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    Feral Fantasy
    Feral Fantasy
    Feral Fantasy
    Ebook83 pages1 hour

    Feral Fantasy

    By Rhea Rose

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    About this ebook

    Welcome to horror and fantasy from this Keyboard Books collection of short stories, an imprint of RainWood Press. In this collection Keyboard Books offers four short tales of domesticity gone feral; from the garden to the were-woods, from the horrors of spider webs in a suburban living room to a dilapidated, boarded up, inner city building with a menacing story time. Bloodthirsty lullabies echo throughout Feral Fantasies.

    Keyboard Books are dedicated to stories set in other realms and that speculate beyond the ordinary. Between these pages you’ll find a super mom once bitten twice shy of revealing her new talents and desires, a family vacation that goes mythically native, an only child who finds strange siblings in magical bubble gum packs, and a little girl who has picture books read to her by a vampire. Thank you for roaming the story telling forest of Keyboard Books.

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    Author: Rhea Rose

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRainWood Press
    Release dateNov 23, 2017
    ISBN9781386684183
    Feral Fantasy

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      Book preview

      Feral Fantasy - Rhea Rose

      Summer Silk

      Summer Silk

      THAT’S A WOLF SPIDER, not a tarantula! Milo, my ten-year-old son explained, as I ran around the kitchen with the broom and tried to bat the huge beast out of the corner and down the heating vent.  The terrified arachnid collapsed, crinkled its hairy legs and became as light as dust.

      Milo bent to retrieve the carcass.  Don’t touch it, I shouted, jumping backwards.  Milo poked at the brown, inert pile; they always reminded me of a ball of discarded thread when they played dead. 

      Toss it in the toilet now, before it wakes up, I ordered.

      I want to collect it, he pleaded; I caved.  Thanks, Mom, he said with such glee you’d think I’d bought him a video game.  He ran off from the kitchen to a corner of the barn to find a jar to store the critter in.

      Make sure it has a tight lid, I hollered. No response. He hears everything, but never lets you know until one day he’s repeated word for word all your gossip overheard during a phone conversation.  Sometimes I could just kill that sweet kid.

      As the weeks went by the webs around the kitchen window and doors thickened even though I worked hard to clean them away.  The porch lights became killing fields.  The bug blood from the midsummer slaughter stained the house’s vinyl siding.  The marks faded if I used bleach.

      This morning I stepped onto the porch to catch a glimpse of the late summer sunrise over our fields of large, green and orange mottled pumpkins, I walked into a gigantic web.  It stuck to my neck; it stuck to the gloss recently applied to my lips and snagged in my eyelashes; I imagined my reflection as it grimaced back at me eight glistening times as the spider scurried to take shelter somewhere in my long blonde hair.  From the corner of my eye I reluctantly observed the spider’s miniature butt swing round in mid scuttle and disappear.  I squeaked in stifled horror when I thought I felt the eight-legged weaver’s tiny tickle as it made its way down the canals of my inner ear.  Several small smacks to the side of my head didn’t seem to dislodge anything but my sunglasses.  A frantic visit to the washroom mirror revealed nothing.  Like some great ape, I checked for fleas, brushed and parted, combed and flipped my hair around.  No spider.  I picked the remains of its web from my brow and felt the silk still on my arms, still invisible except for its insistent tickling presence.

      Days later, the incident forgotten, I cleaned webs off the windows around the house.  The outdoor lights, thick with layers and layers of soft white silk and bits of tangled insect debris, took on the look of large glass eggs in cocoons.

      Ted, do something, I said to my husband, then stepped in front of the T.V screen.  He didn’t flinch.  A commercial for the latest Spider-man movie flashed.

      ’Bout what? He twitched his index finger, signaling me to move aside. I noticed something odd about Ted, odder then the usual odd things Ted had going for him.  A web.  A spider’s web hung between the lobe of his ear and his shoulder—small, delicate and still in progress, the creature, no larger than the head of a pin, still spinning.

      It’s that time of the year, I said, and gave him my best you-know-what-I-mean look.  He continued to stare through my torso as if he had x-ray vision. He shifted in his recliner.

      Time of the month? Already?

      I hit him with the tea towel.

      Spider season is a family affair for us.  I hate the spiders.  Ted hates my project, and the kids hate both of us this time of the year because no one is permitted to rest until every breathing arachnid is gone.

      At first, my plan of attack for this season seemed to take on its own natural momentum.  Ted faithfully sprayed the owner of every web within reach.  Then he used his new feather duster to twist and noodle up the cobwebs like twirling spaghetti on a plate.  Once the duster, thick with silk, was no longer useable he and the kids offered it to me as cotton candy. Gratefully, I accepted these offers for disposal.  We’d usually light a fire in the evenings and watch ‘em burn.

      All was well, so I thought, and I relaxed to the voices of the three kids yelling and teasing as they caught stray spiders, Pull off their legs, and Throw a fly in.

      Ted worked in the crawl space under the house.

      See anything in there? I asked and handed him the duster and sprays he needed I’m hooking the latch, again, Ted.  No getting out ‘till they’re all gone.

      What’s new? he said, and I watched him follow the flashlight beam into the darkness.

      Not until I started to prepare supper did anything untoward present itself.  Back in the farthest depths of the cupboards, my fingers searched the corners for my jar of black peppercorns.  Where’s dada? asked Tannis, my four-year-old. The cool tin lid of the jar met my hand.  With one finger, I pushed the dust from the lid.

      Dada? Oops, said I, as I considered her question, patted her on her sweet corn yellow hair and ran downstairs to the crawl space.  How long had I left him down there?  I calculated. Tried to figure out the ratio of time to anger.  Then I realized three hours had passed. Shit.  I knocked gently, timidly.  Ted? I called out to him.  Are you speaking to me?  Of course, he wasn’t speaking to me. How did I forget?  Trapped in that pit of spiders.  Good God! I said aloud, forgetting myself.  Therapy.  He’ll need

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