‘Tis the Prettiest Little Parlour
“Statement ends.”
Tim was frozen. He’d felt fear before while recording statements, but never like this. Written statements were stale by comparison.
Someone was talking. Martin. Martin was talking. But Martin was dead, so that didn’t make any sense . Something was talking, and it looked like Martin.
The words slid off of him like water. He could still taste it, Martin’s fear on his tongue, that single instant of terror and confusion right before he’d blinked out of existence. He could feel the worms. He could feel the worms.
Something slipped from Tim’s hands and shattered on the archive floor. His shoes were wet and sticky now.
Think. Tim needed to think. He couldn’t think. There was pressure in his ear drums and in his chest and all around him and it hurt . His eyes hurt. They hurt from Watching, but his stomach was heavy and warm and full in a way that scared him. Tim wasn’t sure why that scared him. Maybe if he could just stop the static he would know. Or Know. Was there a difference?
Tim latched on to the last thing his mind had screamed before that awful static rose up, up into his lungs.
Leave. He needed to leave. Now.
Tim ran, and nothing stopped him. Had something been stopping him before?
He didn’t know where he was going but he Knew. His legs carried him to the tube, and then to his building, and then into an elevator and outside a door. Fingers shaking, he unlocked it. He pulled the door shut beside him and collapsed onto the floor.
…
“Tim?”
If Tim had looked up he would have seen Jon hovering above him, uncertainty dancing across Jon’s features. His hair was mussed, sticking up in odd places. He tugged at the fabric of his wrinkled trousers, more for something to do than anything else.
“Are you alright?” Jon asked, halfway between a yawn and concern.
Tim didn’t hear him. All he heard was the wriggling of worms and a single skittering spider. The fear he had tasted still sat on his tongue. It lingered. How did Jon do this? He’d been there. He’d seen and heard and felt every inch of Martin’s fear before he died, and then he’d felt the Spider’s fear. They tasted the same. But that was wrong . Martin and the Spider weren’t the same. They couldn’t be. That didn’t make sense .
But gods. The worms. It was like reliving Prentiss.
He patted down his arms, his legs, the back of his neck. Logically, he knew the worms couldn’t be there, but Tim’s logic wasn’t working at the moment. All he knew is that he had felt the worms burrowing into Martin’s skin as though they were burrowing into his own.
Tim pulled at his skin. He had to check. He had to make sure there weren’t any inside him already. Did he own a corkscrew? No he didn’t. A kitchen knife might work, but he couldn’t force his legs to stand. His fingernails would have to do. They were long enough.
Tim scratched and kept scratching, angry red lines down his arms and face until something soft landed on his shoulders.
Someone was speaking to him, but he didn’t register the words. The soft thing was nice, though, and so was the pressure on his shoulder. It was a nice sort of pressure, but it was gone too quickly. The soft thing stayed and Tim buried his face into it.
The person speaking to him wasn’t Prentiss and it wasn’t the Spider, Tim registered somewhere in the back of his brain, the part that wasn’t consumed with panic. It was a nice voice.
“...don’t like being touched when I’m… yeah. I don’t know if you do, but. Blankets usually help.”
Tim pulled the blanket away from his face.
“I also don’t like noises when I’m panicking. The kind where the sound is everywhere, and no matter where you go you can’t get rid of it so you lock yourself in a room for hours and hours, but someone didn’t fix the vent so the sound is still there and- wait. You might be the same. I’ll stop talking now.”
Jon. The voice was Jon.
Tim took a heavy breath. He was panicking. Right. Having a panic attack, or an anxiety attack, Tim didn’t exactly know the difference between the two. Whatever it was that made your chest hurt and your legs itch .
A weight settled next to him, not touching but still close.
Tim closed his eyes. He needed to breathe. Wasn’t that what they told people, to take deep breaths?
In. 1, 2, 3. Out. 1, 2, 3. In. 1, 2, 3. Out…
That was nice actually. Tim kept doing it.
Eventually the panic settled. There weren’t any worms, his name was Timothy Stoker, the year was 2017, Jon was sitting next to him on the floor of Tim’s flat, and most importantly there weren’t any worms.
Tim let his head fall onto Jon’s shoulder. “Thanks.”
Jon was stiffened at the gesture, but he didn’t push Tim away. “Are you alright now?”
“Not really.”
“Okay.”
He should move, he really should. His neck was already cramping up and no doubt Jon’s shoulder was too. This was nice though. Good. Tim deserved something good.
He’d get up soon, just… not yet.
Martin brushed the shattered pieces of ceramic into the dustpan. It was a shame. He’d liked that cup.
The Mother purred happily, much to his distaste. He didn’t like doing things like that. It was necessary though. Eventually, Tim would see that. Probably. Hopefully.
You could make him see.
I could.
He wouldn’t. The Mother knew that but she liked his doubt. Doubt spun the most marvelous threads to sit upon her loom.
He tossed the rubbish in the bin atop the towels he’d used to mop up the spilled tea.
The Mother wouldn’t speak to him without reason. What do you want?
There was a tug on the threads which binded him, the spider silk which wrapped his ankles, wrist, and throat. It wasn’t a tangible thing, not like the webs Martin had spun around Jon's burned hand before moving onto the Corruption’s many marks. That didn’t make it any less real.
Martin grabbed his coat. His legs moved, not of his own accord but he’d long since stopped caring about such technicalities. They carried him down the institute steps, across London, and into the Covent Garden Theater. The significance was not lost on Martin.
“Anabelle,” he greeted the woman on the stage. “Why am I here?”
Anabelle ran one of her many hands through her spiderwebbed cornrows. A spider crawled out of her open lips as she spoke. “Right to the point, are we Martin?”
“I don’t see the point in niceties.”
“Well that’s a lie if I ever heard one.” the spider scuttled over one of her palms. “Won’t you join me?”
“No.” His legs moved anyway. He sat atop the stage, across from her. Anabelle’s spider scurried over to him and he pet its soft head. “Get on with it then.”
Anabelle sighed. “I really don’t know why you hate me so. You like the spiders well enough.”
Martin simply glared. They’d had this conversation many times over. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“Neither did I.”
Anabelle tilted her head to the side, silver braids falling over her shoulder. She plucked a strand from one of the braids and Martin’s glamour came undone. He glared at her with all of his eyes, to which she simply laughed. It sounded like scurrying legs.
“Why did you bring me here Anabelle?”
Martin sighed at the now useless glamour, pulling it away from his shoulders. He should have secured it better. Now he would have to spin a new one, and that would take all night. It was a shame. He’d been hoping to stop by the new cafe that had just opened up.
“I want to know your plan.”
“ My plan?” Martin stared at the spider woman. “Aren’t you the one with the grand master plan?”
At this, Anabelle grinned. Her eyes shone white with excitement. “If that’s what you’d like to think, I certainly won’t stop you. Oh, but yours is so much more interesting .”
Martin didn’t have a plan. He didn’t. He wasn’t like Anabelle.
He could feel the Mother laughing through the tremors of the web at his fingertips.
I don’t.
Anabelle was laughing too now, and so were the spiders. He hated that. He hated the sound of his own laughter as Anabell plucked it from his lungs.
“I’m just-“ his chest hurt but he couldn’t stop laughing. “I don’t have a plan. I’m just trying to keep them alive.”
The sound of Anabelle’ slaughter would not break even for her voice. “That’s what makes it interesting .”
“Stop that,” Martin choked through a laugh, but Anabelle did not stop. Martin wasn’t entirely certain she could. “I said stop .”
“Stop me,” Anabelle laughed.
Stop me.
Martin pulled at the threads of his sweater and kept pulling. With the unraveled thread he wove and then he knit and then he sliced through the ends with his incisors. Anabelle’s laughter fell into his hands and he tucked it into the pouch he’d made. Only when he pulled the drawstring closed did his own laughter die.
“I don’t have a plan,” he told her.
He shoved the bag at her chest and her fingers closed around it. She beamed at him.
“You’re getting better at that,” pride swelled in her voice. “If you would just let me teach you-“
“Thanks but no thanks.”
“Then let me help you.”
“No.”
“ Please?”
Martin sighed. No matter how many times they had this conversation it never got any easier. He did want her version of help. The last time he let a spider ‘help’ him he wound up becoming one.
“I’m going to help you,” Anabelle decided.
That was the last thing Martin wanted but he couldn’t very well stop her. That would mess up the plan he didn’t have.
He did not grace her words with a response, instead gathering up the ruined threads of his glamour so the two could spin their webs together in silence.
Eventually Tim lifted his head off Jon’s shoulder and lifted himself to his feet. Jon blinked on the floor, somewhat dazed. Right. He should probably stand too.
Things were odd to say the least. He’d woken up to a door slamming and Tim mid panic attack. Jon hoped he’d handled that right. He probably talked too much.
They should talk about what happened last night, right. Or maybe not. If he asked Tim about his budding powers, Tim might ask about what happened with Martin and there was no way that would go over well. Tim would draw all the wrong conclusions.
As Tim ran a shaky hand through his hair Jon noticed the scratches on his arms. They weren’t deep, but they broke the skin and that wasn’t a good sign.
“Do you have a first aid kit?”
Tim squinted at him in confusion. Jon gestured at his arms.
“Oh.” Tim nodded. “Didn’t even notice that.”
He disappeared down the hall, returning with an armful of bandages, cotton balls, and peroxide which he dumped unceremoniously on the kitchen table. He pulled out a chair, reached for the peroxide, then stopped.
“Is that a… Beholding thing?”
Jon blinked. He hadn’t expected Tim to bring that up on his own. “Is what a Beholding thing?”
“The…” Tim gestured vaguely at the ground by the door. “That.”
“You mean your panic attack?”
Tim nodded.
“Tim, I have those all the time. So do a lot of people. They’re normal. Or, maybe not normal, but not supernatural.”
“Oh.”
“Although,” Jon sat across from Tim at the small secondhand table. He studied the scratches on Tim’s arms. Tim hadn’t done that for months. “Statements can trigger them. That only happened to me once, after Darren Hallow’s statement. The one about Annabelle Cane.”
Tim grimaced. He’d done the follow up for that statement. “That was a bad one.”
Jon continued. “It wasn’t bad because of the Beholding though. It was bad because I- I… Anabelle reminded me of…”
“Martin?”
“Someone else.”
Tim shifted in his chair. He looked like he wanted to ask, but he didn't. Jon was grateful for that. Even if he could handle talking about the Lietner which led him to Mr. Spider’s doorstep, he knew any spider conversation would eventually lead back to Martin. That was the last thing Jon wanted. He wanted to sort through how he felt about Martin without Tim’s particular brand of input.
Tim had a tendency to catastrophize when it came to Martin. From Tim’s end it probably made perfect sense, but Jon was tired of it. His and Martin’s relationship was, well not exactly normal by any degree, not what Tim thought it was. Martin had never hurt Jon, not once. Even yesterday, when Jon had stormed out of the flat covered in cobwebs which still clung to his skin, Martin hadn’t harmed him. Martin had simply lost control of his powers, that was all. It happened to the best of people.
Of course, Jon could hardly expect Tim to understand that.
Tim pushed the peroxide towards Jon. “Could you…?”
Jon’s fingers curled tentatively over a cotton ball. He tried not to equate the feeling to cobweb. It took a minute for Jon to twist off the cap to the peroxide. He’d assumed it was the sort you had to push before turning, but it was the regular twist kind.
“Nail polish helps,” he found himself saying as he quickly flipped over the peroxide bottle with the cotton ball on top to soak it. “It dulls your nails a bit, so it hurts less.”
Georgie had recommended it, back in Uni. It was for picking, not scratching, but Jon hoped it might help. He still wasn’t sure whether that had actually worked or if the texture of the nail polish had simply unsettled him enough to keep his hands away from his skin. He didn’t pick as much as he used to though, so Georgie seemed to have the right idea of it. She always did.
He gently rolled the peroxide soaked cotton ball over Tim’s arm. Tim winced.
Was this some sort of relapse for Tim? He’s seen him scratching a few times, after Prentiss’s attack. That was what caused the ECDC to hold him longer after all. Should he ask? Jon hated questions after his health because they felt too much like pity. Martin appreciated them though. He said they made him feel less alone. Jon wondered which sort Tim was.
Neither, apparently. He opened up without prompting.
“You seem to know a lot about this sort of thing.”
Jon nodded absently. Where was Tim going with this?
“How do you stop it?”
Jon winced. How many times had he asked himself that question? At a certain point he’d simply accepted the panic and the picking and the numb sort of terror which lived in the back of his head, had lived there since he was eight years old. They were facts of life now, and had been for years.
There was therapy of course. That was the easy answer, arguably the right answer. It wasn’t as though Jon was so set in his ways as to deny the merits of therapy. He’d been to therapists before. Many of them, in fact. Somewhere between the woman who’d tried to tell him he was a “brainwashed victim of the patriarchy”, and the man who’d tried to not so subtly refer him to a sex therapist when he opened up about his sexuality, Jon had lost hope in finding a good therapist. There were undoubtedly good therapists out there, but he didn’t want to end up stuck again with a person who shouldn’t have been allowed a license at all.
Jon thought back to his own experiences. “You find out what your triggers are, and do your best to avoid them. Beyond that… I don’t know.”
Not for the first time, Jon wished he could find that hidden truth, to seek and scavenge and Know all there was to know. No doubt it would make his life infinitely easier, but more importantly he wouldn’t have to see the way Tim’s face fell at the words.
He peeled away the plastic wrapping around the hello kitty bandaids. It took five to cover up the scratches on Tim’s right arm.
“Worms,” Tim said. “I-I think that’s what triggered it.”
“I’ll make sure not to give you any Corruption statements to follow up on.” Jon doused another cotton ball in peroxide.
He reached for Tim’s left arm.
The peroxide spilled onto its side as Jon jerked backwards. With wide eyes he stared.
There, encircling Tim’s wrist was a line of webbing identical to that which covered Jon’s own skin.
“What.” Tim demanded.
Jon simply stared.
“Oh for fucks sake Jon. What is it now…” Tim followed Jon’s gaze down the stretch of his arm. “Oh.”
Tim swallowed. His chair scraped against the ground as he pushed it out.
“You visited Martin.” It wasn’t a question.
There was a slow drip dripping sound as the peroxide spilled sticky onto the floor.
“That’s a nice way of putting it.”
“What,” Jon pushed down the rising static, the overwhelming need to know which lingered in the edges of his vision. “What happened?”
Tim responded by grabbing a towel off the counter and tossing it over the table. The peroxide left behind a sticky residue after he dabbed it up.
Jon forced his words to come out without compulsion. They felt wrong on his tongue. Stale. “ Tim . What happened?”
Tim dabbed furiously with the towel. He grit his teeth, jaw clenched, before smoothing out into a practiced smile. “Nothing Jon.”
Jon felt his whole body tense. This he knew all too well. In a blink he was back in his grandmother’s kitchen as she set down bags of groceries just a bit too hard.
Jon swallowed. He wasn’t a child anymore. He didn’t need to bite his lip and pretend he didn’t notice the shift in the air.
“Well something obviously happened.”
Tim righted the bottle of peroxide and reached for the remaining bandages. His movements were quicker than normal. Rushed. “It’s fine Jon.”
“It’s not.”
“I said it’s fine.”
“But it’s not .” Jon threw up his hands. He wasn’t great at social cues but he knew he was right about this one and it wasn’t fair for people to tell him he wasn’t on the rare occasion that he actually was. “I don’t know what it is but it’s not fine, and I can’t tell you what it is because I need you to tell me so just tell me !”
There was static in Jon’s voice, he realized too late. Not enough for a statement, but enough for a compulsion.
Tim’s lips twitched where he bit them closed. He was trying his damndest not to answer.
“I’m sorry,” Jon whispered.
“Martin gave me his statement,” the words tumbled from his teeth. “I didn’t want it, but he fed me it anyway and I couldn’t move and I was so hungry and-“
Tim sucked in a breath. He dabbed cotton with peroxide and his arm with cotton.
“It felt good,” he finished.
Jon nodded. He understood. Inwardly his stomach clenched. Martin has never given him his statement. That was a ridiculous thing to be jealous of though so he shoved the feeling down.
He picked up the roll of bandages and began to wrap it carefully over Tim’s arm. He lingered on the area around Tim’s wrist, wrapping more than was strictly necessary.
Out of sight, out of mind.