category archive: fiction

Passing by Mercury, where there is only a lemonade stand operated by a Flanoobian merchant. That’s it. Lemonade. We suggested on our last visit that she might offer some trinkets and baubles, purely in the interest of diversification, but she only smiled and asked if we wanted some diamond dust on our drinks.

Onward to Venus, where we descend through the murk and explore the tunnels of the Heechee. A quick stop at the “Dilithium Crystal-n-Go” and we’re blasting off again.

I never thought I’d write to you. I didn’t think something like this could happen to me, and to be honest, I didn’t believe most of the letters in your fine magazine were true. Until now.

I recently came home early from work to find my wife drinking tea with her friend, “Marlene,” who had just returned from a trip to London.

Things are going well at Federated & Amalgamated, Incorporated. We’re in the process of moving into a brand new campus, still under construction. When finished, there will be four glass-shrouded buildings, each nine stories tall. The buildings are curved, and arranged in a big “O.”

It’s quite impressive.

At an average of three hundred cubes per floor, the new campus will eventually house our entire headquarters workforce of nine thousand, with room for growth. F & A is always growing. “Eff-en-AY!” we say.

(Note that the Department of Branding and Promotion forbids the use of what they call the “pseudo-initialism” FNA, insisting instead on FAI as the official TLA.)

I stopped for a hitchhiker in Lexton, on my way to Bennet. I drive this route a couple of times a week, and on Fridays there is often someone standing at the top of the on-ramp. Webster College, and not much else, is about a mile from Lexton. Bored students walk over here to catch a ride into the city where they stay with friends or their parents for the weekend. I rarely stop, but she seemed harmless enough, and I was feeling lonely.

And she reminded me of Megan.

She sized me up through the passenger window as I tried to communicate my own harmlessness and sincerity. Clean-shaven, short (but not that short), middle-aged guy with a late model Camry. She opened the back door to dump her bag there.

“You’re not a serial killer, are you?” She asked as she got into the front seat.

Well.

I hoped to hear from Fritzi by now, but she appears to have dropped out for good. No new posts, as you can see. No tweets since yesterday. She hasn’t answered my emails. (Not that she was very good about that after getting her author access.)

Let’s hope she’s okay. We don’t know that Hildi has anything bad in mind for her, although the woman seemed just a bit unhinged. And let’s also keep the other spiders in our thoughts. That Nolan guy is probably well over the edge and bent on mass spider murder, now.

Despite her deception in securing the guest blogging spot, I appreciated Fritzi’s contributions. She did the job I “hired” her for, which was to post more frequently and liven the place up. She had a “quest for freedom” that I could relate to. I think …

The man and woman walked into the kitchen, and the woman immediately came over to the jar. “There you are! How are you doing, little earth mother?”

The man rolled his eyes. He said he would be right back, and went upstairs.

I thought: I’m in prison, you daffy broad. You put me here.

I still didn’t trust her. Lots of happy-happy earth-friendly talk, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find she had plans for mounting me in a display case on her wall. She leaned on the counter and was about to say something, but then the man returned with his laptop.

“I have something to show you,” he said, setting the laptop down on the counter.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I found this interesting web site last night.”

“Okay…” the woman said. She seemed wary.

“Now, I just want you to know that I was okay with keeping …

The man came downstairs, all cheerful and singing “Whistle Stop.”

“Hi, Spider!” he said to me. It was really too much. (I think the cat agreed, but for different reasons.) “Guess what? Hildi called.”

Hildi?

“She’s coming over right now!”

Apparently the woman’s name was Hildi. What kind of human has a name like “Hildi?” I wondered why he was being so chatty. Were we suddenly best buddies? Was he trying to get on my good side to win favor with the woman?

After feeding the cat, he went to make tea!

(Finally!)

He filled the kettle with water and put it on one of my rigged front burners. I almost did a jitterbug, thinking about all the dried up beetle parts and sawdust waiting to combust.

With his hand on the igniter, he took a step back, and appeared to be leaning away. What was this? But …

Nothing major to report and I’m still trying to conserve battery life, but I had to vent some frustration.

After the man and the cat went to bed, the other spiders started coming by the jar. At first I was excited about the prospect of getting help, but they only wanted to enjoy a little schadenfreude and tsk-tsking. They seemed satisfied that the situation had “resolved itself.”

They didn’t want to hear my plans for getting me out of the jar. They definitely didn’t want to hear how they could help with those plans. No one would go outside and find the house number and street name so I could call outsiders in to help.

This is upsetting. I’m a part of this community. Maybe not the most popular member at the moment, but still. I would do anything to help a fellow …

There was quite an uproar in the shelter after the woman said she liked spiders. I argued that she would stop him from waging all out chemical and conventional warfare on us. Boris said I was a fool, that the man would surely dump her.

He also pointed out that it was clear the man hadn’t forgotten about the “spider problem,” which caused several people to nod in agreement and scowl at me.

Someone called out, “Let’s throw Webber out of here right now!” Yikes. You don’t want to run into an angry spider mob. That’s the worst kind of mob. I also heard: “Who knows what else she’ll do? She’ll get us all killed!”

No, no, no! I was trying to save them, the ingrates. I thought of the stove, still waiting with its incendiary payload, and wondered if and when I …

Oh my goddess! The man brought his date back here last night!

They watched movies. They writhed around on the couch, which the cat observed with obvious distaste. (Especially when the woman sneezed a couple of times, mentioning cat allergies. Oh, the cat did not like that.) Then they went up to the man’s bedroom.

She’s still here this morning. The entire community is atwitter about it. He never has guests. What did this mean, we wondered. Would the woman come to live here? Would she be prejudiced against the arachnid community like him?

Boris said female humans are much worse when it comes to speciesist attitudes. Especially against us. What if the man told her about the incidents of the past few days? She might want to deploy pesticides against us, Boris said. He made a point of looking my way, as …