In His Arms

'Cleansed​​​​​'

Preface: A shift in P.O.V. is indicated by a line of asterisks.

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1:40 P.M.

".....Well, we've got our work cut out for us. Certainly smells like the walls are drenched in something musky." I'm standing inside the main bathroom with Gramma dressed in only a sports bra and a pair of waterproof pants, clothes I can afford to get wet in, while I had my eyes slightly narrowed from the odd stench filling the room.

I guess this is where Jace's refusal to bathe in here comes in.

"I've had the vent cleaned this morning, so the smell should start dissipating soon. Don't tell Jace I've been using his toilet for the past two days, by the way."

"Err, yeah, whatever you say, Gramma."

"Jace! Hurry up and come in here, or are you going to make Issa clean this bathroom all on her own?"

"Alright, alright. The heat was killing me, so I had to change into these."

Jace comes into sight shirtless, holding a white towel over his shoulders, and wearing a pair of black boxers that looked more like swimming trunks. This guy's surprisingly toned and well-built, with tan lines on his naked, somewhat sweaty torso in the shape of a tank top.

Trying to keep my gaze away from him was admittedly hard, and I hope he didn't see me stealing a few glances at him here and there or I'd never hear the end of it the second Gramma leaves us alone together.

"Alright, I'm gonna leave you two right here. The roof still needs some cleaning, too. Franchesca's probably up there with a rake by now. Jace, take good care of Issa now."

"Yessss, Ma!" As soon as Gramma moves out of the bathroom and out of sight, Jace turns to me with a smug little smile on his face.

"Don't even bloody think about it."

"Relaaaax, I'm not up to anything. Last thing I want to do is...." Jace inhales deeply while looking around the spacious bathroom, likely more spacious than our shared bedroom's, too. ".....get hot and heavy in this room. At least not when it's in this state."

"Well, in that case...."

I toss him his own pair of rubber gloves after I put on mine, then grabbed a coarse sponge and a spray bottle full of soapy water.

"These walls aren't gonna clean themselves. Let's get started."

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2:10 P.M.

Thirty whole minutes of grueling work removing the stains off the walls and floor later and they're near spotless, with Jace in charge of spraying detergent all over every single stain he can lay his eyes on while I'm in charge of scrubbing them off with the sponge and water.

"Did we......get all of it? Ah, I need to take a breather...." I ask while sat on the closed toilet seat, wet and sweaty all over and more than a little spent as each stain felt harder to scrub off than the last. It was like trying to remove chunks of dried cement from the walls.

My shoulders, my upper back, hell maybe the entirety of it, felt like I had been lifting solid gold dumbbells over my head.

Jace walked around spraying the walls using the showerhead, washing off the soapy, bubbly water.

"Pretty much, though Ma mentioned something about replacing the pipe of the sink cabinet too, there's should be a spare in the kitchen drawers."

"Agghh, shouldn't we let a plumber take care of that?? Anyway, that one's yours for now, my arms feel like bacon strips." I leaned back on the toilet's water tank as I watch Jace approach said sink cabinet, two-door and quite the old one, if all the chipping on its white paint is any indication.

"Whatever you say, call this a soli-aaaAAAHHH!!"

Jace makes a brief shriek and literally falls backwards on his ass as he opened the cabinet's little doors. I instantly laugh my ass off, then stood to see what all the fuss was about.

"What, you found a nest of alie-AAAHHH!!"

I too fall back on my ass with a shriek the instant I laid my eyes on the harrowing sight before us.

Wolf spiders, possibly more than a hundred, had made their nest directly under the sink, creating a colony that resembled a Xenomorph's, albeit without the constant dripping seen in the movies. Some are as huge as my hand, some are barely even visible, some are carrying white egg sacs, some already with their hatched babies riding them.

By some odd miracle, very few, if any, were resting around the pipe that needed replacing. A rusty one with a large hole in the drain trap; guess that's why it needs replacing.

Me and Jace look at one another for a moment, and as if telepathy took control over both of us, we each held out our fists in front of one another.

"Rock...."

"Paper...."

"Scisso-- nooooooooooo!!"

My heart immediately sank into my stomach as my rock lost to his paper. Jace himself doesn't seem too cheery about his victory, rather he's more relieved he doesn't have to stick his hands directly inside Xenoville.

"No, no no no no, one more, one more! One more match!" I plead to him like my life depended on it, wrapping my arms around his chest and refusing to let go while Jace tries to push me off of him by holding my face. "Uncle Jace, pleeeease!"

"Ey ey ey! Get off me, what is wrong with you--!"

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"R-Rock...."

"Paper...."

"Sci--uwaaaaahhhhhh!!" This time around, it's my scissors that loses to his rock. My heart couldn't drop any harder; still, I refused to concede defeat.

"Alright, alright! Just wait he--eyy! Let go!!" Right as Jace was about to leave I instantly wrapped my arms around his torso again, not wanting to be left alone in the bathroom with the spiders, who may or may not be aching to jump out and liquify my sorry ass.

"Uncle Jace don't leave me here--mmppphh!" Jace once again holds me by my face and tries to push me off of himself.

"Holy shit, take it easy! I'm gonna go get you some gloves and duct-tape, just--ahh, for fuck's sake."

Jace begrudgingly leaves the bathroom while I'm clinging to him like a puppy that just found a human to call its master and starts looking around the kitchen for all the necessary items, including an adjustable wrench and the spare pipe, or drain trap as he calls it. Once procured, we head back to the bathroom where he literally shakes me off of himself before handing me both the rubber gloves and the duct tape.

He didn't even have to say anything. After I wore the gloves, I wrapped duct tape around the sleeves, then wrapped myself up to my elbows. Taking these off will be an absolute pain in the ass, but it will be nothing compared to the feeling of being swarmed by spiders and their little spawns.

"I-I was thinking of wrapping just your hands, but I guess that works too."

"Alright, here.....here goes nothing."

Lefty loosey goes each of the slip-joint nuts, a task that took longer than it should've thanks to the spiders moving around every now and then, with the occasional hand-sized specimen suddenly dropping from above. Quite a few times I almost dropped the wrench inside Xenoville, too. Jace stayed behind me, aiming a small flashlight at the cabinet's interior.

"That's all two of the nuts. Time to pull that pipe off."

"Wait wait...."

"Breathe, Issa. Breathe. If you want, I can just remove it myself."

"N-No no, I got this." Maybe it's because I already had hard-to-remove makeshift armor on me, maybe I didn't want Jace getting hurt by these spiders and/or the rusty pipe, maybe it's both, but I wanted to press on with this. I reached with both arms inside the wolf colony, carefully maneuvering away from any of the tarantula-sized specimens, and got a good grip on the now should-be loose drain trap.

"Got it."

"Alright, now pull down. Get it off the tailpiece first."

I pulled down and off it came. Some smaller specimens came out of the now severed area. Makes me wonder why we didn't turn the faucet on first to flush whatever that camped inside the pipes.

"Haaaaahhhh, Jace!! There's more of them!"

"Just relax, now pull it off the wall tube."

I pulled and nothing. I pulled again, still nothing. Even with the nuts off, it remained firmly lodged to the wall tube or whatever Jace called it.

"I-It won't come off."

I kept pulling and pulling, first slow and steady, then in short bursts of strength as my patience quickly dwindled. I didn't want to spend my time elbow-deep in Xenoville any more than I had to.

"Hey, stop! You're shaking the cabinet!" Jace quickly positions himself behind me and holds my shoulders to assist with the pulling. "One, two, three....heave-ho!"

"Heave-ho!"

"Heave-ho!"

I can hear metallic creaking with every pull we exert, likely dislodging the trap more and more. I kept my gloved fingers firmly wrapped around the drain trap's bend, sincerely hoping that the rust hasn't made it brittle yet.

"Heave--ah!"

My blood ran cold as soon as I see a lone mother wolf start to crawl over from the drain trap towards my hands. How do I know it's a mother? Hundreds of its tiny little babies are riding on its abdomen, unmoving, but not for long. I tried shooing it away by waving my hand in front of it, nothing. I even smacked my forearm while it was still crawling on my wrist, still nothing. Jace didn't seem to notice it either and just kept pulling on me.

"Nonononono get off, get o--" In a panic, I tried smacking at a much closer area in hopes of finally scaring it off.

Nope. Instead I smacked the poor mother square on itself, probably killing it instantly from the force I used. Alas, there was no time to grieve or mourn; hundreds of its spawn are now advancing onto my arm, likely on a vendetta for the very recent matricide I had committed against them.

"Heeeeeeiiihh!! Jace, Jaaaaace!!"

"What's wro--ohhh shit!"

My forearm slowly but surely turned gray from the swarm of vengeful little wolves. A nightmare come to life, memories of every spider encounter in my life flashed before my eyes, then it was memories of being in general danger, then finally normal memories, of me in my younger years up until right this moment, where I'm in grave danger of the growing swarm.

Then I decided, my short life wasn't gonna end like this, not while I'm still young, not while I still haven't experienced the pleasures of the flesh.

I gritted my teeth, clenched my hands like I have never clenched them before, and had a massive burst of adrenaline. I got my feet braced against the bottom of the cabinet and pulled like my life depended on it. My vision tunneled at the approaching swarm and each second passing felt like one second closer to my untimely demise.

With one final desperate exert, the drain trap comes off, sending both me and Jace backwards.

"Aaachhk!"

"Uwaaahh!"

Relief immediately washes over me as I realize the drain trap's now off, but that instantly goes away when I went to look at my hand. Still gray and rippling, coated in angry little spiderlings that want revenge on the human that killed their mom. I got on my knees and immediately started patting them down in an utter panic, but it seems with every movement I make they would just move around faster.

Some were now even crawling on my bare skin. I didn't give a holy fuck that they weren't biting or stinging me, the sensation of a thousand little spider legs made me want to jump not just from my skin but from every conceivable organ on my body.

"Kyaaaaahhhh!! No no no no, get off me, get off meeeeee--*loud gurgling noises*!"

"Hold still, Issa!" Jace yells as he hoses me down with the showerhead at full blast, which somehow managed to wash every spiderling off of me, including the unholy swarm on my gloves. He showered me for an entire minute until the floor was clear of any remaining spiderlings, and even then he kept the water on at a slight drizzle after putting it back on its holder.

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"That's....that's the last of them. No spiders coming out of the cabinet, either."

I turn to the cabinet from where Issa and I performed a one-sided tug of war with. The rest of the arachnids seemed content to just chill in their nest, despite all the recent disturbances. Guess we got lucky with that one.

I turn back to Issa and she's now standing in front of me, soaked head to toe and dripping. She had a blank, shellshocked look on her face, as if life's biggest horrors had decided to come and reveal itself to her.

"Oh man.....l-look, I'm sorry, I should've--"

Out of nowhere, Issa glomped onto me, wrapping her arms around my torso and began alternating between frantically kissing me on my cheeks and whimper-sobbing like an injured dog. Poor girl even tried climbing on to me like I'm a tree before the slippery water stopped that attempt in its tracks.

"M-Mmmph, hey what are y--"

"Tha....thank you.....*sniffle*.....Uncleeeeee.....! I thought I-I was gonn....*sniffle*.....die..." Issa's expression contorts into a crying one as she promptly starts to bawl. Had she not been soaking wet with shower water, I would've been able to see her tears flow all the way down her pretty face.

"Ah? W-Well I mean....." Issa pulls me into a wet embrace again, still sobbing softly, and gently buries her face into my neck. I couldn't even think of saying anything mean or teasing. I just held her in my arms while she cries her heart out.

"Poor thing, you should've told me you were that much of an arachnophobe. The sink can wait, let's head back."

Issa took at least a few minutes to finally calm down, coughing and hacking every now and then. She never let go of me, even on our way out of the bathroom and back into our shared bedroom.

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2:42 P.M.

Once we got ourselves dried off and properly dressed, Issa still seemed to remain in shellshock, blankly staring into nothing and curled up into a fetal position on my bottom bunk in her admittedly cute white sundress. It would almost be comical if it wasn't equally just as sad, Arachnophobia is a bitch.

She didn't make much of a fuss when I removed all the duct tape off of her forearms, although they did end up looking like they had been sunburnt by how red they turned out.

I gently sat beside my poor little niece and gently shook her by the shoulder.

"Ey, you alright? Would you like something?"

"So.....many....of them...."

"Eh....what?"

"Like........grey goo....."

"That really did a number on you, did it?"

"This bunk is my safe space......my fortress......."

The gears in my head turn as I try to come up with ideas on how to make her snap back to normal. A memory comes into mind, of when I managed to calm down a 'friend' of mine who had been sobbing the entire evening after coming back from her mom's funeral by giving her a good and satisfying massage.

Of course, she got piped by me in the end, but for now I'll try to avoid that with Issa what with her state and all.

"Issa, sit up, come on."

She does so lethargically, getting up like a sloth that had just woken up from a nap. Her eyes still stared into nothing, even while she's directly facing me like this.

"I'm gonna give you a massage, alright? How 'bout that?"

She just makes a weak nod as she stares at me with dull, almost lifeless eyes. That was all that I needed to get started.

Positioning myself behind her on my knees, I began with squeezing my thumbs against her shoulder blades. Her muscles around them felt very stiff, likely both from the trap removal and the scrubbing of the bathroom's wall stains. Though occasionally distracted by the view of her nipples visible from my angle, I massaged those tense muscles of hers thoroughly until they were back to being soft and delicate.

She still didn't make a single peep, but I'm just getting started.

I moved my hands to her dainty little neck this time, going in with slightly less force than I had with her shoulders. It was small enough that I could almost wrap my hand around it and touch my thumb and index fingers together at the same time. I squeezed the sides of her neck together, and Issa let out a soft grunt as I did so.

"Did that feel nice?"

Issa raises her head a little, and I immediately began massaging the area right under her cheeks. Her face felt so smooth and had a very small hint of being oily. I can hear her breathing become ever so slightly heavier, with the occasional soft grunt interspersed here and there.

"Lay down on your stomach."

I said softly into her ear, and she does so immediately. I moved closer and kneeled with Issa's lower body situated between my legs, and began massaging her upper back this time. Her sundress was in the way, but I didn't mind, as the fabric was thin and soft enough anyway.

I worked on her upper back the same way I did with her shoulders, squeezing those tense muscles of hers until they were back to being soft as Jello, as they should be. Issa started moaning halfway through, but I paid no heed to it and went lower on her backside.

"H....Here, Jace." Issa undoes the straps of her dress and lowered it down until the entirety of her smooth, toned back is visible to me, ostensibly to make massaging her easier. Almost immediately, I popped a hard​​​​​, throbbing boner under my shorts, but I've decided to hold off any lewd thoughts until Issa is back to her normal self.

Slowly and steadily, I worked on her entire back, ensuring that not a single spot on her back stayed stiff and tense. Issa moaned all the way through it, and at times it felt like I was sensually slow-fucking her in a pronebone position.

The fact that she would periodically turn her head to the side and look at me with bedroom eyes was not helping matters at all. If she was in a normal state of mind right now, or perhaps if she wasn't my niece at all, then maybe she'd be moaning right this moment ​from something else other than my hands.

"Mhnmm, ahhn....."

"Are you feeling better now?"

I ended the turned-sensual massage before asking that, then got off of her after she responded with a simple nod.

"Ah-- y-y'know, I....."

"Yes, Issa?"

She looked me deep in the eyes for a moment, then fixed her dress before getting up and tying her hair into a neat little ponytail.

"N-Nevermind."

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CHAPTER END

"Thoughts of festering fear, replaced with something increasingly sincere."