I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.
Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.
Enjoy.
Mercy
for Rob Sutherland. Thank you for your support of my work and Clarion West.
I won’t I won’t I won’t go mad, Mercy told herself as she fled the apartment clutching her messenger bag, her keys, one sneaker and a nectarine. But her hands were shaking so hard that the keys jangled like chattering metal teeth oh god Eric’s teeth his TEETH —
Forget the elevator. She took the stairs.
By the bottom of the five flights, she had got some of her steel back; enough to stop, take three deep breaths, and crane her neck to study the stairwell above her. No thump thump thump of pursuit. No head over the rail, grinning gleeful, Found you! with those teeth —
Don’t, don’t. Breathe. Sit on the bottom stair. Put on her other shoe so the doorman doesn’t look askance, doesn’t call upstairs to ask her husband if she’s okay, because that answer is most certainly no. That answer is most certainly, Oh, thank you, Walter, will you please keep Mrs. Adams there so I can come down and get her?
I won’t go mad, she thought again. She straightened her bag across her back, and then she straightened her spine and opened the door into the lobby. She kept her keys like spikes between her fingers just in case Eric was waiting. In case anyone with teeth stood between her and the street.
“Morning, Mrs. A.,” Walter the doorman said. “Problem with the elevator?”
Mercy smiled so brightly that she was sure she looked insane. “No, I just felt like a little exercise.” How many calories did you lose running from a monster? Don’t go there, she told herself. But then she raised her hand to give Walter the usual little wave goodbye, and found the nectarine still in it. That was all it took to swing her into a mental U-turn, to rewind time to the moment that she stood in the kitchen —
— frowning at the fruit. Was it ripe? She picked it up as Eric stepped into view down the hall, naked, toweling his hair dry, giving her a view of his body that would have made her feel deliciously ripe herself on any other day. But today had been the worst fight ever. Today had bitten deep. They were so bitter with each other sometimes, so poisonous, and she found herself thinking that love might not be enough antidote.
Eric pulled the towel from his head and turned toward her.
His mouth was the mouth of a giant spider, with giant spider teeth; and even as her mind tried to turn itself inside out, the spider mouth spoke with Eric’s voice: “Mercy.”
Some old part of her brain took over then, as if she were facing a lion on a veldt. It made her rigid for an instant while it narrowed her vision to what was necessary, while it turned her internal adrenaline firehose to full stream; and then it told her Careful, now, and gave her back control. When she opened her mouth, she wondered if she would scream: but she only said, in a voice not too far from normal, “I’ll be right back.” Then she turned and walked to the living room and shoved her left foot into her sneaker and saw her keys on the console table and her bag on the floor and then behind her, close, the voice clacked her name, “Mercy.”
She made a desperate sweeping lunge to scoop up her bag, her keys, her right shoe. Then she ran. And here she was in the lobby with the nectarine still in her hand and her brain reminding her monster, monster, TEETH!
“Walter, would you like this?” she said. “I think it’s just about ready to eat.” Then she pushed through the door to the street as quickly as she could, so she would not have to see him raise it to his mouth and take a bite.
#
She made it half a block before she started to shake. By the time she reached the coffee shop, she was nothing but trembles and tears. Alice the barista took one look and came out from behind the counter, bullied a non-regular away from his table, and set Mercy in a chair. “Honey, whatever it is, we’ll fix it, okay? I’ll get you some coffee.”
A customer in line said, “Hey, we were here first.”
Alice said, “Then I guess that makes your day worse than whatever just happened to her, Mr. Compassionate? Go get your coffee somewhere else. Go on.” She flapped her hands at him as if she were trying to literally shake him out the door.
He went. No one else complained. Mercy sat, vibrating, staring at the tabletop, trying to stop the terror bouncing in her brain like a pinball hitting all the buttons. Ping! Eric so beautiful that body, turning. Ping! What’s that on his face TEETH TEETH! Ping! Ping! Ping! Then a hand reached into her field of view and set a mocha on the table.
“Liquid Xanax,” Alice said.
“Thank you,” Mercy said, in a voice not too far from normal, and looked up —
Alice’s mouth was the mouth of a giant spider, with giant spider teeth, and it said, “Don’t run,” but oh by god Mercy did.
#
And then the street was full of spiders. Everywhere she turned, everywhere she looked, all of them saying her name. Mercy, Mercy! They cut her off at an intersection, spiders on every corner, Mercy! They herded her into a dead-end alley. Mercy! And when she was huddled shrieking against the wall, one pushed through the crowd and stood before her.
“Mercy,” Eric said. And then he waited.
She silenced herself. She found her steel, and she made a cage of it and put her gibbering brain inside. Then she stepped away from the wall.
“What do you want?” she said to the monsters.
Mercy, they whispered. Mercy. Mercy for the spiders in us all.
Above his nightmare mouth, Eric’s human eyes were full of pain and shame and hope. When she touched her own mouth, she found the teeth there. Be merciful, she thought, and lifted her face for his kiss.
Yowsa! That was intense.