It's time for some more monster madness, courtesy of me!
First time reader? This chapter incorporates storytelling elements spread across six books which span three separate tales. It can be confusing, but maybe that's your kink, so read ahead!
Returning reader! So glad to have you back! With the arrival of Eulalie the web-master, Mike finds himself confronting an old problem as well as a new one. Why did Eulalie ship herself to his home? Will Mike decide to make a trip to his cabin out in Oregon?
You'll find out soon! But first, thank you to everyone for your kind words and support. Special thanks to my beta readers, who have been extremely invaluable. My writing schedule has been obliterated, and I often find myself trying to write for five or ten minute stretches during the day. Lots of mistakes get made, but they help me weed them out (as well as find continuity errors). I am so grateful for their help right now.
As for my readers here on Lit, you are amazing, and I promise to keep working hard to write you the stories you deserve to read. And with that, I introduce to you...
A Case of the Shivers
The group walked to the front door with Mike in the lead. The porch creaked under their collective weight as they gathered and a gentle breeze caressed the nearby pillars. He reached for the front door, ready to allow Eulalie inside.
When his fingers touched the knob, he hesitated.
It wasn't because of his magic. One of his many gifts from Naia on inheriting the house was the ability to not only sense danger, but also to somehow know when someone was a good fit for the house. He felt neither of these things right now, but still couldn't put his hand on the knob and officially invite her inside.
Instead, his mind focused on the shiny chitin of her lower body, the rustling movement of her many legs and the strange rounded pads at the bottom that made soft scratching sounds when she walked. Spiders clearly didn't have needle-thin feet at the end of their legs, but that was a fact he never expected to confront in such a wild manner.
Eulalie's body reminded him of the Andersons' basement. They had been friends of his father, and their basement had been far more comfortable than the back seat of his mother's station wagon long after he had died.
The Andersons never spent much time in their basement, which had worked out in his favor for a couple of weeks. However, it was thick with cobwebs that his mother had dismissed, and not all of the webs had been empty. In the middle of the night, he had wandered through a particularly thick web on the way to the bathroom. What he had thought was just a few sticky strands of web stuck to his face was revealed in the dim light of the bathroom to be a burst egg sac of baby spiders that scurried frantically all over his mouth and nose.
His screams had woken the whole house, causing his mother to berate him in front of their hosts for being such a pussy. He was only nine at the time, and when the Andersons kicked them out a week later, his mother had blamed him for it.
Standing at the door of the house, his skin was once more covered in those imaginary spiders. The others noticed his apprehension, most likely wondering if he had sensed something dangerous about their visitor. The moment was officially awkward, which was now compounding the situation.
Eulalie didn't seem to notice. She moved past him and opened the door herself. Once inside, she looked around and then turned to Mike with a grimace on her face. "Sorry to be pushy, but where's the bathroom?" She bit her lips and flexed her legs, doing a pathetic little dance in his front hallway. "I've been in that box a really long time, and even I have limits."
Dumbfounded, Mike pointed toward the hallway by the stairs. She shouldn't be able to come inside without his invitation. Had Emily invited her in at some point? "It's near the back door, you can't miss it." He didn't bother asking how she was going to fit on the toilet.
"Thanks!" She ran down the hallway, startling a cluster of rats who had been watching from the safety of the stairs. He heard the door slam, and then turned to face Lily and Dana.
"Give me the very brief version," he spat at them. It wasn't so much that he was mad that they had withheld the information, but the shock of seeing a half-spider woman had thrown him off entirely. Now that Eualalie was out of sight, his heart felt like it was working properly again.
"Eulalie and her sister Velvet live out in Oregon," Dana said.
"With Bigfoot," Lily added. "And their father."
"Excuse me, did you say Bigfoot?" This was from Beth, who stood behind everyone with Sulyvahn. "Seriously? How tall is he? What about his, uh, hands?"
Sulyvahn laughed. Abella, who stood in the back, let out a grunt of disgust and jumped into the air with flapping wings. The yard was nearly empty now, save for a few centaurs who were moving about and cleaning up the celebration of Spring.
"They're good people," Dana said. "Their father asked us not to tell you they were living there."
"Why?" Mike asked. "It's not like I was going to kick them out or anything."
"It isn't like they would know that," Lily told him. "And besides, there's another reason."
Dana tilted her head in curiosity, but Mike held up his hand for silence.
"Look, I get you thought you were doing the right thing," he said. "But what would have happened to her if neither one of you had been here? Abella would have killed her, and I wouldn't have known better."
Lily and Dana exchanged a look. He could see that Lily wanted to argue, but knew that he was right. Dana, as always, was inscrutable.
"Well, good thing we were here then," Lily responded. "So get over it." She pushed her way past him into the house. The others followed, but Tink paused before stepping through the door.
"Husband want Tink get club?" she asked. "Just in case?"
He ran his hand through her hair, then rubbed his thumb along one of her horns. She purred in delight, and leaned into his thigh.
"It should be fine," he told her with a smile, his hands automatically supporting her. "But maybe keep the swearing down until she gets to know you."
"Fucking bug-eater," Tink grumbled, then walked inside. "Tink no care what spider girl thinks."
Everyone had spread out in the living room. Tink joined Kisa on the couch with Jenny sitting between them, and Quetzalli held a food platter with one hand while using the other to stuff her face with pigs-in-a-blanket. Cecilia hovered by the window, a look of concern on her face.
Realizing that everyone had decided to stay and watch, he shooed them off while waving his hands. Tink grumbled as she stormed up the stairs with Kisa, and Cecilia simply vanished. Sofia grabbed Quetzalli's tray with a promise of more if she came to the kitchen, and the dragon followed her.
He didn't want Eulalie to feel like she was being put on trial, and was grateful when nobody complained. He did ask Beth and Dana to stay. Lily stood in the corner of the room because he knew better than to try to shoo her off, and he saw Jenny had tucked herself in a corner to watch. That, too, was also not a battle he was going to win, so let her stay.
When the toilet flushed, Mike wondered how Eulalie had managed to go to the bathroom. Did she have a human butt? Or maybe she peed like people do? These were stupid questions to wonder about his guest, but his mind was much happier pondering these things until she stepped back into the hallway.
It was the legs. Each one was black and glossy, and they rustled when she moved. He wondered if she could walk along the wall or even the ceiling, and if the plaster could sustain her weight. A cold chill went up his spine as she came out of the hallway. Once back in the living room, her whole body moved upward a foot now that she wasn't about to hit her head on the ceiling.
"That's so much better," Eulalie said, then looked at everyone. "I'm so sorry for showing up unannounced, I didn't have a choice."
"You should have called," Dana told her. "Or sent an email."
"I would have if I could." While Eulalie spoke, one of her legs lifted and stretched out. When it eventually settled back to the ground, another one lifted and went through the same routine. "But that was no longer an option."
"Apparently," Lily grumbled from her corner. "You fucking Fed-Ex'd yourself across the country."
"It wasn't technically Fed-Ex," she said, then assumed a weird squat that made it look like she was sitting. This put her at eye level with Mike, which gave him something to focus on other than her body. "But yes, I did cram myself in a box and mail myself here. An overachiever at the post office decided to be nice and put extra nails in the box, which meant I couldn't get out."
"What brings you here?" Mike asked, his voice squeaking a little.
"I don't know," Eulalie said, turning her focus on him. He could see his reflection in all the extra eyes on her forehead. "Wait, sorry, that came out wrong. I have good reasons for coming, but am unsure of the root cause. My sister and I disagree on the severity of the situation. As Caretaker, I believe that you may hold the key to solving our dilemma."
"That's my job." His voice was steady this time. "Tell me everything."
"Thank you." She crossed her hands across her belly. "To begin with, my father Darren passed away over the winter."
Lily let out a noise like a squeak and left the room. Mike found this to be an odd reaction, but kept his attention on Eulalie. Trying to figure out what was going on inside Lily's brain was a madman's game.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "Was he, uh, like you?" He looked at her legs again.
"No, he was human," she said with a wistful smile. "And he was wonderful. The only reason I bring it up is because it relates to why I am here. Everything that I'm about to tell you started shortly after his death. When he died, it was like a change had come over the forest. It seemed circumstantial at first, but a pattern started to emerge. My sister refused to see it, but my whole life is patterns, and she's just being stubborn."
"What do you mean by patterns?" asked Dana.
"There's a barrier around our home, much like your own," Eulalie said. "The former Caretaker Emily gave my mother permission to live there, where she would be safe from people hunting her. The magic that protects the place distracts and confuses anyone from entering who doesn't belong."
"We could use some of that here," Beth grumbled. "Maybe people would quit loitering in our yard."
"The magic isn't foolproof. Anyone determined can breach the barrier, or even just someone who gets really lost. My father used to patrol the boundary almost every day. He would occasionally find a lost hiker, or even a hunter who had tracked game into the area. Nothing too problematic."
