Extras

You are dangling from the ceiling, staring down at the thing in the box below you, its pallid face reflected in your eight tiny eyes. There is a woman standing next to it, leaning over the box, crying. She’s wearing all black. A man puts his hand on her shoulder, but she doesn’t seem to notice. You barely notice either. You are still transfixed by those closed eyes, that waxy complexion. Why is this dead creature so fascinating? It is meat, yes, but not an insect, not the kind of meat that can be consumed. More humans, all dressed in black, start filing into the room, and you scurry back up your strand of silk, into the shadows where you can no longer be seen.

You creep through the gap under a locked door, into a room with the lights turned out. The walls have all been painted bright colors, and large pieces of wood and plastic are haphazardly scattered across the floor. Everything in the room is covered in a fine layer of dust; it has not been inhabited for some time. You crawl across the floor slowly, carefully, maneuvering around carpet fibers that are almost as tall as your entire body. There is a large box in the corner with a piece of fabric draped over it, blue but patterned with red circles that each have crisscrossing black lines and smaller white ovals within them. It is best to steer clear of this box where the humans sleep, as sometimes a large foot can unexpectedly come crashing down from over the edge. The room is currently uninhabited, but one can never be too careful.

As you turn to go in the other direction, something wide and flat blocks your path, and after a moment’s consideration, you decide it would be easier to climb on top of it than to try and scurry underneath it. The smooth surface makes it difficult to keep your footing, but the material is also thin enough that it indents slightly under each step.

Paper. The surface is a piece of glossy paper, with more papers underneath it.

How do you know this? What “paper” is? This isn’t a word you have ever been taught.

It’s there again, the same red circle from the pattern on the child’s bedspread, but now it is attached to something vaguely resembling the shape of a human body, all covered with the same red-and-blue pattern. The circle is this creature’s head, and the white ovals within are its eyes.

Wait. What are “eyes”? What are “patterns”?

This is too much. You know things you that should not know. It is time to leave.

That night, in the web, you dream.

Can spiders usually dream? Had you ever dreamed before?

Everything around you is white, until something slowly fades into view: the pink flesh of a human arm. Your arm. There is a plastic tube sticking out of it, connected to a machine that keeps beeping. You are lying in a bed, with a stiff white sheet pulled up to your thorax—to your stomach. The man and the woman who live in the house are standing over you, staring down at you, and they’re still considerably larger than you are, though nowhere near as much as they usually are. With tears in her eyes, the woman asks if you need anything, and in response, a weak voice asks for something called a comic book. The man smiles and nods, still barely holding back tears himself, and says that shouldn’t be a problem.

The web becomes a flurry of vibrations as a small, careless moth becomes entrapped in it, and suddenly the dream is gone, barely a memory of a memory. As you hastily clamber over to the creature and begin to wrap its struggling body in silk, some inner voice screams that this is disgusting, that this is barbaric, that it needs to stop, but these impulses go ignored. It’s been days since anything has flown into your web, and you are hungry.

The body in the box is gone, but in its place is a framed picture sitting on a small wooden table. You lower yourself, slowly, on a single thread, hanging almost exactly halfway down the room, and gently rotate until the picture is directly in view. It is a young child, the same body that was in the casket, but here it is smiling, and its skin is rosy, and its hair is being blown back by the wind. So full of life, such a stark contrast to the lifeless thing in the box that had been there a couple days prior.

Footsteps come from the other room, and you’re already climbing back up your web when she walks in. She doesn’t see you, paying no attention to what’s going on above her head as she kneels down in front of the photo and once again begins to cry.

The memories are coming back piecemeal. You remember running barefoot through the wet summer grass, screaming and cackling with joy as you barrel into your father’s waiting arms. You remember sitting in front of the TV, transfixed by a Spider-Man cartoon, and breathlessly asking your parents for Spider-Man comics, a Spider- Man bedspread, a Spider-Man-themed birthday party, anything and everything that came with Spider-Man’s face on it. You remember waking up one morning, suddenly not feeling well. You remember going to the hospital.

You don’t remember coming back out.

You’re on the ceiling of your old bedroom, watching as your mother shuffles around it slowly, picking up the toys one-by-one and carefully, reverently placing them in a cardboard box. The urge rises to scream at her, to shout, “Mom, it’s me! I’m back, Mom! Look at me, I’m okay!” but no voice comes out. You don’t know what to do. You try standing up on your hind legs and wave at her with your front ones, but you’re upside down on the ceiling and realize just a little too late that gravity is not your friend—

You land softly in her hair, and she doesn’t seem to feel you at first. Her posture straightens as she lifts a remote- control car off the floor, and at this scale the motion feels unbearably ponderous and slow. You lose your footing once again and tumble onto the bare skin of her neck, and this time she notices.

She lets out a yelp and grabs blindly at her neck, trapping you in her fist and bringing her hand back around so she can get a better look.

As soon as her fingers unfurl she screams, and before you know what’s going on she’s thrown you across the room. You thump lightly against the closet door, then land softly on the carpeted floor.

“What?” your father says, barging into the room with a panicked look in his eyes. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Your mother points at you with a trembling finger. His eyes follow the line-of-sight until he finally sees you, then he rolls his eyes and sighs.

“No, Dad!” you shout. “It’s me! It’s really me!”

Your father reaches to the floor, picks up a Spider- Man comic book, and tightly rolls it up in his hand as he strides over to you.

The tears want to come, but can’t. Spiders don’t have tear ducts.

“Please! I know you don’t recognize me, but you have to believe me! Mom, Dad, please—”

The rolled-up comic in your father’s hand rushes towards you, and the glaring white eyes in Spider-Man’s mask are the last thing you see before returning to oblivion.

In the beginning, when The Lord created the heavens and the earth, he was quite drunk. All was chaos and void, and God’s spirit blew back and forth, uneasily, across the vast reaches of nascent space-time. Suddenly, eternity started spinning, and The Lord stumbled. He felt queasy, like he was falling through the never-ending abyss. He exerted his considerable mental faculties on orienting himself, but he soon realized that had been a mistake. Bending over, hands at his knees, The Lord took a deep breath, but despite his purported omnipotence, he seemed powerless to quell that which was rising from his gargantuan belly. He opened his unfathomable mouth wide and regurgitated the previous night’s hazy memory. From this cosmic vomit grew all of creation.

The Lord felt better, momentarily. He stretched his mighty arm above his head, and inadvertently, pulled down the curtain of darkness.

“Why is it so bright in here?” he asked, then covered his eyes with his massive hand to try to sleep it off.

And it was evening, and it was morning, the first day.

Some of the liquid The Lord regurgitated the night before had evaporated overnight. In the morning, it began to rain on The Lord’s head. He hastily built a firmament, which divided creation into the heavens and the earth, and which kept about half the liquid above the barrier, so he could get some rest.

And it was evening, and it was morning, the second day.

It was a good thing he had left some of the water below the firmament, because when he awoke the next day, The Lord was parched. He drank about half the liquid left on Earth, revealing the land that lay beneath.

The Lord tried to go back to sleep, but soon woke again because he had to take a massive piss. Since his issue was imbued with the power of creation, the Earth sprung forth grass and trees, all manner of vegetation.

And it was evening, and it was morning, the third day.

The Lord woke the next morning, still bothered by the light which, in his hungover state, gave him a splitting headache. He shielded his eyes from the incessant glare with his left hand, and with his strong, right hand, he gathered the light, forming it into more manageable portions. Thus, he created the heavenly bodies by which people now keep time: the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars.

And it was evening, and it was morning, the fourth day.

Some of the divine piss, which the creator had released on the third day, drained through the soil and ran off into the sea, while the rest evaporated into the air. Its life-giving power coalesced with the basic elements in the sea and in the sky. Life formed in the oceans and birds appeared in the sky. The racket of their squawking kept the creator up all night.

And it was evening, and it was morning, the fifth day.

After a while, some of the life-forms from the ocean crept up onto the land. Subsiding on the vegetation, which was filled with The Lord’s power, they grew and changed into complex animals of every species before the creator dragged himself out of bed.

Those creatures who remained in the ocean continued to evolve as well. Great sea monsters, squid, kraken, and all manner of sharks fought for supremacy, but all were subdued by the great Leviathan who, in the absence of the still-sleeping creator, established themself as ruler of the vasty deep.

Back on land, giant lizards ruled for a time, and the rest of the animals cowered in fear of these great behemoths. The sound of their massive footfalls reverberated even unto heaven, disturbing the divine slumber. Half asleep, The Lord conjured a massive boulder out of his subconscious dreamland and hurled it down at the Earth to try and quell the noise. It worked, for a time. The dust from the impact choked the great reptiles, killing them instantly, and wiping their memory from the Earth for many years.

All was quiet for a time but, eventually, the smaller, furrier creatures grew to fill the void left by the erstwhile dinosaurs. By this time, however, the creator was sleeping deeply. Nothing on Earth would disturb him for some time.

Around noon, God awoke. He saw what he had created, and behold, it was . . . not great. The animals had eaten much of the vegetation and trampled the ground. The sea teemed with monsters. The Lord was wroth. When he went on his bender the night before, he had not thought of the consequences. He considered destroying the whole thing and starting over but, ultimately, he did not want to be that kind of god. He might be careless—even irresponsible—but evil? That was a bit much. No, this god felt some sense of responsibility, even while he was hungover.

Still, as creations went, this was embarrassing. It was a self-damn mess in here.

“What in the still-unnamed underworld am I going to do now?” he asked into the void. “I didn’t want any of this.” He sat down to think.

Finally, he said, “I’m not dealing with this mess. I’ll hire someone else to take care of it.”

The trouble was there was no one else to hire. None of the angels seemed up to the task, except Lucifer, and something about the way that one looked at him made him hesitate when he thought about willingly handing over power. He would have to create someone to clean up the place and whip it into presentable, working order.

Thus, The Lord created people, male and female, in his own image. He formed them out of the dust and blew the divine breath—which still smelt vaguely of alcohol and vomit— into their lungs. (It is this last tinge of alcohol on the divine, life-giving breath that accounts for humanity’s inability to act rationally.) The Lord set up a small garden—it looked good next to the rest of the creation, which had grown out of his piss and vomit—and placed the new couple there.

He provided minimal instruction and left them in charge. And it was evening, and it was morning, the sixth day. On the seventh day, God rested. He is still sleeping it off.

A-walking in Blatherly Woods one fine day

And lo to my start and surprise

Many a lady in finest array

Each plotting somebody’s demise

Now I’d heard the rumors that fluttered about

Of spinsters who gathered in woods

Some saw them as evil, still others would doubt

So I’d gone there to dig up the goods

Supping on tea cakes and Mulligan stew

On bottomless glasses of wine

They seemed so angelic the talk must be true

Their unmasking to all would be mine

I scarce had a chance to take in the sight

Before they turned ’round as a group

Then baring their teeth all in girlish delight

I knew I was deep in the soup

Retrieving me there from the edge of the yew

They gathered around me and then

They fed me on cakes and they fed me on stew

And relieved me of paper and pen

But I am a stalwart, a journalist true

Not one to be thwarted with ease

I’d easily outsmart this harridan crew

Despite all their feigning to please

I spoke with Miss Martha, both burly and stout

Who, no doubt, could snap my neck clean

Fear not, gentle readers, my wits were about

With me she’d not get such a scene

The meek Miss Eugenie waxed earnest and pure

Her subject, the tatting of lace

A code for the others, I knew it for sure

They would plan my demise to my face

“Oh, do try the peppermint aspic,” said they

But I wasn’t fooled for a trice

I saw it all truly, as clear as the day

The sugar concealing the spice

When luncheon was finished they started to play

At Honey-pots, Horseshoes, and so

Their games, I’d no doubt, meant my fears to allay

I remained unconvinced by the show

I was hot on the trail and out to discover

Each lady’s particular rot

From gambling to murder I soon would uncover

Then charge them all there on the spot

With dusk there came dancing and whirling delight

To tunes played upon airy fiddle

I was quickly pulled in by girls charming and slight

For a jig with me in the middle

I watched them with eyes as keen as a raptor’s

Not once taken in by their spell

Till the tolling of 9 alerted my captors

In truth I’d been saved by the bell

They gave back my paper, they gave back my pen

All sighing, contented, and spent

Declaring as one we should do this again

Collecting their things as they went

They bid me adieu and plied me with kisses

And drifted away in the night

Thus freed of the vigilant watch of the misses

I saw my best chance and took flight

I hastened, pell-mell, to my lone rented room

(I lodge just above the green grocer)

Determined to recount my ghastly near-doom

A shaving could not have been closer

My editor was keen, he thought it terrific

But fretted the good folk in town

Might easily quail at a tale so horrific

And sadly, he turned my work down

Thus is my harrowing yarn, my dear friends

Please take my example to heart

When sleuthing, or dodging precipitous ends

Then ne’er put the horse ’fore the cart.

Still the eye watched her.

Whispered.

How can an eye whisper?

She’d asked herself this question countless times, had yet to find an answer.

And still the eye whispered on.

About her.

Sighing out secrets it had stolen.

It blinked from its spot in the ceiling.

A glint of pupil gone and then back again. Watching.

She could feel its gaze on her body.

A nauseating, oily presence on her skin.

Like grease stains gliding across the surface of the water and collecting, unwelcome, on her extremities.

It made her want to get clean.

Bubbles popped on top of the water and the eye in the ceiling blinked again.

She felt the weight of it watching her. Unblinking now.

Staring.

How much did it see?

How long had it been there?

She remembered the burden of its gaze on her ninth birthday, winking at her through a cluster of shiny balloons while pizza was served to her friends.

She remembered sitting frozen beneath its gaze, a motionless rabbit too afraid to move and draw any more attention to herself.

A flash of white and gray in a field of green.

She remembered its presence, hidden behind a poster on the wall of her freshman dorm room.

Radiating its silent intent.

How much had the eye stolen from her over the years?

How much was it stealing from her right now?

Staring down as the warm water cooled and the leaky drain gurgled.

She slipped beneath the water, holding her breath as it closed over her mouth, her eyes, her nostrils.

The whispers from the eye were muted by the water. Sibilance silenced.

But the eye’s perception was unfettered.

She remained laid bare before it.

Her lungs demanded air. She deprived them of it.

Her chest heaved, fingers squeaking against the sides of the tub as she held her body down.

The eye watched, whispered . . . waited. Her body stilled beneath the bubbles. The eye, unblinking, watched. Whispered.

. . . Waited.

She broke through the surface.

Gasping.

Spine curved like a question as she coughed up water.

And still the eye watched her.

As Greg Sampson awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself with a tremendous hangover. He’d been drinking with his students after his last lecture. One of the girls (Gabby? Genevieve?) had been flirting with him, touching his arm every time he made a joke, which only made him want to make more. He remembered implying something about what the F in F. Scott Fitzgerald secretly stood for—but the rest of the night was a blur. Greg stumbled out of bed, straight to the fridge, and guzzled cold water.

That’s when Franz Kafka crawled out from under the refrigerator.

At least, he had Kafka’s face, the thick brows and piercing eyes, although his mouth was bracketed with mandibles. His arms, protruding from torn shirt sleeves, had extra elbows and hairy spines.

“Hello,” said Kafka, like chewing on tinfoil. “I believe you are familiar with my work.”

“Yes,” said Greg. “I mean, absolutely. I’m a big fan.”

Greg hoped Kafka wouldn’t notice the state of his apartment: the dirty dishes, dust bunnies, and stacks of student assignments waiting for his red pen. Then Kafka started licking grime off his arm-spines, and Greg felt a little better about it.

“I have so many questions!” he said. “How was Amerika supposed to end? It was published as an unfinished work . . . ”

“I left so many things unfinished,” Kafka sighed. “That’s why I’m here.”

Greg scanned a bookcase, heaving with hardcovers, until he found a battered copy of Kafka’s complete works. He took it and held it out like a sacred object. “This is almost everything. Everything you wrote.”

Kafka took the book and ate it. “Tell me,” he said, scraps of paper falling from his mouth, “are you familiar with the name Brod? Max Brod?”

“Of course!” Greg was almost offended. He was a literature professor, after all. “Max Brod was your friend. You left your work to him when you died . . . ”

“To be burnt. To be destroyed.” Kafka reared up; his antenna scraped the ceiling and knocked a dangling globe, causing shadows to skitter around them. “And what did he do?”

“ . . . He published it?”

“That is right.”

Greg took a step back and collided with his couch. His mouth was dry, his tongue clumsy. “But he made you famous! There’s a word—‘Kafkaesque’—that’s all because of you!”

Kafka reached out, plucked a dictionary from the bookcase, and opened it to the Ks. “Kafkaesque,” he recited. “Characteristic or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka’s fictional world.”

“People use it all the time!”

Kafka tore the dictionary in half and let the pieces fall to the floor. “Yes. It is a nightmare, isn’t it? The world has read my work before it was ready . . . ”

“Well,” said Greg, treading eggshell carefully, “Max Brod is dead, isn’t he?”

“But you’ve read it, too.” They were standing close now, eye to eye, mouth to mandible.

“You can’t . . .” Greg swallowed and tried again. “You can’t kill everyone who’s read Kafka. That’s insane.”

“Is it oppressive? Nightmarish?”

“It’s more just kind of terrifying,” said Greg. Then he lunged across his desk and grabbed up a wad of papers. “Look! These are student essays. Some of them are about you! Your work! Go and kill them first!”

(Sorry, Gabby or Genevieve.)

Kafka took the papers and tucked them away somewhere in his carapice. “I will,” he said. “Thank you.” He turned to leave, and Greg saw the vestigial wings on his back, emerging from his jacket. They glistened with slick rainbows.

Kafka stopped before he reached the door. “Although,” he said, “you did say I leave things unfinished . . . ”

He pinned Greg’s hands with two of his arms, tore open his clothes with another two, and ate him like he was a cheap paperback.

My word, this is just—this is just such a surprise. Hand to God, I didn’t prepare at all for this. Not a lick. I even had a moment last night where I was like: “Should I prepare something just in case? Like, on the off-off-off chance that I win?” But I dismissed the thought almost immediately. It was getting late and I was still a little bit drunk from the afternoon and I thought—no bullshit here, I really thought this—I thought: “Who’s going to give me an award? Little old hapless, goofy, off-beat moi? Never in a million years.” And so instead of writing anything down I just put the kids to bed while nanny supervised before swallowing one of my special melatonins and blacking out.

I almost didn’t even show up here today I was so sure I wasn’t going to win anything. No joke—I almost stayed home! My husband had to actually carry me here, fireman style, after he and the children dressed me like I was one of my daughter Serafina’s American Girl dolls. He and our limo driver had to drag my semi-conscious body down the red carpet between them Weekend at Bernie’s-style to get me here, my stilettoed feet drifting behind me like a child’s beach toy through the sand. Seriously! I’ve been told by my publicist that there’s footage of it.

And Lord knows I wasn’t expecting to hear my name called when they announced the winner! Certainly not when I was up against so many talented people. I mean, I straight up wasn’t even in the room when they called my name! You all know. You were there. That camera cut straight to my empty chair. You all had to watch like five or six solid minutes of the emcees trying to fill dead air while the cameraman wandered frantically through the theater trying to hunt me down. I was so shocked when he finally found me, out back by the dumpsters trying to bum a smoke off a security guard, and told me I’d just won, I didn’t believe him! Not even when the security guard showed me that I was trending on Twitter. Incidentally, what’s a hot mess? Somebody tell me after.

I thought the whole thing was a gag. I took my sweet time, as you might remember, making my way up to the stage— finished my cigarette first and everything! But when I finally got in here and saw my name on that screen next to the word “winner,” I swear you could have knocked me over with a feather. Turns out you didn’t even need a feather, really, as those couple glasses of wine with dinner had gone straight to my head and I took a fairly significant nosedive on my way up those stairs—to the point that I’m actively bleeding pretty badly right now. True story!

I know I have so many people I need to thank for getting me here tonight, but the thing is, I don’t actually remember most of their names. It’s not even just that I forgot to write them down—it’s that I was so utterly, completely convinced that I’d never get this award that I never bothered to learn their names in the first place. I remember a man with a moustache and a pen who seemed to be coming in and out of my trailer a lot. And there was that woman who would bring me coffee, and the other one with the makeup bag, and then a whole bunch of folks holding all those cameras. Also I spent a hell of a lot of time with that one guy who was in the majority of my scenes with me, the one from the movie poster? That one’s bugging me, actually, I’m pretty sure I know that one. The second I’m off the stage I’m gonna be like, “Oh, Billy, duh!” But not Billy. Something like Billy. It’ll come to me.

It looks like they’re telling me to wrap it up. There’s a lady with a headset who has been gesticulating wildly at me for about ninety straight seconds, and I can see behind her that there’s a stretcher and a couple of EMTs in the mix as well, which feels like a smart call. Hopefully next time you give me one of these awards, I’ll be better prepared.

A TALE OF THE CLEVELAND MYTHOS by PW DANKWATER

O, pale, dreaming Cleveland—city of a million lost wonders! Smog-obscured and ethereal, its ghostly lights reflected in the malignant, eldritch waters of the River Cuyahoga. What obscure secrets float belly-up like dead, gas-bloated catfish in your Stygian depths, huh? No, me neither.

I confess I had not seen M—— in years, not since we had roomed together as anguished young cookery students at the University of Akron. His unexpected telegram had stressed urgency and hinted at some dark, terrible discovery in shadow-veiled Cleveland: “COME QUICK! Stop. FOUND SOMETHIN’! Stop. ARRGH! Stop.”

The decades had been unkind to M——, leaving him wretchedly thin with a pronounced bug-eyed demeanor. He glanced nervously to and fro in the uncertain gloom of his shotgun shack, as if he feared he was being watched by invisible, otherworldly eyes. “I—I got the Coffee Jitters!” he confided, “T-Too much Java Joe.”

“They thought I was mad,” he explained, as he chugged on a quart-pot of Columbian Loco Express to calm his nerves. “But it’s real. I found it – fished it out of the river!” And then I too saw it lurking in a shadow-dappled corner of his hut: a verdigris-tainted copper vessel inscribed with delicate, unfathomable symbols from ancient, time-weary Milwaukee. An occult coffeepot!

And... it was coming to the boil!

By now M—— was a gibbering wreck, his eyes so big their sockets could scarcely contain them. He gabbled incoherently, spoke of “secret, extra-rich blends,” of “terrible grindings,” of “the dried-out bean-husks of the Unliving! H-H-Human Beans!” As he babbled, strange wraith-like shapes seemed to writhe in the steam that rose from the pot. Demonic faces appeared and popped like marsh-gas bubbles in the coffee’s dreadful, tar-like depths. I begged him to cease his unholy, arcane catering: “Men were never meant to consume a brew such as this!”

“The Elderly Gods!” he shrieked, clutching at my shirt, his face a sickly, gibbous moon rising an inch above my own. “Without their coffee they nod off in the afternoon!”

As I pushed him away, he stumbled, fell against that hideous cafetière, screaming horribly as its loathsome contents poured over him. I barely remember my flight from his cabin—the vile black demon-java that oozed across the floorboards, nipping at my heels as if it were alive; the sudden, raging fire; M——’s demented howls of anguish as his own coffee drank him!

The Cuyahoga caught fire and burned for days, as if Cleveland were purging itself of a nasty, unwanted urine infection. When the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Watercraft Division, pulled his body from the river they found M—— had been badly scalded. But it was his eyes – his horrible, bulging, hyper-caffeinated eyes! – that caused the murder-hardened local coroner to bolt from the mortuary-slab on which M—— now lay. T-THEY WERE *choke* STILL OPEN!!!

Some nights—usually when I’ve eaten a particularly rich, undercooked lasagna—a low, ominous sound wakes me in the small hours, filling me with a nameless sense of dread. The coffee pot is calling me from beyond! Soon I will be unable to resist its eerie, caffeine-infused siren song and will be forced to return once more to the crepuscular, gargoyle-haunted diners of fabled old Cleveland.