ARACHNOEXTINCTION

Dr. Kale whistled a stupid tune as the elevator plummeted into the earth. He ignored my heated scowl, and I wondered if anyone would notice if I strangled him to death right now.

It was remarkable how many different floors this building had, all made of glass. How deep did the land of this island travel? I feel like we would be in the ocean at this point, and what was the point of all this glass? It must have been cheaper and easier to use something else. I suppose I could just ask Dr. Kale, but that means he will talk again. Lord knows I do not want that, but it’s not any worse than this whistling.

He hit a particularly high note with his whistling and loved it. He leaned back and clenched his fists. His eyes were closed and he raised his hands up in a slow motion, getting into the noise he was making like it was something impressive. The god-awful sound bounced around in the glass elevator, leaving me cringing.

“So what’s with all this glass? I mean, it looks great and everything, but surely there were better options when designing this facility,” I said, desperate to making the whistling stop. There was no winning with this guy.

“This is more than just glass! This is borderline indestructible; you would need a dozen tanks or something similar in strength to break through this glass. Plus, we get natural sunlight and don’t feel like we’re science rats trapped in a cage,” Dr. Kale said.

Once the elevator lowered to the floors where the employees lived, the glass floors and walls were replaced with metal, and nothing was transparent. That was a relief. I was worried I would have to stare deep into someone’s eyes as I slept.

The elevator issued a loud “ding!” to signal our arrival to wherever Dr. Kale was leading us. With a hiss, the doors slid open. A strong musky scent hit my nose like a hammer would a nail. I struggled to prevent myself from coughing. It smelt like a basement that had recently flooded. This would take some getting used to.

We walked down the hallway; it was lined with door after door. After passing several of the doors, Dr. Kale stopped in front of a door numbered 812. He swiped a card that was strapped to the inside of his lab coat into a reader next to the knob. Dr. Kale swiped his card, the reader flashed green, and the door swung open.

“Here you are; there’s a phone on the wall if you need anything. Just pick it up and it will automatically dial out to me, don’t worry about trying to memorize numbers or anything,” Dr. Kale said and I squeezed by him into my room.

“Great, thanks. I’ll call in a bit once I’m settled,” I said and started exploring the room.

“Say hi to your wife for me,” Dr. Kale said and shut the door.

“You cheeky little dick,” I growled at the closed door.

I set my briefcase with my laptop in it on the desk provided by the room. Then I slid my glasses into the briefcase and put in my contacts. Once I was settled, I pulled out my cell phone and called my wife, stopping only to glance at the picture she sent for like a second…maybe two.

“Finally,” she purred as she answered. “I was starting to worry you wouldn’t call until it was all over.”

“Well, your picture caught my attention, as well as the attention of Dr. Kale too,” I said with a constrained laugh.

“Oh.... I certainly did not intend for him to see that,” she said, the purr leaving her voice. “Well....”

“You want to know if he liked it?” I said shaking my head even though she couldn’t see.

“...Is it that bad to be wanted?!”

I started to laugh, as I always did with her.

“Yes, I’m pretty sure he’s fondling himself now thanks to you, that or some grotesque images of spiders,” I said.

“If you’re trying to kill the mood it won’t work. I happen to find spiders very sexy,” she said with the purr returning to her voice.

“Ugh, I want a divorce,” I said as I sat down on the twin-sized bed pinned between the wall of the room and the wall of the bathroom in the corner.

“Yeah, you wish,” she said with a cheery giggle.

We continued to talk for a few hours. I explained my irrational fear of the spider eggs contained here, which may or may not have been a massive breech of protocol. Oops. As we spoke, I walked around, exploring the tiny room. It only had enough space for the bed and a desk. My closet was a metal bar that was screwed in at two ends to the ceiling and hung parallel to the bed. There was a small door that led to the bathroom that contained a small standing shower. I was thrilled this wasn’t a long-term stay, but it worked for tonight. I hoped the people that lived here day in and day out had a more spacious setup than this.

“You know, this whole experience with Dr. Kale and the spider eggs might be good for you,” she said as our conversation dwindled to a close.

“How on Earth do you figure that?” I asked, taken back.

“Ivory, there’s not many men out there they scream for their wife to kill a spider that has them trapped in the shower,” she said through a stifled laugh.

“I was vulnerable, and the spider saw me as an easy target! Plus, I was soaked and could have slipped on our tile when I tried to kill the spider. I would have hit my head and died naked and wet. Then the spider would have won, and I can never let the spiders win,” I said in a vengeful growl.

“I can’t believe you think I’m weird when you say shit like that!” she half-yelled in a fit of laughter.

“Alright, well this was ridiculously fun, Nell, but I got to write up this report for the angry boss--man and see this mammoth machine,” I said and sat up on the bed.

“Oh,” she cooed. “I would love to see the mammoth machine.”

“Unfortunately for you, this is a different machine, and a much different mammoth,” I said and tried to comb my bed head with my hand with limited success.

“Well, call me again before you leave. Remember to be careful, because if something happens to you, I will kill you. Miss you!” she said.

“Miss you too,” I said with a smile and hung up. She was simply terrifying sometimes, but she’s just kidding. Well, I sure hoped she’s kidding. If it came down to fighting a spider as big as me or fighting her, I’d be picking the spider every time.

I went to grab the phone hanging by the door; I picked it up and it began ringing audibly. I held it away from my face. I would be able to hear Dr. Kale answer and I could do it without this droll ringing devastating my ears. The phone rang for several long moments; I slammed the phone back in its holster.

“Of course, he wouldn’t answer,” I said through my clenched jaw. I was considering going out and looking for him when I heard a soft thump come from outside in the hallway.

I stopped moving and held my breath, focusing on just listening. I heard it again, this time against the door.

“Hello?” I called out.

Another soft thump against the door answered me.

The majority of this building was made of glass, but they couldn’t put in a peephole in my door? Of course. Government logic.

I cracked open my door try and sneak a peek, but before I could peer through the crack, the door was forced the rest of the way open. The sudden and forceful opening of the door threw me to the ground, and I looked up to witness my nightmare coming to life. Looking at my open door, I saw a giant spider taking up the entire doorway. The hellish spider was as black as death with blood red eyes that tore my soul to shreds. I felt like claws were digging into my gut and pulling my insides out through a freshly carved hole in my stomach. The size of the head wasn’t much bigger than a bowling ball, but its body was at least as long as me and quite a bit wider. It stood about thigh high, with its legs at least twice the height of the body, and it had pincers around its mouth that were snapping open and closed as it looked me up and down. The clicking that sounded from the pincers sent fearful chills down my spine; I tried to react before the spider could make a move at me.

I stumbled backward and fell down on my butt as I attempted to leap back. After a few pitiful failed attempts, I gave up on rising to my shaky legs, and I began scooting away in a weird crab crawl. My arms and legs moved as fast as they could on the floor to create space between me and the spider.

I kept waiting for it to run at me. For the spider to jump on me and rip my face to pieces and engulf my body, but the spider never moved. It just locked its demonic gaze on my face, which was now a ghostly white, and continued clicking at me. Once I backed up against the wall and was as far as I could go, I held my breath, waiting for it to make its move. I was going to sit and wait for the painful and disturbing end to come. I was so paralyzed with fear that I couldn’t fight back if my life depended on it, which it did. A soft growl began to emerge from the spider, and it started shaking violently in the doorway. It took one slow step toward me and stopped. Its growling grew louder and angrier as it fought to take another step toward me. Its mind seemed to be fighting against any movement the body attempted. Its eye grew to an even brighter red, and with a red flash and abrupt pop, they faded to black. The spider’s body slumped over with all movement and noise coming to an end.

“Aw man,” whined Dr. Kale as he stepped over the spider into my room with a controller in his grubby, little hands.

My hand was resting on my chest and I relaxed my body against the wall. Well, as much as I was able to relax. I was not entirely in complete control of myself at the moment. There was also a decent chance my body lost control of all functions and I might have made a mess. That is all I will say on that matter.

I was trying, and failing, to calm my racing heart and gain control over my sporadic breathing.

“What. In the actual HELL...are you doing?” I wheezed at him, never taking my eyes off the slumped over spider.

“This is a robotic representation of what the spiders will look like once we bring them back,” Dr. Kale said while beaming. “This one is a little smaller than the living version will be, but isn’t it amazing?”

“Smaller? That thing is bigger than me! I should just pull your funding! Those things are evil! Grotesque! Horrid! Why the hell would anyone want those things alive?” I shouted and climbed to my feet, ignoring his outstretched hand to help me up. “If there’s any creature that deserves to remain extinct, it’s giant freaking spiders!”

“Arachnophobia is such a funny thing,” Dr. Kale said, wiping a laughter-induced tear from his eye.

“Arachnoerotica is such a creepy-ass thing,” I grumbled as I collected my phone and notepad.

“You ready to see the mammoth life machine?” the evil Dr. Kale asked.

“Yes, anything to get me away from any type of disgusting spider creature, alive or dead. Let’s see this mammoth magic, Dr. Frankenstein,” I said and scooted passed the broken-down robot spider, kicking it once as I went by.

Dr. Kale flashed me a hurt look and scooped up the slider like an eight-legged baby. This eight-legged baby happened to be bigger than him. When he tried to balance the spider as he walked, he fell to the ground and got tangled in the fake spider legs.

A muffled voice came from one of the pockets of Dr. Kale’s lab coat. His face scrunched in confusion.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Emergency walkie-talkie,” he muttered and pulled a small, black receiver from his inside lab coat pocket after he untangled himself and stood up.

“This is Dr. Kale. Please repeat.”

Static ensued for a moment before a voice broke through. “--is gone. I repeat, one of the specimen eggs is gone.”

“Are gone,” Dr. Kale corrected the voice.

“Are gone?” The voice asked him.

“Are you sure it’s ‘are’? And not ‘is’?” I asked.

“Yes. Maybe. I thought so, but now that you have questioned me, I’m scared to commit,” Dr. Kale said and gave me a bashful glance.

“Wait, now I’m confused, I can’t remember how this works,” I said and scratched my head.

“The subject, ’one of the eggs’ is plural so ‘eggs’ should be followed by ‘are’…right? Crap, now I’m not sure,” Dr. Kale said, scratching his head and forehead scrunched in deep thought. “What’s the rule?”

“How many doctorate degrees does it take to figure out a simple grammar question,” I mumbled under my breath.

“Everything I know is a lie,” the voice said on the walkie-talkie.

“We can Google this later!” I said. “I feel like we should focus on the fact that there’s an egg missing. That is a concern. Am I right?”

“Don’t worry, you nervous Nelly,” Dr. Kale said with a nonchalant wave of his hand.

“Nervous Nelly?” I asked.

“We’ll head up to the camera station and see what happened,” Dr. Kale said and gestured with a nod for me to follow him. He brought the walkie-talkie back toward his face and told the guy on the other end, “I’ll let you know what we find out.”

He slipped the walkie-talkie back into his lab coat pocket and gave me what he thought was a reassuring smile. It was closer to murder and psychotic than to reassuring.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I worry? I wasn’t just assaulted by a fake spider in a cramped room and now found out someone potentially stole an egg for whatever reasons. No reason to worry at all. This is all good news. The only reason an egg would go missing wouldn’t be a bad reason. I have a wonderful feeling about this,” I said talking to myself, not realizing that I announced everything out loud. My wife just had to remind me about my failures against spiders. If one of these things hatched…no I can’t even finish that thought.

“You uh, you aren’t alright in the head, are you?” Dr. Kale asked with his stupid voice and annoying smile.

“That, coming from the guy who wants to resurrect monster spiders that were so dangerous they murdered their food supply and forced themselves into extinction?” I said. The job sometimes got in my head a bit. I had a tendency to get nervous and talk a lot, mostly nonsense. My wife found it hilarious, especially since I was never more nervous than my first few times being out with her. She could be intimidating in many ways, but she’s great. A little out there and wild, but great.

“Come on, one of the eggs probably just hatched,” Dr. Kale said followed by a high-pitched squeal of a laugh and nudged my side with his elbow again.

I rubbed my side and glared at him. This guy.

As we walked down the hallway back to the elevator, the lights in the ceiling flickered and popped off for a moment, then turned back on. I came to a complete stop and grabbed Dr. Kale to make him stop with me.

“What was that?” I asked Dr. Kale.

“Those stupid island--native--monkeys keep frying themselves on our electric walls; drains a lot of power,” he said in a dark tone. “It was funny to watch at first, but it shoots up our electric bill. Sometimes we will lose power for a few seconds if a particularly big monkey cooks himself, but nothing more than flickers now and then.”

“This place seems less and less wonderful with every passing moment,” I said.

“Oh, please, this is a majestic utopia!” Dr. Kale said with a bright grin that lit up his face.

So the guy with a hard-on for spiders liked to watch adorable, little monkeys cook themselves on his overpowered electric fence. Yeah, I was super comfortable staying here. I would bet money he has cameras in all the rooms, or at least the bathrooms.

Especially the bathrooms.

“The good news is that the security office is right past the mammoth machine, so two birds and one stone. All that jazz,” he said with a half-hearted shrug as the elevator raised us toward the sky.

“Do you know of someone who would benefit from stealing one of these eggs?” I asked. The walls turned from metal, back to the glass as we left the living floors, and we’re now rising past the working floors.

“Who wouldn’t?” Dr. Kale said with a shrug. “No one besides my friend who discovered them, the workers here, and you, know they even exist. Discoveries like this can make a career, or, at least, garner a paycheck large enough to retire off of.”

“So you think it’s probably a money thing? Not a ‘bring these creatures back to life’ thing?” I asked the question that was really bothering me. I did not want these things wandering around. The little ones I found wandering around my house were bad enough; I would never sleep again if I knew something like this was out and about in the world.

“These eggs are almost guaranteed passed the point of being revived, but the best chance of bringing them back is this facility here. Stealing one would be the worst thing to do in regards to giving life to the specimen. So if the eggs were stolen, it would not be for reasons of science.”

“Maybe someone got smart and realized destroying the eggs is the best thing for this world,” I said under my breath but loud enough for Dr. Kale to hear me.

“ANYWAYS, no one is sneaking off the island without our knowledge; if someone took it, we’ll find them,” he said, increasing the volume of his voice to talk over mine. He was ignoring what I said, but was unable to keep from flashing me an offended look.

We rode the rest of the elevator ride in awkward silence. The only sound was the quiet hum of the elevator as it lifted us out of the residential area of the building and back to the working floors where glass made up the building. I would take this silence over his whispering with a smile. The smooth ride and soft hum would almost be relaxing if an extinct spider egg wasn’t missing. These glass walls almost seemed to glitter with beautiful mockery in the setting sun, taunting me as if they knew something I did not. The light danced around between the dozens of different glass walls, creating a light show that captured my attention for much of the ride before my mind began to wander. The images of giant spiders running free throughout the world and their violent slaughtering of thousands of people with ease kept playing on repeat in my imagination.

We should have just destroyed the remaining eggs to ensure none of these creatures’ eight legs ever touched the face of the earth.

A loud “ding!” signaled our arrival. I jumped at the sound; I was very deep in my thoughts and had forgotten where we were. In unison, we stepped off the elevator and Dr. Kale led us back into the room where he kept the eggs. As I had feared, there were only thirteen eggs left in the room.

“Well, something certainly happened since we were in here a few hours ago,” I said.

Dr. Kale scratched his chin as he looked into the nest of eggs. “Let’s go look at the video starting from when we left until now.”

“Why don’t you have this room, or at least the eggs, locked up? The eggs should have at least been moved to a secure location,” I said while staring at the remaining eggs with a frown.

“Well, normally I would reply to your question by saying it’s not like someone is going to steal them. At the least I can tell you that no one will steal an egg and get off the island, so it’s not a real risk to leave them out. Besides, the eggs need the sunlight,” he said.

“What’s that?” I said and pointed at a pool of red on the floor of the room on the other side of the table. “Is that blood?”

“Oh he always gets these nervous nose bleeds. I’m sure it is nothing,” Dr. Kale said.

“That is a lot of blood, that’s no nose bleed,” I said.

Dr. Kale shrugged and took off in a swift walk out of the room, catching me off guard. Again. I spun around and had to run to catch up. All this running was wearing away at me; why the hell could he not walk off like a normal person? Or maybe give voice to the fact he was about to leave the room. Something other than all this random speeding off.

We continued walking past several offices. I noticed there was no one around on this level. Sure, it was hours later than when I got here, but I still expected some people to be around. This floor, and from what I could see through the glass into the other floors, were empty outside of Dr. Kale and myself. The emptiness and stillness of the many rooms raised the creepy level up quite a bit.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Probably lower levels, either relaxing or getting something to eat. We live where we work, so it’s unusual to put long hours in daily. People work every day, so it is important to try and take some time for themselves. Otherwise, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed, trapped, become claustrophobic, and go a bit crazy,” Dr. Kale said. “Personally, I spend much of my free time on the Internet; there are some truly amazing things on there. The best perk in working in a place like this, unlimited access to the fastest of Wi-Fi. No buffering when conducting ‘research.’”

He used finger quotes when he said “research.” This guy was just something special.

“I feel like you’re the kind of guy to venture into the dark depths of 4chan for fun,” I said.

“Yes. Like I said, some truly amazing things.”

I tried not to imagine what he considered amazing. He took me around a corner, up a few stairs. The glass was growing thicker and darker as we went; it wasn’t long before I could no longer see what was around the corner of a hallway. In his excitement, Dr. Kale leaned into his fast pace walk and into a jog. I was eager to join him; the closer we got to the mammoth, the more I could feel the excitement bubbling up inside me. I thought cloning, in general, was a terrible idea, and what was happening in this building was a direct insult to God, but I couldn’t help but be totally enthralled by all of this. Dr. Kale kept pushing our pace around another corner and then came to a sudden stop. I came to a halt, almost crashing into Dr. Kale, and looked up in awe as we were facing a gargantuan metal wall. Dr. Kale went up to the small door, swiped his card and pushed the door open.

“Follow me, please,” Dr. Kale said with a cocky, and somewhat unnerving, smile.