Will you Walk into my Parlour?

Tim fumbled in the dark, fingers curling over his phone. It screamed at him, and Tim wanted nothing more than to scream back. The caller id showed up as Jon. Of course it was Jon. Who else would call at this ungodly hour? Tim groaned and turned his phone off, effectively silencing the inconvenience. Whatever it was could wait until the morning.

Wait.

Tim’s eyes shot open. Jon was calling.

He fumbled quickly in the dark and called him back.

“Tim,” Jon said in lieu of a greeting. “Could you let me into your building? It’s a bit cold out here.”

Tim flicked on the light. It was too bloody early for this.

“What the hell Jon. I’m not about to crawl out of bed in the middle of the night just because- wait, how do you know where I live?”

“I just Knew, I-” Jon sighed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. It’s not exactly like I can control it.”

“Could you try?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Tim shrugged off his blankets and instantly regretted it. The air was cold and he shivered with what felt like static in his teeth. He called it like it was. “Bullshit.”

“If I could control it I’d be tempted to use it. No, I would use it. I think it speeds up the process of Becoming… whatever it is I’m becoming.”

“A monster?”

Tim couldn’t hear it through the phone, but he knew Jon had flinched. It wasn’t as satisfying as he’d thought.

“Right. That. I’ve seen it happen before with other avatars, with…” There was a long pause after that and the sound of shuffling footsteps. Pacing, Tim realized. Jon was pacing. “So can I crash on your couch?”

“Right,” Tim yawned. “Sure. Be down in a sec.”

He hung up the phone, thoughts still groggy as he shuffled through his flat. Tim shrugged on an old tee shirt over his boxers, grabbed his keys, and stepped out into the hall. He didn’t bother with shoes; his building was carpeted. He was halfway to the elevator when the last dredges of drowsiness were chased away by the bright fluorescents.

Tim’s steps faltered.

Jon was alive .

More than that, Jon was at his doorstep asking to be let in. Which meant he was lucid enough to make his own decisions. Which meant he hadn’t gone to Martin after he talked with Jude Perry. Which meant there was still time .

Tim hadn’t been able to save Danny, or Sasha, or the real Martin, but he could still save Jon.

Tim moved quicker after that. He was at the front door of his building in record time, holding the door open for Jon and shoving him inside when he didn’t move fast enough.

“Thank you,” Jon smiled. It seemed wrong, but not in a supernatural way. Rather, it seemed Jon didn’t want to draw attention to his distress. It wasn’t any good as Jon was an awful liar, but Tim smiled back anyway.

They made it into Tim’s flat and he walked Jon into the kitchen.

“Tea?” Tim asked to fill the silence. Inwardly, he cursed. That was such a Martin thing to do. “I have coffee too. Or hot chocolate. Or-”

Tim froze. There was something wrong with Jon and it wasn’t the faux smile which turned more into a grimace every second. It was his skin which was wrong, covered head to toe in a gauze which wasn’t gauze at all. Web traveled across Jon's neck, disappearing down his sweater. It was especially dense against his worm scars, silver threads connecting each one like constellations over his dark complexion.

“The Spider sent you, I take it.”

Jon blinked up at him, tugging at the collar of his sweater. It was an olive green, hand knitted thing which left Jon’s collar bones exposed beneath its baggy weight. There was no question who the sweater belonged to.

“Tim,” Jon sighed, pinching his nose the way he used to when Martin used anything less than Times New Roman 12pt. font. “I know you don’t like Martin but-”

Tim set a mug down on the counter more forcefully than was necessary. He didn’t miss the way Jon’s shoulders tensed at the noise. “Don’t call it that.”

“Tim, please. We’ve been over this.”

“That thing isn’t Martin any more than that monster which killed Sasha was her. You remember Sasha, right? Neither do I. Because it ate her.”

Maybe that was cruel. Tim decided he didn’t care.

“It’s a monster, Jon. It’s not Martin.”

“Well then what…” Jon swallowed the question down his web covered throat, the intricate patterns shifting with him. 

It reminded Tim of the table, the one which trapped that thing which stole Sasha’s skin. Tim knew the question Jon had been meaning to ask just as surely as he knew he couldn’t answer it. What am I then?

“It doesn’t work like that, Tim,” Jon settled on instead.

Tim laughed. It was bitter and scratched at his throat crawling out. It tasted like battery acid. “Martin pines after you for years. You never show any interest, in fact you’re awful to him. Then Martin turns into a spider monster and now you two are dating? I don’t buy it.”

Jon sighed. He’d been doing a lot of that recently.

“He’s an avatar of the web, Jon. The entity of control, manipulation. Have you ever stopped to think, really think, about what that means for you?”

“Of course I have.”

The words came out biting but Tim could practically taste his fear. For a moment he wondered whether the Beholding’s gaze had burrowed deeper into Tim than he realized before deciding that no, Jon was simply an awful liar. For as still as he kept his voice the rest of him was trembling. His shoulders curled inward, gaze pinned to the floor. He was pulling at his collar again, though not at the jumper. His nails dug beneath the crisscrossing thread but they would not give. Instead the skin at the base of Jon’s fingers was rubbed raw and red.

“Why do you think I’m here, Tim?” There was no static in his voice, just quiet resolution.

“The Spider sent you.”

“ Martin doesn’t know I’m here.”

Tim wanted to believe him. More than anything, he wanted to believe that Jon had come here of his own volition, not because that Spider which used to be Martin was pulling his threads. But that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?

“You’re covered in webs . That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“Yeah well, I don’t like it either.” Jon paused. “Are you still offering tea? You’ve been standing next to that empty mug for a while now.”

As far as diversion tactics went, Jon was as obvious as they came. This conversation was going nowhere though, and he looked like he could use it. “Sure you don’t want something stronger?”

Jon shook his head so Tim busied himself with making tea. All he had were instant tea bags, which Tim knew the Spider would be appalled by. That was why he’d bought them, to imagine those beetle eyes blown wide in horror. That, and they were on sale. He handed the cup to Jon whose fingers curled around the warmth. He didn’t drink it.

“Why are you here then?” Tim recycled Jon’s earlier question.

“Didn’t know where else to go.” Jon still made no move to drink and it became clear to Tim that Jon could care less about the tea. He just wanted heat to clutch at the palms of his hands. “The institute would be the first place Martin looked, and I couldn’t very well stay at our flat.”

“Wait, you two are sharing a-”

“Tim.”

Tim backed off.

“I know you think Martin made me join this relationship, but he didn’t. You need to accept that.”

He was still defending him, even now. Just how far beneath the skin had the Spider spun his webs? “If you really believe that, you wouldn’t be here.”

Jon sighed. Tim was getting tired of the sound.

“Do you really believe Martin’s powers had nothing to do with it? That you went from being hating Martin to being in love with him and his new little mind control powers are completely irrelevant?

There was a tape recorder on the counter which hadn’t been there before. It clicked on with a whir. Jon stared at it dumbly before turning to Tim, eyes wide.

“Do you honestly believe he’s not manipulating you? Do you-”

The air was filled with static and battery acid. It wasn’t coming from Jon.

“Do you love him or do you just think you do?”

How? Jon wanted to ask, but when he opened his mouth a statement spooled from his lips.

Martin died in his flat. He told me as much. There is something about dying which fosters an Avatar’s becoming. Rebirth, that’s what Martin called it. The worms killed him and the spiders saved him and then he belonged to The Web. I can’t tell you more than that, I wasn’t there.

He’s still Martin though. And if he isn’t, then he’s the Martin I fell in love with, and quite frankly I don’t care how much of this Martin is the old Martin. I don’t think the old Martin would have understood, not really. This Martin is- terrifying. I love him.

When Martin first told me what he was, it was all too familiar. My horror was woven of silk and cobweb and Martin had the audacity to be more scared than I was. I thought he was going to eat me to be honest. I believe I asked if he was Mr. Spider. He told me no, Jon and who is Mr. Spider? But his confusion did little to ease my fears. I hadn’t always been scared of spiders. There was a time in my youth, an admittedly short time, where I bore no ill will towards the creatures. Then I had an encounter with a Lietner, and well. Suffice it to say I bear little sympathy towards the Mother of Puppets and her children.

I ran. To Martin’s credit, he did not follow.

The next morning however, I found a cup of tea next to a statement I’d been working on. I didn’t drink it. Accepting tea from monsters was the sort of unnecessary risk which makes up the statements in my Archives. I dumped it down the drain. I searched my office after that, certain I would find a cluster of cobwebs tucked away, or worse: their inhabitants. I found nothing. Somehow that was more terrifying than the feeling of web pulling apart beneath my fingers. 

When I went in the next morning there was another cup of tea on my desk, still warm. Again I searched my office, and again there was nothing to be found. This carried on for almost two weeks until my curiosity overcame my paranoia. As I raised the cup to my lips I told myself this was the best thing to do. Monsters like Martin liked to toy with their victims and I refused to be his play thing. If I was to join the ranks of the statement givers, it would be on my own terms. In actuality, I know choice had nothing to do with it. I was consumed by the need to Know , to see and experience and catalogue my own terror.

Nothing happened.

The tea tasted like lemon and cinnamon. It was bitter and scalded my tongue, but utterly mundane.

The next morning there was a paper bag on the desk, a napkin stapled to it. I pulled it towards me to see Martin’s spidery handwriting. Sorry, it read, I didn’t know which kind you liked. Inside were a half dozen different pastries. My lips curled upwards on their own. It was so Martin, overeager, fussy, and all too apologetic.  I was struck with the strangest urge to write back to him. Instead I picked up a chocolate muffin and took a sip of the tea. It was sweeter this time.

It’s curious how easily humans adapt to their situations. The fear never truly left, but it eased some with the certainty Martin wasn’t actively trying to kill me. I drank Martin’s tea, I ate his pastries, and I read statements. I stopped searching the corners for cobwebs. There were larger things to worry about, namely Gertrude’s killer. A cleaning crew had found her body in the tunnels three weeks after Prentiss’s attack. She’d been shot. I had my suspicions: Tim, Sasha, Elias. It couldn’t have been Martin. Her death was too mundane for that

I tried going into the tunnels. I came in early, stole a key from Elias’s office, and snuck down into the archives. The trapdoor was sealed shut, three inches of cobwebs holding it, strong as steel. There was a note attached, scrawled onto a napkin. “It’s not safe Jon.”

So I tried tailing my suspects instead. I followed Sasha after work, tracked her boyfriend's car to a wax museum of all places. I tried to follow her inside, but the cab I was in simply kept driving despite my instructions. I tugged at the door handle frantically but a spider scuttled over my fingers so I resigned myself to my seat.

I might have struggled more but I recognized these roads. This was the route to my flat. Sure enough, the cab slowed outside my building and the cabbie turned to look at me. Her eyes were glazed, cobweb patterning where his irises should be.

“Really, Jon,” the cabbie gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white, but it wasn’t the cabbie speaking to me with fond exasperation in his voice. “Stalking your coworkers? Are you mad?”

I tugged at the handle. There weren’t any spiders this time.

I wanted to stay. I wanted to ask Martin why he kept intervening. I wanted to tell him I liked his tea. I’d noticed how it changed every day, just slightly, and I knew Martin was looking for the perfect blend. I wanted to say he was almost there. I wanted to pry his statement from the cabbie’s throat and file it neatly away.

I opened the door and walked into my building. The cabbie’s eyes followed after.

 I’ll admit Martin had the right idea of it, stopping me from going too far. I.. tend towards obsession. I doubt that would have gone over well. So, I resigned myself to more passive research. I stalked social media, found names, addresses. Reverse image searching became my best friend. It didn’t help any, but at least I felt I was doing something.

Basira fed me statements. She suspected me, that much was obvious. As for Sasha and you, Tim, I don’t actually know what you did all day. I locked myself in my office, poured over statements, and drank Martin’s tea.

I didn’t notice how isolated I’d become until I started writing back to Martin. They were little notes, a ‘thank you for the tea’ every now and then, but soon notes turned into letters. He told me about his mother, and I told him about my grandmother. He went on about knits and purls and patterns I didn’t understand. I talked far too much about emulsifiers. I even told him about The Mechanisms. His laughter in the next letter was almost audible coming off the page.

Reading that note, with his gentle laughter echoing unnatural in my head, I came to a horrible conclusion. I liked him. I liked his tea and his letters and the sweater I found draped over my chair one morning. It was warm. I’m not great at relationships, which is why instead of asking him to coffee- I asked him to come back to work. Dreadful, I know. Martin didn’t seem to mind though, if the way he beamed at me the next morning was any indication. He handed me my tea in person this time and my fingers brushed over his. It was nice.

You, Tim, did not react the way I hoped you might. I suppose that was understandable. Martin had been declared missing since Prentiss, only to waltz back into the archives unscathed with eyes that weren’t quite right. You were angry Tim, and Martin was the perfect outlet. He was a monster, and you could hate him without guilt. I hadn’t realized how hard Prentiss’s attack hit you. We got along well enough,which likely wouldn’t have happened if Martin hadn’t curbed my paranoid behavior, but I wasn’t there for you the way you wanted me to be. I thought you had Sasha, but that wasn’t Sasha, was it? 

I remember when Martin killed that thing which took Sasha. The way he pulled at a thousand invisible threads, the absolute confidence in his demeanor, the control, it was intoxicating. I kissed him then. His breath caught like cotton in the back of my throat. I worried, of course I worried, that this wasn’t my choice at all. Maybe Martin was pulling on my strings, or perhaps he’d planted a thought or two in my head and simply waited. But the look of shock on his face was so lovely it couldn’t possibly have been faked.

It was wonderful. It was intense. It was-

The tape recorder clicked off. Jon was shaking.

“You,” Jon swallowed the static in his voice. “You just compelled me.”

“No.” Tim wasn’t having this conversation. Not now, not ever. “I’ll grab you some blankets. You can take the couch.”

“What?”

“ Goodnight , Jon.”