The Sand Spider
"We run out the door, just to walk back in again…"
"She struts up to me
She whispers my name as if I know her
But I never knew her
She asks me the time
Quarter to one, we go for a drive
I just don't know her"
Typical-Tickle Me Pink
He walks out the elevator, cigarette placed gingerly between his two chapped lips; smoke puffing as he flips through the thin papers of a cheap magazine. His mouth is turned backwards into a smarting grimace, his eyes squinting almost woefully in the yellow pasty glow of the streetlight. This morning he never even bothered to comb his hair.
It stands up, rebelliously intent on pointing in every which way. It's a dark greasy brunette/grey shade, neglected from the typical abuse.
He hasn't taken a shower in the past two days.
Just like the other times, he has forgotten to pay the bill, and remembers to pay the barkeeper for another drink. He is depleted, and, 'so…' he thinks to himself in his raspy voice, tickled from the tangy cheap cigarette smoke, 'this is what it's like to regret even existing…'
The bus pulls up, the door creaking open as few late night passengers, wavering and rank from the nearby bar limbo clumsily from the steps, barely avoiding crashing down onto the pavement in a flurry of muffled grumbles. His nose wrinkles in disgust, and even the whiff of smoke cannot get rid of the pungent smell of human puke, reeking of whiskey and tequila. The bus door closes as another passenger steps off gingerly onto the damp pavement, her heels clicking meticulously against the gritty concrete. Her hair is raven, tied back into a high greasy ponytail with a dark blue hair-band. Her lips are lacquered with a thick layer of cherry red lipstick, almost glowing in the dank air, her almost translucent skin rippling against the crusty yellow background. He thinks, even though the obscure cloud of smoke, so he cannot see too clearly, that she is a beautiful girl, and worth not getting on the bus for.
He continues drinking in the scent of his cigarette, inhaling carefully while trying too hard not to stare at her for long periods of time. She is leaning against a light pole, inspecting one hand, while clicking some sort of tune with the other hand. The tip of her tongue pokes out from between her lips, and then slides delicately over the bright red, sinking deftly back inside her mouth as she looks at him, the interest a muggy fog growing in her eyes.
He stands up, the cigarette dropping forgotten to the concrete, the small stub still glowing a dangerous dusty red, unnoticed by the two of them. A snake of smoke lifts its way up until it reaches the muggy air, slowly, it goes in on itself, and cripples until it is only a small wisp being blown away.
Meanwhile, as she leans against the pole, her right leg sticking out just so that he can see the lean contours of her calf, and part of her thigh, all covered in black silk, his left hand presses his last hundred dollar bill discreetly into her palm.
A small tight smile from her perfect lips, and she has him in the palm of her hand. She speaks; he can smell the thick scent of ladies musk, and the peppered breathiness of her voice, low and husky in the damp evening air.
Her eyes squint as if to say 'I'm all yours darling'
And he responds with the literal eagerness of a rebellious young man.
"Right this way…"
He leads her swiftly into the elevator and at the end, struggles in a vain rush to unlock his door, hands shaking with a need he can't remember ever having, even though he has with many others before her kind. As she looks at him over her shoulder, something churning in the way she breathes so lightly, he thinks to himself recklessly 'What is one day spent in sin when you have millions?'
Cotton sheets rustle, and he can feel her skin beneath his rough finger tips, his breath reeking like smoke and his hair oily, falling over her in a shaggy drape, as he dares her to perform her worst on him. She does all she can, breathing his name like a friend, like a lover, gasping in muttering sighs at just the right times, caressing the nape of his neck…
She dares him to make her his.
And he does his worst.
He wakes up to a jar with cigarettes floating in the gray water, reeking of smoke…reeking of wet paper and tobacco. Only his clothes remain tangled in messy heaps on his worn carpet, only his sheets remain chaining him to the truth.
And the beautiful girl with the cherry red lips, whom in darkness was an angel?
At the end of the night, she was no longer his.
She belonged to the sin of the world, bathing in an otherworldly glow that only a women of the night would have.
In the morning she was no angel, she was a girl struggling with sin.
And that was not the kind of women he had requested.
He has made a mistake, and shuffling to the bathroom, he looks at the reflection in the dingy mirror, and hates it with every second of this moment.
After one day, he has to live with the memory during the other million.
Three months later and he has all but forgotten Miss. Lips.
She is but a day in a million.
A day he wasted everything, for something he would regret and give back for anything.
He has moved to the country, to a small secluded town he used to visit when he was a sickly child.
As he walks into a wine-shop, he hears scattered whispers of a conversation not meant for him.
She's come back….
Whore…
Typical behavior for a spoiled daughter such as her…
How many men did she deceive?
Did they break her heart?
…or did she break theirs?
This is nothing compared to the smoggy sin of the city, and as he saunters lazily into the small humid wine shop, he clears away the snippets, and hears a husky voice speaking in lazy tones to another.
"After all this time… And, now I'm back…"
There is a cloud of dusty smoke, the yellowing shade of a fading plaster wall, a lady with a short black bob, and a girl with cherry red lips staring straight through the smoke towards him.
And just like before, she lifts her lips into a demure smile, and waves subtly, licking her lips slowly as the older women looks on questionably at him.
She mutters in that faint breathy voice as he can smell a faint wave of Musk, the inside of his stomach doing a scared little dance as he sweats nervously. "Have we met somewhere sir?"
Time stops.
He holds his breath…
And walks out the door.
"We go to her house
Flip on the telly, and lie on the couch
But I don't feel her, anymore
She asks me to bed
This is the end of my disenchantment
Now that I'm walking out the door"
A/N
I've been coming up with a good amount of short stories.
If you didn't get it, Jack is the man and Aja is the girl with the cherry red lipstick—aka the prostitute.
I like doing weird little twists like this, and of course this story was inspired by Tickle Me Pink's "Typical" Which noticeably I've used at the beginning and end of this story.
The reason it's called "The Sand Spider" is for many reasons.
If you read about "Sand Spiders", they live in the dessert and are one of the most poisonous spiders on this earth as we know them. They are known for their extended long crablike legs, which have a certain elegance to them. They are also widely known for hiding in the loose sand and ambushing their prey, bringing them down to their little sand dens to feed upon them.
The point I am trying to get across in this story, is that once the man was drawn into her trap, he managed to escape for a short while before stumbling into her trap again.
Thus, Aja is the Sand Spider, and he is her prey.
Any other questions,
Tell what you thought,
TMoh