Eency-Weency Spider by Sapphire200182
A bizarre crime…heightened feelings…and my first ever CSI short story…read and review please! Takes place between the last and third-last episode of CSI Season 6. Warning: M for various (well-earned) reasons…
Disclaimer: I don't own nothing…
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Prologue
Room 633,
Lucky Dragon Hotel.
Las Vegas.
2348 hours/11:48pm.
The frenzied activity threw chaos and confusion onto an otherwise normal occurrence, thought Gil Grissom. Death happened every day. Death was normal. But when death struck unbidden, the yellow tape came out, and people passing by stared with fear at an otherwise natural happening.
It showed in their faces, in their whispers and their subconsciously quickened footsteps.
"Well, it's time for work, Sara," said Gil, hefting the forensic tool-box up from its' place in the patrol car. Nick Stokes had already taken the first elevator up with the deputies.
The ride in the elevator up to the sixth floor was a silent one.
"It's a bad one, Gil," said big Jim Brass, as Grissom and Sara ducked under the yellow tape splayed across the entrance to the room.
They entered a typical hotel bedroom, with ample evidence of the American hotel designer's fetish for redwoods, a table here, two chairs there, plus the double-bed and wardrobe. That was where the normalcy ended.
A man Grissom judged to be around twenty-seven sprawled on the bed, naked, with a trail of clothing leading from the doorway to the rumpled bed.
His eyes travelled over the man's body, noting the powerful legs, the sinewy muscles on the forearms, the advanced abdominal and pectoral muscle development, and came to the conclusion that the vic was quite fit.
So what killed him? Grissom helped a deputy bag the body, and carried him out to be speed-couriered to the coroner.
"Signs of struggle, a female companion who's disappeared. Seems a fairly standard one," said Sara.
"Humphh" was Grissom's non-commital response. His eyes scanned the room. "Who found him?"
"Hotel worker. Door was ajar, and she was delivering towels to the lovers next door. They didn't hear a thing, unsurprisingly. Nick's interviewing them all now."
Sara noticed a small hole in the woodwork around the wardrobe. As she bent down, she called Grissom over.
"Griss, have a look here." She decided to poke a finger through to see whether it contained a poison of some sort…
Gil was watching the hole intently. Grissom saw the series of twinkling flashes as if in slow-motion, and was transported momentarily to a different time, happier times, times spent with a loving family.
He hurled himself towards Sara, knocking her out of the way with the force of his body, and as he did so he was in the farmhouse again, with his mother again…
Grissom lost his balance, toppled, collapsed on top of Sara. Sara, taken aback by the suddenness of the push, fell down and struck her head on the wardrobe.
Gil pulled himself off her, as the black thing came out of the hole, and flashes resolved to a series of eyes. There was a red hourglass mark printed on its' huge, obscene black bulb-like abdomen. It made for Sara, who lay in a tangle on the floor.
As the spider scuttled up her jeans, Grissom aimed and kicked it away, and the ugly thing smashed against the wall. Immediately, it was back on its eight feet and reared up its head…
…only to be crushed by the heel of Grissom's leather shoes.
He turned around rapidly. Sara lay on the floor, moaning with pain.
"Sara?" he called, kneeling by her side, cradling her head in his arms like he would a sleepy infant. "Sara!"
"Stomach…hurts…" she whispered, a spasm of pain making her grimace. "Oh, Gil…"
"Corpsman!" shouted Grissom, as the first deputy rushed in the door.
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Chapter 1: Eency-Weency Spider
Las Vegas Police Headquarters.
Dr. Grissom's Office.
Since the tender age of five, Grissom had dealt with painful situations by immersing himself in work. When his mother had died, he retreated to the playroom and studied.
No-one bothered with him. They were rushing around, making arrangements, comforting bleary-eyed girl cousins, or just sitting down and crying.
Only his father knew he was upstairs studying. Reading his favourite book, "papa's bug book", he hadn't noticed Father checking on him. Dr. Grissom hadn't become head lecturer in UPenn for no reason. The respected entomologist knew what Gil was doing, and he understood.
He was the only one besides Sara and Mother who did, mused Gil. At the mental mention of her name his knuckles tightened on the lab tool and he went back to work.
Cully had said that the man died of spider bites. He glanced at the specimen that lay on the lab table, the crushed one, and then at the spider that hung, framed on the wall besides the certificate of his doctorate in entomology.
Latrodectus mactans. Common to eastern and central United States.
His dissertation had resulted in the Grissom Scale, a scale designed to measure insect danger sites in quantifiable numbers. It had nearly won him a Nobel.
"Uh, Griss?" called Nick from the door, and Grissom mumbled an 'enter'.
"We got a full confession from the hotel staffer who reported the vic," said Nick. "Here's the transcript."
Their eyes met briefly, and Grissom knew that the other man was also clouding his feelings with work.
He put on his reading glasses, and began.
I rang the doorbell, and then he pulled me into the room. He was…naked, and (sob) he pinned me down and start (sic) stripped (sic) me. Then he yell (sic) and suddenly (sob) he fall back (sic).
I Latino (sic), I didn't want to tell the police (that I was at the crime scene). The man die front of me (sic). I just tell that I found him like that.
"Good. Did she run a lie-detector test?" asked Grissom, massaging his temples.
"Yep. Passed with flying colours. That just about wraps it up."
Just then Catherine Willows poked her head in, as Warrick and Greg rushed past the door towards the elevators.
"Sara's in trouble, come quick!"
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Ward 293.
"What's the problem, doc?" asked Grissom. The doctor was rushing the trolley of medical instruments towards the operation room.
"We have to operate on her and remove it, fast!"
"Remove…?"
Grissom was left with a question halfway down his pipe. He swallowed, and turned back to the team of anxious investigators.
"We'll just have to wait," said Catherine, and he nodded. His throat went dry.
"What was the problem?" asked Cathy, as he sat down beside her.
"Sara was bitten by a Black Widow. Latrodectus mactans. The man was bitten by it too. Multiples bites cause death to adults. The same species that…that killed my mother."
The farmhouse kitchen was dark and shadowy. The twinkling in one corner of it was like stars in the night. Or like the warning flashes of an angered animal. The flashes became eyes as the spider scuttled out of the shadows.
It made for his mother, washing dishes by the sink a mere two feet away. 5-year old Gil Grissom cried out a warning to his mother, and Mom, brown hair tied back in a ponytail, young, vibrant and full of life, turned around to see…
The spider struck, hitting his mother's exposed heel sticking out of the house slippers. Once, twice…oh God, three times. Like a machine-gun hammering away. The red hourglass laughed at him like Poe's Mask of the Red Death.
Little Gil Grissom ran as his mother collapsed and the spider chased after him. Then Father's boot heel smashed it to a gooey mess as he barked at his son.
"What happened!"
Even at that tender age, Gil had understood the urgency of the situation. "Spider. Black widow, I think. Is mommy gonna be okay?"
Grissom put his hands in his head and relived the horrifying memories. He'd always hated spiders…no, not hated, but he'd definitely entered entomology to discover new antivenins, ways to prevent spider-bite fatalities, so that no other 5-year old would have to relive the horror Gil Grissom did.
He sat staring unblinkingly at the wall as his thoughts returned to the present. They'd been waiting a while…
Finally, the doctor reappeared, removing his smock. Grissom and the rest of the CSI team surged to their feet.
"Well…" began the doctor.
Time stopped a moment. Gil could hear a pounding in his heart. The rest of the doctor's sentence was slow and punctuated by the thumping in Gil's rib cage.
"She's…"
What? Tell me!
"…not…"
Not?
"…gonna…"
Make it? Oh, Jesu Cristo, please, not Sara…
"…die. She'll survive. We removed the appendix before it ruptured."
A dizzying, bizzare wave of mixed relief and shock struck Gil as he sat down on one of the chairs, gazing dumbly at Catherine as she stared at the doctor quizzically.
"But…but…Grissom…" she was lost for words.
"Appendix. Not a spider bite. Doctor Grissom misinterpreted the signs when he told us what happened. We were going to give her the treatment for black widow bites, when we realized that she was having appendicitis."
"Of course," said Grissom wearily. "Abdominal pain. A symptom of black widow bites. But this…this was appendicitis…"
Greg collapsed to the chair, chuckling and ruffling Nick's hair. Warrick exchanged high-fives with Nick, while Catherine stared at Gil.
Catherine didn't blame him for it. She understood. And so too, she knew, would Sara.
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Five Days Later.
"…you know, go to the forest, re-read Moby Dick. Something like that," he finished, gazing unseeingly into the distance.
"No," said Sara Sidle, peeling the bathrobe off her. "I wouldn't want it that way."
Grissom turned off the lights as she stood over him.
She sighed as he pulled her down, moaned as he kissed her. Her young, lithe body draped over him like a comforting angel.
She gasped as he thrust hard, inside her. She drove herself against him, hot and wet, clenching and releasing, rising and falling…
Finally, with a dying cry that could have come from either or both of them, they subsided.
Grissom brought a hand up, and stroked her hair. Her face lay inches away from his own on his chest. He marvelled at the wonder and love he felt for every inch of her.
She lay on him, breathing heavily, coming back down to earth, face like a young child's, scrubbed and sleepy.
"I'd want it to be together, with the man I love most."
As the moonlight shone in the window of Grissom's modest apartment, it illuminated the two figures clasped to each other on the bed. Slowly, the one beneath kissed the other, and draped a quilt around them.
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