Spider

23

Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York Spider checks the gag and restraints, locks the basement door and heads upstairs to rest.

As he walks into his bedroom he glances up at the mirrored tiles that cover the ceiling. They're there so that he can see himself perfectly as he lies on his specially adapted bed. He thinks of them as his 'Window to Heaven'.

He empties his pockets on to the bedside table, opens up his clam-shell cell phone and thumbs through the Menu. Under Media Gallery he chooses View and flicks through the digital shots made by the phone's two-mega-pixel lens. For two nights he'd covertly snapped Lu Zagalsky plying her trade across the streets of Brooklyn Beach, high-heeling her way alongside the cars that cruised Little Odessa. He'd got to know and photograph her every move as she grafted punter after punter, leaving them with empty balls and empty wallets. She was typical of all women: they took your money and left. Only difference was, this girl did it in twenty minutes rather than in twenty years. But the outcome was the same, in the end they all left.

Except in your world, Spider, isn't that right? In Spider's World, no one leaves. What is it you tell them? Even when your mortal flesh is gone, you will still live inside of me; you will still be part of me. Your soul and my soul will be together for ever.

Spider looks at the small digital picture of her and thinks how, like all the rest, there's something about her that reminds him of his dead mother. The hair colour is almost identical, and the shape and colour of her eyes too. But that's where the similarities end. This girl is a whore and a slut; someone almost unworthy of what he has in mind for her. For this will be no ordinary kill. This will be a unique murder, a killing that will make her more famous than any of his previous victims. Spider feels an ache of passion, a lustful gnawing inside him, as he thinks of how she'll die and what her cool, dead body will be like when he's finished with her. He strips off his clothes and goes to the en-suite bathroom to use the toilet, wash and clean his teeth. He brushes them three times a day, not twice. It's something his mom used to make him do. Cleanliness is next to godliness. That was back in the happy days, the days before she left him.

Left without even saying goodbye.

He'd come home from school and had been told that his mom had gone, that she was dead, but he shouldn't worry or be sad because she was now in a 'Better Place', she was in heaven with the angels.

How could that be? How could Mom have gone somewhere so much better, and not taken him with her?

He was only nine years old when it happened. And while he was already smart enough not to trust everyone about everything, he did trust his mom and dad; as they had said, they were the only people in the world you really could rely on, the only people who would always tell you the truth and would always look after you.

Always. For ever and ever.

But it was all a lie, wasn't it?

For weeks she'd been in hospital and he'd missed her. Missed her every day that he was away from her.

'I can't get to sleep, Daddy. When's she coming home? When will Momma be back?'

They'd taken him to visit her in hospital during all those weeks, and every day she looked sadder, thinner and somehow paler. They said she was fighting what they called cancer and it looked to him like this cancer thing was winning but, oh no, they said, your momma's a fighter, she'll be okay, she'll be fine in the end.

Liars. All of them, goddamn liars.

Even when there were those tubes sticking out all over her, his dad had hugged him and told him that he shouldn't be frightened, that they were only there to help his momma get well again.

Well again! How he'd longed for that day.

Sometimes he'd climb on to the hard hospital bed because she was too weak to even sit up and put her arms around him. He'd lie down next to her and cry on her pillow. She'd lift her hand, now all bony and thin, with plasters and tubes sticking out of bruised veins, and stroke his face. Her voice was thin and weak, not the one that used to shout down the garden for him to come inside right now and get his dinner, and it was hard to hear her, but the words were always the same: 'Don't cry, baby, I'll be better soon. Wipe away those tears, Momma will be home very soon now.'

And then, all of a sudden, she was gone. Gone to heaven. Gone to the Better Place without him.

Where are you, Momma? I'm waiting. Still waiting.

Given time, Spider might have recovered from the traumatic loss of his mother, but sometimes fate can be cruel, and sometimes that cruelty can have lifelong consequences. Within only weeks of his mother's death, his father, Spider's emotional anchor during this critical period of grieving, was knocked down and killed by a police patrol car turning out on a fake 911 call made by local kids who just wanted to see the cruisers zip by with their blues and reds flashing.

Spider's pine bed is high-sided, like the one he had as a child. Only this one is coffin-shaped. He built it himself, using the tools of his dead father. The bottom of the bed contains a deep, space-saving, slide-out drawer. Inside, Spider keeps pictures of his parents, newspaper clippings about his father's death and some other precious mementos – his trophies. Stripped of flesh and muscle, boiled and scrubbed squeaky-clean are the bony joints of victims' fingers lying like a stack of stumpy chopsticks. He had no desire to retain their hands. He cut them off solely because it made it quicker and easier for him to get to the finger he wanted, the wedding finger. And when he did, he took care to slice off his precious trophy without damaging it. At the back of the drawer, wrapped in a handkerchief, is also a collection of cheap and expensive engagement and wedding rings.

Spider sits naked on the bed's padded red mattress and out of habit plays with the gold chain around his neck. On it are his dead mother's wedding and engagement rings. He raises them to his mouth and kisses them. He thinks of her for a moment and then lets go of the chain. From the side of the bed he picks up a plastic canister, twists the top and shakes its contents into the palm of a hand. Slowly, he spreads white talcum powder all over his body, until he's white, entirely white.

White as a corpse.

As white as Momma's face in the Chapel of Rest.

Spider lies down and looks up at his Window to Heaven. On the other side, he's sure, really sure, he can see Momma in the Better Place, her dead white arms stretching out to embrace him.