The Spider-Worm Witch

by Paul O’Neill

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

It struck her how little she knew her father. He’d been some distant, shady thing her whole life. Mum always making excuses. Always saying that he didn’t mean to smash that man over the head with a lamp. Didn’t mean to steal that car. Didn’t mean to run over that old man.

The witch was nowhere to be found. She marched along the quiet beach, kicking the sand, screaming at the gulls.

What if the witch had buggered off? Was this her life now? Dealing with the fear-maddened classmates until they turned to anger?

“I... I only wanted to feel like one of them. Wanted in. Just for a wee bit.”

The spider-worm witch’s tremulous voice came from the top of the beach. “You were filled with a rage so full you’d have made them all eat worms. Was I mistaken? That Chloe was a feisty one, lass. See why you like her.”

“You leave her name out your mouth, you filthy, hairy bastard.”

“Look at you, look at you.”

Becca marched toward the towering beast, something in her brain demanding that she turn and run in the other direction.

“What’s the matter, love?” said the witch. “Did you not do the tongue thing?”

“This isn’t what I wanted.”

“Och, it’s always the same. Yak, yak. I didn’t want this person to fall in love with me. I didn’t want this body to show up with holes in it. Picky, picky, picky.”

“Take it back. That’s what I want. Take it all back.”

The witch moved its muscular, multi-jointed legs, moving around Becca like a maddened horse ready for war. “You think it works that way, lass? Do I look like a time traveller?”

“B-But, you have to. They’ll never let me do anything now.”

Becca did her best to hold the thing’s glare. The sunlight seemed to phase along its body, making an oily rainbow of its spider skin. As it leaned in closer, fetid air plumed over Becca, laying its hot paws on her face. The worms dangling from its eye looked like some slimy, distended ball sack.

“What’s done is done, and what’s won is won.”

“It’s not what I wanted.”

“It’s not what any of us wanted, dearie. It never was.”

Becca fought to keep a hold of the rage in her gut. Fought to make it climb her gullet and singe the demon thing for doing this to her.

The spider-worm witch seemed to deflate. “I could feed you to my worms, you know.”

Becca felt as if she gulped a ball of sandpaper. The worms wriggled from its eye, hung from its mouth. They moved as if reacting to the anticipation of a good meal.

“But I won’t, lass. I won’t. Don’t poop your stomach out your breeks.” The bulbous spider body moved up and down in something like a sigh. “Look, I don’t usually help this much. It’s not in my blood. So, do you have another wish? One that I can actually help you with. Things to do. Worms to feed.”

“You’re an evil thing. You’ll just twist whatever I ask for, turn it on its head, mess my life up even—”

The witch blurred forward, grabbed Becca by the neck. It held her high off the ground as she kicked at the thing’s arm.

“I’ll gobble, gobble, gobble you up right now, you ungrateful wretch,” said the witch. “I’m not your slave, or anyone’s. Not my fault it doesn’t always work out.”

A pressure built inside Becca’s skull as she gasped for air. Spots glitched about at the edges of her vision. “P-Please.”

The worms from its mouth and eye reached for her like deadly snakes. “Why did you have to come to me, eh?”

The sky seemed to rush away from her. She tried to suck in breath as she fell. The back of her head smacked the packed earth. The smell of crushed grass reached her as she rolled around, trying to breathe, wheezing like a rabid dog. Dizziness almost caved in her knees as she stood, shaking away the nausea.

“Doesn’t matter what I do,” said the witch in a huffy tone, “it’s never good enough. I’m gonna leave now. Take my—”

“Wait!” Becca stepped forward almost blanking out. As the witch danced to face her on spiky legs, her skin felt as if it wanted to turn itself inside out. “I... I understand. All my life, I’ve tried to help in class. Can’t help how I was raised. Dad in and out of Broadshade and Mum not giving a toss, what else was gonna happen? Course I’d have an angry streak. But no one listened. So, I made them listen. And I’ve been cast-off ever since. A write-off.”

“We’re not so different, lass.”

“You’re the only one who’s bothered to try help me. That’s well sad, eh? I... I just want to be able to do that, you know? Just like you. Help people. Get them to let me in. Even if it’s just small things. That’s what I want.”

“I can’t do this one anymore.”

“What? Wait. Don’t go.”

The spider punched its front legs into the green earth, clawed aside dirt. It rumbled through the soil so fast it was like watching sped-up film. Chocolatey soil covered it, singing its moist worm smell as Becca stood at the lip of the churned ground.

* * *

Waking up in the middle of the night, Becca wanted to gouge her own eyes out with a rusty knife. Her whole body ached. Her skin seemed to vibrate with heat. How hard had she conked her head when the spider-worm witch let her drop?

The irony taste of wet dog wouldn’t leave her mouth no matter how much she clucked her tongue. She wasn’t in bed. It was as if she’d just come back to herself mid-sleepwalk.

An ear-splitting scream tore itself from above her. Her mum clawed at her own cheeks as she let out a howl of pain, collapsing to her knees, leaning against the doorway of Becca’s sparse bedroom.

Becca viewed the whole scene upside-down. She blinked, hoping to wash away the illusion, but it wouldn’t shift. She’d read about things like this before. How a spirit could leave a body, looking down from the ceiling in an out-of-body experience. That’s what this must be.

Her mother raised a shaking hand, pointing it at Becca’s bed. It was a body. Her body. A red slash had left a clown’s smile on Becca’s neck, a ruin of blood cascading down the bed and onto the floor. From Becca’s point of view, it looked like the blood pooled on the ceiling above her.

“M-Mum?” She tried to call out, but it felt as if her gullet was packed with dust.

Mum slowly craned her neck to look at her, eyes raw with fear. A ghastly smile trembled up her mother’s face, horror-movie wide. All sense had gone from her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, then flopped to the floor like a large doll toppling over.

“Mum?” said Becca.

The smell coming from Becca was like an old engine burning off a layer of slimed sewage. When she looked around the room, she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirrored wardrobe.

“No.”

Eight hairy legs. Two human arms. Deadened skin. Blackened, pointy hat. Four lively worms dangled from a slit in her cheek.

“I’m...”

She’d been turned into a spider-worm witch. Had she sunk her new fangs into her own body somehow? Was that the crimson iron taste of blood on her tongue?

Each one of her spider limbs seemed to wake, coming to life, feeling like the worst pins and needles sensation. She forced herself to move. Gravity felt like some malleable thing, like she weighed almost nothing.

A shadowed form appeared in the doorway. Her dad. He gazed down at the crumpled figure of Mum and let out a yelp of a noise like a hurt puppy. From inside the shadow of his hood, she saw his features scrunch up as he called her mother’s name over and over, whispering it gently.

Becca made her slow way across the ceiling, toward the wall. Her foreleg touched it, feeling somehow solid. She moved across, and her viewpoint careened sideways.

She stared into her father’s eyes as he pointed at her. He now looked like he was on the opposite wall.

“You,” he breathed, “I’ll murder your witchy face for coming here.”

“What?” said Becca.

“You killed her. This isn’t what I wanted. It’s not what I said.”

Becca felt her lips move, baring her fangs. How she wanted to dig them into her father’s flesh. To taste his death.

She shook the rage, breathed in deep. The first purpling of the dawn sky shone through the window. She threw herself at it, bursting the glass and into the chill morning.

“I’ll find you!” her dad roared. “Dig you out if I have to.”

* * *

The morning sky had turned into blue fuzz by the time Becca made it to the beach. She felt strong, able to run on her eight legs for miles and miles.

What damage could she do in this new body? How easy would it be to rip her father’s insubstantial form into slithers? It was no less than he deserved. He’d driven her to this path. The rage had her quivering, had spiny hairs falling off of her like a shedding cat.

The spider-worm witch waited at the top of the beach. The sullen look on her face told Becca everything she needed to know.

“You knew this would happen,” said Becca, charging nearer.

The witch’s bulbous body was so low to the ground that it looked as if it had been squashed by some giant boot.

Becca wanted to fling herself at the witch. Tear its worms from its skin. All that came out was a pathetic, “Why?”

“Thought I’d seen it all in my time here, lass.” The witch rose slowly, towering over Becca, almost twice as large. “But your father takes the cake.”

Realisation dawned in Becca, making her blood run to sludge. “He came to see you, didn’t he? That’s why he was here.”

“All the things he said. So sad. Almost ate him on the spot, but then I saw you. And you said all the things you said. I tried to help you both. You have to understand that.”

“Help us both? Sure doesn’t look like you helped any.”

“Forgive me, please. It was the only way I saw how.”

“What did he say?”

“Wish I’d ended him. Feasted the worms. They grow hungry, as will your own. You’ll feel it soon. How the desperate and the needy call to us, force us out our burrows. We have to hear them.”

In response, the worms on Becca’s cheek shifted, swayed in some rhythmic dance. Something in her gut tried to smother the question bubbling inside. She pushed through it. “What did he wish for?”

“Don’t ask me that.”

“What was it? Tell me!”

“He wanted you gone, alright? Happy? He looked at me with those pathetic puppy eyes under that hood and begged me to end you. Told me his piano sob story about how he was never there, that his stints in jail ruined you. How the world would be better if you didn’t exist anymore.”

“H-He actually wanted me dead?”

The witch wiped a hand under her eye. The worms made a slurping, wet noise as she tried to control the tears streaming down her face. “See what you do to me?”

“You could’ve just killed me. Write me off for good like everyone wanted. Why turn me into this?”

“I only tried to help. He said it would be best for you to be gone. Said you were rotten. Didn’t see that it was his fault. Begged me. Then you... You came straight after he left. I was raging inside. Then you said you only wanted to help people. Help people just like me.”

Becca’s mind drifted back to the conversation. You’re the only one who’s bothered to try help me, she’d said. I just want to be able to do that, you know? Just like you.

“Just like you,” said Becca, looking up at the quiet, cloud-dotted sky. “I said I wanted to be just like you. And you did it. You killed me and turned me into this. Should’ve sunk my new fangs into his neck when I had the chance.”

“Wouldn’t blame you for a second for that, lass. None of us deserves to be tossed away like that. There was a time when I was a merry girl. The man treated me bad. Real bad. Until I screamed for release. I found my own spider-worm witch, and she saved me. Like I saved you.”

“Saved me? You call this saving?”

“Better than dead. There’s nothing beyond death for those such as us.”

The wind picked up, sighing through Becca’s prickly leg hairs. It whistled through the holes in her hat.

There was nothing stopping her from going on a rampage. Visit her mum and dad and lay havoc to their lives. Visit the kids at school who’d all treated her so badly, so distantly. Pay Mrs. Randall a visit, string her up by the intestines, watch her bleed out.

“You can do all that,” said the witch as if reading her red thoughts. “We are not slaves. We...” It stretched to its full height, sniffing the air like a dog catching a scent. “One comes. No time like the present. Just...”

“What?”

It opened its mouth, closed it again. Then it leapt, dug its way into the soil until it was gone.

Rage cycloned inside Becca, making one of her spider legs tap the ground in a staccato rhythm.

“You!”

Becca’s sanity felt like it was tied to a very loose string. Her dad stood before her. Blood covered the front of his black hoodie, glistening in the sun.

“You did this,” he said, marching closer. “I didn’t want this. Not like this.”

“You wished she didn’t exist any more.”

The anger thrummed through her. It beat through her large spider body, down her eight legs. Her worms swayed.

“Can’t believe you actually did it,” he said. “Crawl back to hell where you belong, you disgusting thing. No one wants you.”

“You never wanted me here in the first place,” said Becca, creeping closer.

“W-What?”

“Never wanted to be a dad. Can see it now. In everything you did and didn’t do.”

“Don’t you understand? I’ll get pinned for the murder. Sent back to Broadshade for good. I can’t go back there. Take it back.”

“I can’t. But isn’t it a shame that she’s gone? Won’t you miss her?”

“What? A-Aye, of course. But—”

“But it’s better this way. Better that she’s no longer among the living, so that you don’t have to be reminded of your failures. Don’t have to remind yourself that she felt things, just wanted to help people if they’d only let her. What could’ve happened if you only tried being a good dad.”

She charged forward, knocking him to the ground. A spider shadow spilled long over him as he shuffled back, unable to force himself up on his legs. He brought his hands up, trying to ward her off.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t end you right now?” Becca glared down into his large eyes. “You deserve nothing less for how you made her feel.” She drove a spindly foreleg down, driving it into the ground by his head. “It was all you. Your fault. If only you’d seen her for what she could’ve been.”

“It was t-too late. She was ruined.”

“It’s never too late!”

His neck screamed at her to sink her fangs into him, delight in the hot crimson of spilled blood. She imagined stringing him up in a web. Ripping him apart piece by slow piece. Making him pay.

Looking at his whimpering form, the rage dimmed as if someone had covered the inferno with wet planks of wood, stifling it to smoky embers.

She moved away, looked back to the sun that had climbed over the horizon. The start of a new day.

“P-Please?” her dad said behind her, getting back to his feet.

Becca closed her eyes, let the sun’s warmth fill her. She could feel his desperation coming off of him in waves, like she was tuned into the frequency of it. “What can I do to help?”