Creighton Melice lay on the cot in his cell and let himself relax into the deep unknown. He dreamt of spiders, as he often did, but tonight, with the end so close at hand, the images seemed as real to him as moonlight and blood.
And so. Now, his dream.
A spider the size of a baby’s fist wriggles up his neck and across his face, brushing her feet against his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids, the soft indentation beneath his nose. In his dream he’s paralyzed, so he can see her dark body pause on his cheek, but he can’t move, can’t brush her away. It repels him and excites him at the same time, sending shivers of secret pleasure running all through his body.
The spider rears back and lands with a prick in the middle of his cheek. He wants to scream but can’t make a sound; can’t brush her away. He feels the pressure, the widening wound, the gentle ripping sensation as she burrows into his cheek and the skin kisses open to receive her eggs.
She deposits her skinned offspring, then, in one moist plop. And he can feel the small wet sacks soak onto his tongue.
In the cocooned heat of his mouth it won’t take the eggs long to hatch.
Time passes. How much? A moment. An eternity. Impossible to tell. Impossible to know.
And then they hatch.
It’s a dream. It’s all a dream. Their whisper-thin feet explore his tongue. Some of the babies roll down his throat, while others manage to squeeze up and out the narrow passages of his nostrils. A few of the tiny spiders crawl out his mouth, nimble legs stepping over his teeth, across his lips, and then spreading out to scurry around his face. Always examining, always probing.
Of course, it’s just a dream.
It’s only a dream.
The rest of the babies descend deeply into him. Moist bodies sliding, wriggling against the tight, confining space of his throat.
Down. Down.
A dream. A dream.
All the way down.
Deeply, deeply.
They land in his stomach. They’re still alive.
Then he feels them wriggling inside him, and senses the quivering sensation as they begin to work their tiny mandibles and chew.
Devouring him from the inside out.
And he imagines how all of this would feel, should feel, how much it should hurt; but he notices only textures, light and airy; only pressure, blunt and numb.
Then Creighton Melice awoke, pleased by his dream, and rolled to his side. And there, in the solitude of his cell, he began going over tomorrow’s plan as he scratched at the small wound on his left palm that none of the cops who arrested him had bothered to inspect. Wouldn’t they be surprised.
Wouldn’t they all.