“Tess! Have a drink with us. We went to this lovely little village and bought tons of food. So cheap too! And we found this stuff. What’s it called again?”
“Shay,” Flea said.
“Yep, Shay will make your day. Have one!” Jez said, staggering to her feet and looking through the cupboards.
“No, I can’t .”
“ ’Course ya can! Not like you have to get up and take a meeting with the Pussy people of Pospington, do ya? What do you think it’d be like, going down on a girl Pussy?” Jez said, hand on her chin, eyes swimming in their sockets as she considered it.
“Hairy,” Flea replied.
“Hairy?” Jez’s face went blank for a moment, then she collapsed onto the couch, laughing hysterically, repeating what Flea had said when the giggles died down, then bursting out laughing again.
“So how was your meal?” Flea asked, blinking a little as he looked at me.
What could I say? I tossed up with telling them about the survival of the fittest game we were about to engage in, but right now Jez was ecstatically happy and Flea seemed relaxed. Let them have this last night, I thought. We can all go into survival mode tomorrow.
“It was fine. Did you get something to eat or has it been Shay all the way?”
“Yeah, turns out they do bread and cheese just like anyone else. We had to settle for cheese sandwiches. Trying to do toasties in there sent a huge cloud of smoke everywhere.”
“Yeah, we were coughing and spluttering. I only do that by choice when I have a cock in my mouth,” Jez said, taking a big swig.
Are you OK? I sent to Miazydar.
Full stomach, a nice little fly and the accommodations are acceptable, he replied sleepily. I’m fine.
“Yeah, well, I’m going to have a shower and then head to bed.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I remember just where I was sleeping and with whom. I smiled and waved to Jez and then turned as quickly as I could to head down the hall. I brushed my teeth and then went over to the shower, ready to wash my cares away, at least until tomorrow. God, I hoped they had decent hot water out here. The shower was kind of like an open-topped cabinet with a swinging door and wooden surround. I opened the door and then let out the loudest, most blood curdling scream possible.
There, like some grotesque excuse for a Halloween gag, was a mother fucking massive spider sitting on the shower rise. “Fuck!” I snapped. I had had bloody enough. Not only did I get sentenced to three months hard study at Alcatraz University, I had to deal with stupidly sized spiders in my accommodation. I came from a country full of huge animals that tried to kill you on a regular basis and even I was scared of the bloody thing. It flexed its fangs at me as if saying, “C’mon bitch, let’s dance.” I narrowed my eyes, cursing myself for not bringing an industrial-sized bottle of insect repellent. Instead, I turned and grabbed one of the towels, holding it by the corner and then twirling the fabric until it became a hard twist.
My idea was to use the towel as some kind of whip to, I dunno, Crocodile Dundee that shit, smacking the spider into the next week and leaving me to shower in peace. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. The spider had the advantage on me, having all eight eyes trained on what I was doing. Instead of flicking the filthy arachnid to death, it watched the arc of the cloth closely, choosing the exact moment to jump on the end, swinging up into the air with the towel, then speeding back to me on the downstroke. “Fuck!” I dropped it like a hot potato, slamming the bathroom door open and pelting down the hallway like the devil himself was after me. I burst into the lounge room, getting little other than a sodden side look from Drunky and Drunkier. “Thanks for rushing to my rescue!” I said, gasping.
I bloody hated spiders. Even if I were halfway across the room from them, I always felt that skin-crawling sensation like they were scrabbling across my back instead of lurking on the wall, resembling a truly appalling piece of kinetic wall art. Just like I felt now. I squashed down the need to shiver all over. I had escaped the Hairy McLairy, Lord of All Spiders, I needed to get Miazydar in to smoke that bitch, like yesterday.
“Whadja need help for?” Jez said, looking at me through tiny slits from where she lay on the couch.
“There was a giant spider, like this big,” I said, showing them with both hands, “like y’know the Balrog when they went into Moria—.”
“Blah, blah, geeky elves and dwarves and shit, blah.” Jez wove her hands in the air as she closed her eyes.
“And so I got a towel and tried to whip it off the shower rise, which didn’t work quite as well as I hoped and now I’m feeling really, really itchy. You know that yucky, crawly sensation...”
Flea’s eyes jerked up, then went wide. “Uh huh,” was all he said.
“Like you know there’s no way you could have anything crawling on you but—.”
“Ah, Tess,” he said.
“But you just feel like a million creepy-crawly horrors are all over you, like Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
“Tess!”
“What? I’m telling you, I need help here and you keep interrupting! I’ve had a shitty night, found out my prison sentence is less Hogwarts and more Lord of the Flies.”
“Tess, shut the fuck up about popular culture for one minute and tell me, how long would it take Miazydar to get in here?”
“Less than a minute, but—.”