Along Came a Spider Ch. 04

Story Info
How to ghost a creature of the night.
13.4k words
4.62
9k
14

Part 4 of the 7 part series

Updated 06/08/2023
Created 06/30/2016
Share this Story

Font Size

Default Font Size

Font Spacing

Default Font Spacing

Font Face

Default Font Face

Reading Theme

Default Theme (White)
You need to Log In or Sign Up to have your customization saved in your Literotica profile.
PUBLIC BETA

Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.

You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.

Click here

Monday, 4:30 a.m.

Tabitha stirred and peeled her cheek off of a warm, smooth surface as she writhed into consciousness. Her head felt like a crumpled hunk of metal that had been hammered back into shape on an anvil. Her tongue was dry, and the right corner of her mouth was sticky with drool. She could feel her heartbeat throbbing painfully in the back of her skull.

"Oh, God," she croaked. Even those words ricocheted through her brain like rubber bullets. Something was rioting noisily next to her knee, shrill and tinny, and when Tabitha looked for the source of the noise, she saw a bright screen shining from in between two cream-colored couch cushions. When she dug her phone out, she frowned. For whatever reason, she had set an alarm for four o'clock that morning and, even more stunningly, had somehow managed to hit snooze several times without regaining consciousness.

The warm thing she had been stuck to for most of the night let out a snort, and Tabitha glanced down. Lily was snoring quietly with her head propped up on the sofa's armrest. Her pajama pants had been hiked up to her thigh and, near her knee, there was a red mark the exact size and shape of Tabitha's left cheek. The television was playing an old rerun of Family Guy on mute. The window outside was pitch-black. Why was she awake? And why did every part of her body feel like it had been shattered and glued back together?

Suddenly, the events of the night prior came rushing back to her with the force of a wrecking ball. James, in her apartment. James, walking her down the street. James, sucking a wad of noodles into his mouth. James, kissing her violently against her apartment door.

And then, of course, there was Lily, waiting with that enormous bottle of whiskey. She saw it perched on the living room table like a trophy, completely empty. With a low moan of agony, she buried her face in her hands. It was only through some miracle that she wasn't still drunk. She hoped Lily had been responsible for consuming most of it.

Her eyes, which were dry and almost certainly bloodshot to all hell, fixed themselves on her door. It was still dark. James could still be out on the prowl...and now, she wasn't quite sure how she was supposed to feel about that. Her sense of trepidation was being beaten down savagely by memories of his lips on hers and his hands gripping her waist...

Suddenly, she slammed her forehead into her palm. Shit. She promised Luke she would open for Ross today, if he never called back. And, judging by the lack of text message alerts on her phone's screen, he never did. The heel of her palm made contact with her head again, and again, and again.

"Mmmmmmmwut?" Lily sighed from the couch. She had wriggled around to squint at Tabitha, her lips pulled downward into a delirious frown.

"I have to go to work."

"...Fuck that," Lily said in a half-coherent drone, right before turning back over and resuming her snoring. Tabitha gazed sadly down at her. All of the begging in the world wouldn't rouse Lily at this hour. She was going to have to walk.

She drowned her mug of coffee in milk and chugged it down, then took a hasty shower and tugged on her clothes. Minimal makeup. Brush. Ponytail. Boots. She almost wished she had more whiskey to pour into another cup of coffee---just to get her in gear, if that even worked. She wasn't sure it did, but today, she was certainly willing to try. She rubbed her eyelids, and crusty sleep stung around the area like shards of glass.

"There's towels in my closet for when you shower. Don't be late for work or anything," she told the lump on the couch. Then, with a long-suffering sigh, "I have to go."

"Godspeed," Lily slurred, raising a pale fist high in the air and dropping it limply back down again.

I'm never drinking again, Tabitha told herself as she tottered down the hallway. The whole building was dead silent, packed full of tenants who were still bundled up in warm jammies and wrapped in nests of blankets, or, at the very least, still nursing their morning coffee. When she limped down the staircase, the door windows were still blacker than tar, and when she made her way outside, she was swallowed up by the stillness of it all. No sunlight, no bird songs, no familiar lines of traffic. It felt like she was the only thing in the universe that still existed, along with the handful of stars that glittered overhead. And it was freezing.

As she folded her arms tightly across her chest, she heard a muffled cough from somewhere down the street. There was a hooded figure trudging down the sidewalk and towards the apartment building. Its shoulders were hunched and its spine was curved wearily, like it was only just barely capable of walking. And when it passed beneath a streetlight, Tabitha spotted the dull shine of a leather jacket.

Without thinking, she dove behind the metal block of mailboxes. James's droop seemed even more pronounced when she peered out at him again and, after a few more steps, he careened towards the building wall and stumbled onto his knees on the sidewalk. Another flurry of choking noises split the silence. James's silhouette lurched towards the row of skeletal hedges and promptly doubled over. Then, he began to retch.

Sympathetic nausea bloomed at the base of Tabitha's alcohol-filled stomach, and she quickly pressed her mittened palms against her mouth and took in several deep, pacifying breaths. Her eyes screwed shut as a wet noise erupted from somewhere near those hedges, followed by a forsaken moan. After several seconds, he coughed again, heaved again, and then spewed another wave of sick into the bushes. Silence.

Tabitha eased her eyes open again and stared out at the outline of James's body. He was still on his hands and knees, which wobbled with the effort of keeping him upright. After another cough, he teetered back up to his feet and rubbed the back of his palm hastily over his mouth. What on earth was happening? Did he go into work and leave with a stomach bug? Had he gone straight to a bar after their date? He certainly didn't look sober, judging from the way he was stumbling towards the doorway. She chewed wildly at her lower lip while he inserted his key and wrenched the building door open, then waited for several seconds after the door had shut before scuttling back onto the sidewalk. At least he hadn't seen her. Sick or not, she wasn't entirely sure if she was ready to interact with him again. Not yet.

Her footsteps slowed as she approached the hedges. She swallowed back another wave of nausea when she spotted the wet mess beneath the branches, gleaming from the glow of the streetlights. She hoped something hadn't been wrong with the pho. She couldn't afford to be ill today---not when they were already a man down.

Suddenly, she stopped dead in her tracks. It looked so...dark. Like ink. Sections of branches were painted black with it. Eyes wide, swallowed up by a feeling of impending doom, she slowly lifted her phone from her purse.

She only had to toggle the screen on for half a second to see the mass of red that had been splattered all over the bushes.

A strange, high-pitched whine escaped her lips, and she staggered down the sidewalk and across the street before collapsing and emptying the contents of her stomach loudly into the gutter. Once her retching fit had subsided, she leaned back against a brick wall and stared wordlessly out into the dark.

Maybe vampires couldn't eat after all.

---

Monday, 3:28 p.m.

Tabitha stared out the window at a few quivering husks of leaves, her fingers clenched over the wooden cafe table. Her shift had ended ten minutes ago, and she still hadn't found the strength to move. Moving meant walking. Walking meant going home.

"You still look like a train hit you, kiddo," said Luke, and Tabitha's eyes rolled slowly upwards to fix on his face. He was behind the cafe counter, hovering over a woebegone spiral notepad. His salt-and-pepper hair gleamed like hematite under the fluorescent lights. "Tie one on last night?"

"A little bit. I'm sorry." She leaned back slowly in the chair, teetering it back onto its hind legs. "I forgot about the shift change today until my alarm went off. I guess I was kind of hoping...well..." She looked down at the tabletop. "...Has anyone...?"

Luke shook his head. "Nothing. No calls, no texts, no damn emails. At this point, I think it's safe to say he's quit," he added morosely.

"I think I'm going to miss him," Tabitha said, her voice made monotonous by sleep-deprivation. Luke snorted, and she looked up at him in a panic. "I meant it," she continued hastily. "He was a twit sometimes, but he was always nice to work with."

"You'll see him soon enough. Checks come in on Thursday, and I'm sure pride won't help pay his rent."

"Are you...uh..." She swallowed. "Am I...am I going to have to...?"

Luke watched her as she trailed off, his lips twitching into a reluctant smile. "What, you don't want to open every day?"

Tabitha shivered. "God, no."

"Don't worry," he laughed, and she felt her body loosen in relief. "I've been training Jenny and I have a new hire starting tomorrow. Besides, I need you closing if I don't want the weekly count...well, mauled beyond recognition." When Tabitha gave him a weary smile, his jolly expression quickly faded into that familiar, nearly paternal look of concern. "You gonna be okay walking home?"

She regarded the near-white sunlight that had been assaulting her corneas only moments ago with something akin to fondness. "I'll be fine," she said, and for a second, she let herself believe it. "Do you need me here early again tomorrow?"

"Keep an ear out for me, but you should be good to close. Just keep your phone close in case...you know..."

Tabitha lowered her voice. "...Jenny?"

Luke looked furtively over his shoulder, but Jenny was busy dusting the fiction shelves dozens of feet away. "Just keep your phone on," he muttered. Tabitha nodded and rose to her feet, her knees wobbling. "Be safe," he called as she carved an unsteady path towards the exit.

"See you tomorrow!" Jenny shouted from the back of the store.

"Bye, Jenny!" Tabitha echoed in what she hoped was her happy voice. She wasn't quite sure how she was still capable of speech. The whiskey she had imbibed the night prior had lingered painfully throughout her shift, throbbing in the back of her brain, turning her legs and fingers into stiff, sore splintered versions of themselves. Even pushing open the door was agony.

She stepped outside into the mid-afternoon monotony. Those sparse leaves rattled on their skeletal trees, and the chill sliced, knife-like, through the barrier of her coat. She tried to find comfort in the stillness of it all as she paced down the sidewalk, and wondered vaguely what she was supposed to do next.

Crunch.

Tabitha looked down at the ground with a feeling of dread, then slowly lifted her foot. Beneath it, the crushed remains of a shiny black insect were smeared over the filthy pavement. A fine web of slimy innards connected the corpse to the tip of her raised boot, and she shuddered before taking a step backwards and grinding her sole into the sidewalk.

"...Sorry," she said to the yellow smear. One of the insect's leg gave a feeble twitch in response before going still. Somewhere below her, seemingly from the depths of the storm drain, a cricket let out a piercing trill. She had only a moment to wonder if insects held a grudge before a glossy black cricket came skittering out of the gutter to her left, followed by another, and another...

Tabitha let out a noise that was somewhere between an expletive and a wordless shriek and sprinted across the street. She didn't stop running until she reached the bus stop, and then she collapsed onto the bench in a fit of defeated giggles. Crickets. She was running from fucking crickets now. This was what the world had come to.

At least she had one last line of defense, she thought as she shouldered her way into the bus, trying to hide her labored breathing. One last thing that might make her life bearable again.

---

Monday, 4:25 p.m.

Or, maybe she didn't.

Tabitha stared at the bare brick wall with enormous brown eyes, ignoring the frigid breeze as it stung her cheeks. The wall was cast into sharp relief now that she was looking at it while the sun was up, but there wasn't a single hint that a door had ever existed between the back entrances of the two shops. Not even a faint outline.

"God damn it," she breathed. And then, a little louder, "God damn it."

She caught herself feeling around the collar of her jacket, as if she would find her scarf sitting where it should be; like she had never given it to some creepy man who had set up shop in an alleyway. But much like the door it had vanished into, the scarf was gone. She wondered if it would have been easier to accept if she had found it still wound around her neck. Then she would have just concluded that she had actually lost her mind, and maybe found herself a nice therapist who would shell out bottles of expensive but highly effective drugs, and that would be the end of it.

She looked around frantically for something---anything. A flash of peroxide-blonde hair, a lollipop wrapper, a strand of white hair, but she came up short. It was all simply gone, as easily as it had arrived in the first place.

The toe of Tabitha's right boot collided with the green dumpster to her left, and then she felt herself stomp furiously in the filthy puddles of melted snow. Someone screamed, raw and long and panicked, and she spun dizzily in place for a few seconds before she realized it was just her.

The door furthest to the front opened just a crack, and a young man around the age of seventeen stuck his head out to stare at her. He was wearing a violently pink apron with a peach embroidered on it. "...You okay?" he asked after a brief pause. Tabitha gave him a fierce glare, and he shook his head in awe. "Alright, then. Could you go and scream somewhere else, maybe?"

He broke off with a yelp and slammed the door shut as Tabitha tugged off one of her mittens and lobbed it furiously at his pink, pockmarked face. She pelted the other one at the closed door, shrieked at it to do something anatomically improbable with itself, and then, after kicking the dumpster one more time, stormed off with her hands shoved deep in her pockets.

---

Monday, 5:04 p.m.

The glass door let out an inviting chime as Tabitha stepped through it, and a pretty receptionist with short red hair glanced up at her from behind the front desk. Immediately, her eyebrows shot up into her carrot-hued bangs.

"Tabitha?" Lily said. "What are you---"

"I'm sorry," Tabitha said, hurrying quietly up to the desk. The office was completely silent, broken only by the jazz music that was filtering in through the speakers on the ceiling, and it made her painfully aware of every scritch-scratch of her boots on the pale blue carpet. "Do you...do you have a break coming up or something?"

Lily glanced down at her computer screen, still looking baffled. "I mean...yeah. I can pop out for a bit." She turned to the heavyset blonde woman who was sitting behind her, her face framed by enormous hoop earrings. "Ruth?" The woman rolled her eyes before waving her away with a plump hand. "Thankee."

Tabitha followed her out the front door and around the building, and when they reached the back parking lot, Lily stopped and rotated once, twice, three times in place, her hand held up against the wind. Finally, once she had decided that the direction she was facing passed muster, she lit the cigarette she had pinched in between two of her fingers and gingerly took a drag from it.

Tabitha watched her strange little ritual in stunned silence, and Lily turned to give her a grim look. "Bosslady doesn't like cigarettes and nobody else smokes. If she catches a whiff of it, she gets all pouty."

"So you can't even smoke?" Tabitha asked incredulously. "That's ridicu---"

"I can. I just can't smell like it. Everybody's so sensitive about that shit now. Do you remember when we all used to go to Wafflehouse and chainsmoke inside?" She paused, then withdrew another cigarette. "You need one?"

"...Sure," Tabitha sighed, plucking it out of Lily's fingers and hovering over her lighter. When it was lit, Lily crammed it back into her jacket pocket. "I like your wig, by the way. You should go red sometime," she said around the filter. The smoke was dry and thick in her throat, and she repressed the urge to cough. It had been an eternity since her last cigarette.

Lily grinned and carefully tapped her cigarette with her middle finger, sending a few flakes of ash tumbling onto the pavement near her feet. "So, what's up? You want to do something tonight?"

"Actually...I was wondering if I could come over to your place." Lily blinked at her, and she flushed before inclining her head to study the asphalt. "I just think it would be nice to have a change of scenery for a night."

"This is about that neighbor guy, isn't it?" Lily said, looking smug. "Getting cold feet?"

"He still creeps me out," Tabitha muttered before taking another long drag from her cigarette. Lily waved her away when she exhaled.

"For god's sake, Tabitha, stand downwind with that thing," she chided, and Tabitha quickly sidestepped so she was standing directly in front of her. "You didn't look creeped-out last night," she added, gleefully watching Tabitha blush.

"Well, I am now," Tabitha snapped. "Can I come over? Please?"

Lily suddenly averted her eyes, looking guilty. "Well..."

"What?"

"My floor might have flooded a little last week, and until they get the carpet all finished, I...I'm staying with my parents," she said slowly, a wince tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Tabitha stared miserably at the amber glow of her cigarette. "Oh."

"I mean...you can still come over," she continued, looking apprehensive. "It's not like they don't know you..."

"Didn't your mom used to hate my guts?"

Lily burst out laughing. "Oh my god, she thought you were the devil."

"I'll never understand how she thought I was a bad influence..."

"Because I'm her perfect little darling." She gave Tabitha a thoughtful look from over her cigarette. "She might still hate you, but not to your face. It's not like she's gonna lace your toothpaste with arsenic or anything if you spend the night."

Tabitha shook her head, feeling lost. "It's fine," she said softly.

Lily scrutinized her for a few more minutes, took another drag, then leaned back against the brick wall. "You gonna be okay? You don't look like you're gonna be okay."

"I'll be okay."

"You sure? Do you need to talk again? I can always stop by---"

"I'll be fine, I promise," Tabitha groaned. Then, a little more gently, "I'm so sorry about all this. I don't mean to be clingy, I just...well." She sighed. "I just want all of this to blow over, already, so I can feel stupid for overthinking it and everything can go back to the way it was before."

"Ehh, it was pretty boring before," Lily said, and there was that familiar, dangerous glimmer in her eye again. "I think I prefer living under the threat of a thirsty man-beast."

Tabitha shook her head, but her lips were twitching into a reluctant smile. "Then maybe we should switch apartments for a while."

"What, and leave James all heartbroken?" Tabitha's fingers gave an involuntary spasm at the sound of that name, and, judging from her expression of lofty amusement, Lily seemed to have noticed. She took one last drag and stabbed her cigarette out on the wall, twisting it hard against the bricks. "I don't think it would make much of a difference, anyway. The crazy stuff always happens to you, doesn't it?" she continued, casting her eyes downward, and Tabitha could have sworn that she heard a touch of darkness enter her tone.