"Get in the hole for fuck's sake, Mark. It's not going to get any bigger." Bart insists, gesturing to the access port leading into the crawlspace. "We're just running a few lines of PEX. It'll take us like two hours tops if you stop pissing around."
I groan, putting my hoodie on and moving towards the hole. The access port to the trailer's crawlspace is tiny, just barely large enough for me to squeeze my hips through. "Okay, okay, I'm going in." I mutter, lying down on the ground and squirming my way into the darkness. The floor of the crawl drops a few inches, affording a meager amount of breathing space, but it's still incredibly difficult to maneuver in any way. I toil for a moment to roll onto my back, my shoulders pressing into the dirt floor as well as the joists above my head as I turn. Flopping onto my back, I'm greeted by a beefy giant house spider crawling slowly across the floor joists in front of my face. I slide my arm up slowly and goad the creature onto the cuff of my hoodie by nudging its spindly back legs ever so gently with my finger. I move the spider far down the joist and deposit it back on the wood, away from where it might fall on my face. "Sorry, buddy. Need this spot for a bit."
Outside, Bart peeks into the hole and squints his eyes. "What're you doin in there, kid?"
I reach my hand toward the opening and gesture for him to pass me the materials. "Spider needed to be moved. He was vibing in the exact spot where we need to run the pipe. You can hand me the clips and the hammer now, by the way."
Bart shakes his head and rolls his eyes before stuffing a couple bags of j-hooks through the port. "Just smash the damn thing and move on." He stands up and I see his legs recede in the direction of the work van. I assume that he's probably grabbing another cig and get to work hanging the hooks. The cramped space doesn't allow me enough room to swing the hammer properly, forcing me to turn it sideways and swing it only a few inches. I breath in a little too fast and inhale a large cloud of dust knocked loose by the hammer impacts, eliciting a coughing fit during which a slightly too forceful lurch slams my forehead into the joists above me. I hiss at the pain, rubbing my forehead briefly before returning to my task.
When I originally started working for Bart, I'd developed a glorified image of blue-collar guys in my head for some reason. With many friends of my father being tradesmen of different backgrounds, I'd always admired their grit and commitment to providing for their families as well as doing quality work. That image was dashed my first month working for Bart. I'd had pretty tough jobs in the past, with my landscaping job consisting mostly of weeding planting beds and digging trenches in the hot sun, but working for Bart was my first time experiencing the feeling of a truly grueling nine to five. I should've expected it, but finding out the hard way that my job was basically to do all the shitty work (pun intended) for Bart was a revelation hard to come to grips with.
From week one, I was the guy carrying toilets and water heaters up and down stairs, squeezing into all the smallest crawl spaces, and snaking all the plugged sewer lines. Lying face up under some old lady's shitty trailer with mouse shit rubbing into the fabric of my hoodie wasn't half as glamorous as I'd expected my life as a plumber's helper to be, and I hadn't been expecting glamor. It doesn't help that Bart, a sixty-something hard-ass chain-smoker, is about as pleasant as a boot to the balls and never passes up an opportunity to make me feel like an effeminate bitch over the smallest things.
I take my sweet time pounding the hooks into the floor-joists, thinking up a myriad of witty responses to most of Bart's most recent jabs over the last week, none of which would ever be levied against him in spoken form of course. Bart's footsteps return swiftly, and my intuition tells me he's slightly peeved about something. I speed up my efforts as he approaches the access port and kneels down to it.
"Did you move my smokes?" He glares into the hole at me, his dark form silhouetted ominously by the sunlight behind him.
"What? Why would I move your cigarettes?" My expression is marked with confusion, but Bart still seems suspicious of me despite my insistence as well as my lack of motivation for such an act.
"I'm making a run to the gas station for more. Make sure all those hooks are nailed in securely and lined up right before I get back. If you put them in crooked, I'll make you do the whole fuckin thing again. I'm sick of having to redo your fuckups." He stands up and starts back toward the van. "Be back in thirty."
I roll my eyes and lay my head back against the dirt as he starts the van and drives off, leaving me alone stuffed into a hole under a house. I pick up the hammer and prepare to drive the next hook into the floor joist, when a rustling sound stops me dead. I bend my body so I can peer into the darkness of the crawl space beneath my feet, scanning the space for some type of animal. I've been stuck in a crawl space with a racoon before and that shit did not end well for either of us.
All the way on the other side of the crawl, tucked away in the corner, a mass of shadowy fur unfurls itself slowly. My eyes widen with surprise and terror as I take in the size of the animal. Is it a bear? It's gotta be a bear! It's way too big to be a racoon or a possum! I pull out my phone and quickly turn on the flashlight, shining it directly at the animal as I wiggle toward the sunlight.
A bushy tail swishes slowly to the side, revealing a set of glowing red eyes and a grinning mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth. The face is horrifyingly uncanny, twisted into a demonic imitation of humanity. The creature unfurls itself and begins crawling toward me at a seemingly comfortable albeit quick pace, dragging itself along on its belly with handfuls of soil churned up by long talons.
I scream and grasp desperately for the exit hole, trying to get a grip on it before the monster reaches me. The creature's slender fingers wrap around my wrist and drag me back into the depths of the crawlspace with incredible force. I quickly become disoriented as the creature wraps itself around me, choking me in every way possible at once. It slithers itself under me, crushing me against the floor joists above until I can't take any more air into my lungs. I try hitting the creature in some way, but my arms are pinned against my body as if I'd been trapped by a boa constrictor. I can't move a single part of my body aside from my fingers and toes, both of which are quickly losing sensation, and I gurgle helplessly into the creature's fur as I feel it sink two massive fangs into the back of my neck. It keeps me pinned for a few more minutes before releasing me and letting me slump against the dirt. I try to crawl toward the hole but my body refuses to cooperate. Despite still being conscious, my body is completely paralyzed from head to toe. The monster crawls around my body and peers directly into my face, the impossibly wide grin still present as it looks deep into my fear-stricken eyes. It reaches out a talon and lightly touches the tip of my nose.
"You're a cute one." It says, and disappears behind me in a flash. With the sensation in my body mostly gone, it takes me a moment to realize what's happening as the monster drags me by my ankles into the deepest corner of the crawlspace and through a trapdoor fashioned out of clay and web. My lolling head pounds against rocks, roots, and dirt as the monster drags me deeper into the earth and the sunlight from the port hole disappears above me as we wind our way through a labyrinthian system of tunnels. A particularly harsh smack to the back of my head dazes me, and the rest of the painful and rough journey passes in a blur of dark shapes and dull thuds across my entire body.
...
My eyes flutter open, but I'm unable to focus my gaze as a result of sustained head trauma and a layer of dust caked over my entire face. I clench my fists and curl my toes to check if I have control of my body back yet, glad to discover that the paralysis has receded.
As my senses return, the first thing I notice is the soothing sound of humming coming from somewhere in front of me. An attempt to move my limbs reveals that I'm bound by my hands and feet to a sloped portion of the floor, with four large buried stakes holding my appendages securely. Placed at regular intervals around the room are six ornamental braziers burning with some mysterious flame that steeps the space in an eerie blue glow. Casting my gaze across every corner of the room, I spot a large dark mass perched in the corner of the room, clutching tight to the ceiling. I gasp with surprise and struggle against my bindings, hissing with frustration and terror as the monster turns its glowing eyes toward me and crawls across the wall toward me.
It stops mere feet away from me, its red eyes piercing deep into my soul, obscuring the rest of its hideous face with its tail. Slowly and gracefully, the monster unfurls itself, lowering itself onto the floor in an upright position and standing in front of me at its full height. In the dim light of the blue flames, the monster appears to be strangely human, though my brain refuses to accept that fact considering the trauma it's experienced in just the last few minutes.
