballerina, a jester, a phantom.

Then I lost control, and got caught up in the strings. They wound around my throat, but I kept dancing. Wilder and wilder, until I began to spin, to soar, to fly.

And then I slipped.

With a small gasp, I felt the strings constrict around my neck. But I wasn't afraid. I was weightless, suspended in the air. I was flying. It was a beautiful thing, to fly.

To die flying.

Strangled, the web lowered me slowly to the ground. It set me to rest, there, the frames for the puppet strings still woven with my limp fingers. I stared into the floral pattern of the wallpaper as my awareness faded, and it was like looking into an endless spectrum of mirrors within mirrors. A garden