The Predator's Mall -- Carrie
Of all her duties at Weird Tales, Carrie hated the most when Charlotte's web needed revision. She didn't mind maintaining the book displays, although the fifteen-foot long green velveteen snake "Kaa" in the Rudyard Kipling section gave her the creeps. She actively liked the toys-and-books tie-in section, although her ideas for displays sometimes met with less than enthusiastic approval. Still, Leo the manager gave her a lot of freedom, which made work fun.
But when the saying woven into the twine meshwork of the faux web in the EB White section was due for revision, her fingers started to ache in anticipation. Leo insisted on authenticity; the old letters, formed by painstaking knotting and direction of the thin rope, had to be unknotted, and the new saying woven back into the classical orb-weaver's web design in which hung the basketball sized purple spider with the long, feminine eyelashes. The old saying, "Reading is Fun", had been up for several weeks now. Leo wanted something new - and had left it up to Carrie to come up with the new legend.
"Something with not too many letters, then," she thought, reflexively flexing her fingers.
"So long as it reads and doesn't have any questionable words," the old manager responded.
Carrie started - she had not realized she had spoken out loud. "Of course not," she said, favoring him with a sidelong glance, and catching him in the act of checking her out. She was dressed in a short skirt and form-fitting sweater this day, appropriate for working the front register. She knew she was probably the old lecher's main fantasy, and she enjoyed the power it gave her.
Now she turned to fully face him, leaning on the counter to give him a full appreciation of her firm, pert and perky breasts. With obvious effort he lifted his gaze to her eyes. And then she had him. Carrie turned the full power of "the Look" on the hapless old man. Her grey-green eyes captured him, drew him in and held him, helpless. Carrie smiled sweetly, leaning very close to the craggy, saggy face. "What would you suggest," she asked in a husky whisper.
Leo didn't answer, mesmerized by her eyes.
"If you don't answer, I'll have to spank you," she warned. No response.
"If you don't answer, I won't spank you," she threatened. "I'll bet it's been a long time since you've been spanked by someone my age."
Carrie lowered her eyes, breaking her hold on her victim. She smiled, knowing that he would remember nothing she had said to him while he was under the influence of "the Look". "Men are so easily confused," she thought as he wandered away, still in a pleasant daze.
The rest of the evening dragged, but finally it was nine o'clock - time to close up. Carrie locked the door and lowered the privacy shutters on the rest of the Mall. It would take her no more than thirty minutes to straighten up and re-arrange the few displays needing it, and then she was free for the rest of the night.
Ten minutes later found her in the toys-and-books tie-in section. Here the GI Jeff figures and their action comic books were arranged opposite Betsie dolls arrayed with her "lifestyle adventure" novels. Carrie surveyed the possibilities. "Hmmm . . . let's see. Doctor Betsie, Lawyer Betsie, Skateboard-Action Betsie. Nothing new here. Let's give Dentist Betsie something to do."
In ten minutes GI Jeff, handsome in his fatigues and combat boots, was an unwilling patient in Dentist Betsie's chair. Rubber bands strapped his arms and legs to the plastic chair, and Dr. Betsie loomed over him, legs wide, instruments of torture in hand. "Bad day at the dentist for you, soldier," Carrie remarked.
"Not bad," she thought, regarding her work. "But not enough".
Soon Kung-Fu Commando Jeff was starring in his own tableau, cowering on one knee, his hands tied behind him, with three Cheerleader Betsies standing over him, impossibly long but non-bending legs surrounding and imprisoning him ("prison bars indeed," she thought). Behind her back one of the Betsies held a hangman's noose fashioned with twine borrowed from Charlotte's web.
The web - Carrie remembered with a wince that she had promised to change the legend in the twine. And it was already nine-twenty five. "Tell you what, Chuck," Carrie said, approaching with one more unlucky GI in her hand. "I'll do your next words of wisdom tomorrow night. For tonight - a snack as a token of my affection." In seconds the impassive army doll was entangled in Charlotte's web, arms and legs intertwined in the narrow mesh. Carrie turned his body away from the plush spider, and his face toward it, as if her were struggling to escape while watching his doom approach on eight legs. "Not bad," she thought, "if I don't get fired for all this."
"And another thing," she said aloud to the stuffed, spherical purple matron in her web. "If Leo fires me for having too much fun with this stuff, then tomorrow he'll be the guest of honor in your web. So don't stuff yourself tonight."
She left chuckling - "don't stuff yourself; I just slay myself sometimes" - leaving behind various GI Jeff dolls in peril at the hands of demented dentists, predatory cheerleaders and one hungry giant spider.
The next day, Malcolm was scheduled to work the register, while Carrie opened delivery cartons and arranged new books and toys on the shelves. She dressed in faded denim jeans and a polo shirt - comfortable to work in , but soft and close-fitting enough to give Malcolm something to think about. She could feel his owlish gaze on her every time she left the stockroom with an armful of books. "Score another one for me," she thought to herself. Just for fun, she made sure to pass by his station as often as possible, learning in the course of the day that Malcolm was an ass man. She filed the information away for future reference; it was always good to know what buttons to push to get someone in line.
It was a busy day, with lots of incoming stock to be categorized, organized and put away, so Carrie never got close to Charlotte's web during business hours. She did manage to visit the tie-in section - there stood Dentist Betsie, smiling radiantly next to her empty chair. And there were the Cheerleader Betsies, forming a human pyramid. But no GI Jeff in sight ("victim Jeff," she thought to herself.)
It was only later in the day, while clearing out back issues of GI Jeff comic books, that she found the forlorn figure of a muscular plastic man hanging by the neck from the comic-book rack. His little camouflage pants were down around his ball joint ankles, his stiff little camo shirt was open, and deep furrows scored his plastic torso and once-smooth crotch.
Carrie decided to avoid Malcolm for the rest of the day after that. Demented fun was one thing, but this was taking things a bit too far on the weird side. She declined Malcolm's offer of an escort through the mall at closing, telling him she still had Charlotte's web to take care of.
She was even more glad she had let Malcolm go off by himself when she saw the condition of the doll in the spiderweb. The GI Jeff figure had hung in the web all day, apparently unnoticed by the customers thronging the store. But instead of a splayed-limbed figure in the position of someone trying to escape, Carrie found him securely wrapped - cocooned even - in a shroud of twine. Worse, the plastic face was shrunken in on itself, and had turned a dull brown rather than its usual inhumanly caucasian tint. He looked like a victim of famine ("or someone being eaten up from inside," she thought).
The creepiest revelation came when Carrie looked at the web. Woven into the strands above the pathetic figure of the Commando were the words "Thank You".
"Malcolm," she thought, "you're scaring me. And you have way too much time on your hands. You have got to go."
As Carrie laboriously unknotted the tiny letters in the web, a dulcet voice from high and to her right came down to her: "I take it I shouldn't look forward to the pleasure of Leo's company tonight?"
Carrie started and followed the voice - to the figure of the plush spider fastened high up in the corner of the web. "I mean," continued the stuffed toy, "I am very grateful for the gift of last night - please don't think I'm not." The great long-lashed eyes blinked daintily at her - all eight of them - and the purple body curtsied with all eight floppy legs.
Without thinking, Carrie curtsied back. Then she caught herself. "Working here has finally gotten to me," she thought. "That's it - this is my last night."
A soft sound from behind drew her attention. There was the stuffed snake, Kaa, drooping off his papier-m�ch� tree branch. "Excuse me," she said to the purple spider. "I have to go fix Kaa." Feeling ridiculous for excusing herself to a toy, Carrie hurried gratefully over to something she knew how to handle.
Kaa's lime-green head was drooping almost to the floor. Carrie lifted it back to its resting place on the fake tree branch, surprised at how heavy it was. She was only a little less surprised when Kaa lifted his head himself and looked into her eyes. "Hello, Carrie," he said, somehow managing to lisp even her name.
"Not you, too," she said, locking him down with the Look. To her surprise, he didn't immediately go into stasis, as had every other male she had ever favored with her special gaze. Instead, he gazed back, and she felt his tail circling her hip, coiling down and around her thighs. The feeling was smooth and sensuous, and she felt like wriggling snuggly into its embrace . . .
Without thinking, Carrie lashed out with a right cross, catching the stuffed snake flush on the nose. He jerked back and Carrie quickly stepped out of the triple-coiled hold he had been twisting around her legs. "Don't you try that trick again," she said, backing up. "I'm on to you now."
"Oh but Carrie," Kaa insisted, following her off the branch, his face remaining at eye-level, "I've got lotth of trickth left to try." He feinted with his head and she ducked, to find another thick muscular coil around her waist, pulling her down onto his body. She jumped to her feet, pushing his body down over her slim hips as he closed the loop swiftly.
She almost made it - his body closed around her calves and she tripped, falling backward. Kaa reared up, a cartoon look of triumph on his bright green face. "Come to papa," he whispered, jerking her roughly toward him. Carrie tried to pull her legs from his grasp as he drew her closer to his powerful coils, jerking her in fits and starts. "Come and play," he said . . . two more jerks on her legs and she would be in the midst of his coils, which she knew she would not be able to escape.
Only one possible trick was left to her; Carrie unsnapped her jeans and wriggled desperately. At the next jerking pull from Kaa, her jeans came down her hips. With the second spasm of the snake's plush body, her jeans came off completely and she rolled free, dressed now in panties and polo shirt. Kaa was left with her well-faded jeans in his coils.
"A very worthy adverthary," Kaa said, advancing on her. "Thuthie wath almotht too eathy."
A shiver ran down Carrie's spine as the realization came to her. The last time she had seen her co-worker Suzie had been weeks ago - and Suzie had been working on the Jungle Book display of which Kaa was a part. She had assumed Suzie had quit the low-paying bookstore job. Now she pictured the slim, leggy blond helplessly wrapped in the inexorably tightening coils of the ridiculous, but deadly, stuffed snake.
"She wriggled," Kaa whispered sibilantly, sliding across the floor toward Carrie. "She twitched. She let me touch her - here," he said, his tail encircling Carrie's hips and gently caressing the thin triangle of silk between her thighs.
Carrie started our of her reverie - "can't look into his eyes," she thought - and spun away from his touch, dropping under his body as he formed coils which dropped over her body. "Keep moving," she thought, "if he gets a good hold, I'm done for."
So began a dance of flowing movements with the athletic young girl twisting and leaping among the snake's coils, bare legs flashing as she leapt and turned, her sweat plastering her shirt to her fit, curved figure. Carrie found herself enjoying the contest; the stakes were extreme, her concentration was total. "One mithtake," the snake said drily, "and we thtop the danthe, and begin the embrathe. The thlow, wonderful, thenthuouth embrathe." A coil closed suddenly on her thigh; she jerked her leg free just before it tightened inescapably.
"Don't listen," Carrie thought to herself, her breath becoming ragged as he kept her constantly moving about the limited floor space of the store. "He'll mesmerize me if I listen."
"You're tho thmall and thoft, Carrie," Kaa said. "I jutht want to make you happy. I can make you feel tho good . . . " A length of his thick body raised from the floor between her legs, lifting her up and carrying her in a wave toward his head.
"Yeah, right before you make me so dead," she gasped (the pressure on her sex from his rippling body was unbelievably distracting), somersaulting off of him just as she would have been carried into a tunnel of his coils.
"No - you'd thtay alive -- Thuthie ith," Kaa said. "She'th - inthide, now, but thtill Thuthie. Not that you'd recognithe her," he chuckled.
Carrie almost stopped moving at the words - the idea that Susie was somehow trapped inside the snake and still conscious was even more horrible. "You don't think I can digetht, do you?" Kaa asked.
And then, in the momentary pause his words had brought her to, Kaa struck. His snub nose struck her square in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Carrie flew over his waiting coils ("curtheth!" Kaa cried) and rolled to a stop ten feet from the great fuzzy green serpent.
Carrie lay stunned for what seemed ages. Finally she lifted her head ("why am I still alive," she wondered) and looked down her body. Kaa's head was lifted between her bare knees, smiling down at her. "End game," he said brightly, rearing up and opening his mouth wider and wider. The inside of his mouth was completely dry, velveteen plush, and bright pink. At the back of his mouth, a dark gullet, puckered closed, dilated slightly.
"That's enough, Kaa," a bright voice came from above. "This one is mine."
Kaa looked up with a snakishly-petulant expression. Carrie also looked up, to see Charlotte leaning out from her web, glaring fiercely at the triumphant snake. "You just leave this little girl alone, now, Kaa," Charlotte continued. "You've done quite enough harm for one day."
"Curtheth," Kaa muttered, backing out from between Carrie's legs. He sat just out of striking range, a definite sulking scowl on his face.
Carrie sat up with difficulty, a wary eye still on the great muscular body of the snake. "Why doesn't he come after me," she asked Charlotte. "He's bigger than you are."
"There are rules, dear," Charlotte said kindly. "Even a trickster like Kaa must abide by the rules."
"Lucky me," Carrie remarked, leaning back against the yielding meshwork of twine which was Charlotte's web. "Am I under your protection?"
"You might say that, dear, " Charlotte replied, dropping down to eye level with the girl. Charlotte's eyes - all eight of them - were kind and maternal, fringed with long feminine lashes. Her lips were bright red with perpetual lipstick dyed on.
"You're so sweet, Charlotte. I could almost hug you." Charlotte looked uncomfortable at the thought, even raising up a few inches on the web-line from which she dangled. "Oops; stuffed-animal faux pas," Carrie thought.
"How am I going to get my jeans back, with him sitting there," Carrie asked, more to change the subject than out of real concern. The truth was, she was quite comfortable sitting there in panties and shirt, legs stretched before her, conversing pleasantly with a basketball-sized, purple plush spider.
"Oh, I hardly think you need worry about that right now," Charlotte said gently.
"Why is that?" Carrie asked. As she did, she looked over Charlotte's shoulder (one of eight) to see a crowd of GI Jeffs thronging the shelves of the tie-in section, all watching her and jockeying for position. ("Like they're all trying to get a good look. All men are letches," Carrie thought). She noted with satisfaction as four Cheerleader Betsie dolls approached the crowd of commandos, grabbed one from behind and dragged him off between some boxes. ("That's my girls," she thought. "I taught you guys everything you know.")
"Because, Carrie, you have to play by the same rules as Kaa does, and as I do," Charlotte said. Her tone of voice, and expression, were those of a young mother explaining something obvious to a toddler. "None of us has any choice in the matter - we are what we are, and the law is the law."
"What law are you talking about," Carrie said with some annoyance. ("I didn't fight off a fifteen-foot stuffed snake just to get a civics lecture," she thought).
"Why, the law of the jungle, dear," Charlotte said. "That's why Kaa didn't follow you into my web - he knows he would have been trapped, and become my prey. You do know that spiders are predators, dear," Charlotte said, glancing meaningfully up at the remains of Carrie's GI Jeff gift from the night before.
Carrie's heart leapt as a thought occurred to her. "Am I prey, Charlotte?" she asked, growing very still.
Kaa snorted from the edges of Charlotte's web.
"No, dear," Charlotte said, and Carrie released her breath with a whoosh. She hadn't realized she was holding it until the answer.
"Not technically," Charlotte continued. "You're too dear to me. I've selected you to be a caregiver for my child - it's quite an honor, you know."
Carrie's heart started to triphammer again. "That is quite an honor, Charlotte, but if you don't mind, I'd rather not."
"Oh, dear. I'm afraid you don't have a choice, darling. It's that law again, you know."
"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead," Carrie thought, rising swiftly to her feet and leaping over the recumbent Kaa. Or she tried to. She rose a full half-inch from the floor and fell back again, arms and legs flying. Kaa snorted again, almost a sardonic laugh.
"Charlotte," Carrie said, her voice rising shrilly, "what's going on here?" Her strong and athletic legs were intertwined in the meshes of Charlotte's web, just as had been the GI Jeff doll's. Her arms were entangled also, one behind her back and the other up over her head. She could not move her limbs an inch in any direction before the twine pulled taut.
She reached down to free her legs from the mesh - but the web held her arms back. She tried to stand, but the mesh encircling her legs grew taut, keeping her from straitening her legs or rising to her feet. "How did I get so tangled up," she asked in exasperation.
"Darling, I thought you understood," Charlotte said gently and with real regret. "It's the law of the jungle - I'm a spider, and you're a creature that has stumbled into my web. It's designed to hold you still and keep you from scampering off."
"It's made of STRING!" Carrie shouted at the spider, and felt almost bad when Charlotte looked hurt. "I tied the tiny knots myself. It's not real - and neither are you!"
"Perhaps not, dear - but then, here you are, truly entangled, aren't you? I can't explain it, and neither can you. But my nature is to be a spider, because that's what I am. And you - "
"I'm a woman! Or a girl. Or - Charlotte, I'm not a bug!"
"No, dear, you're not a bug. You are a very lovely, vivacious and active young woman, and it has been my pleasure to make your acquaintance. But now that you are caught, and completely enmeshed, we both have to play our roles, now don't we?"
"My role's not done, Charlotte," Carrie said with grim determination. And as Kaa watched with growing interest, and the GI Jeffs made book on her efforts, and the Cheerleader Betsie dolls captured another hapless victim, Carrie started to struggle in earnest.
The twine comprising the web was dry, not sticky, but it clung to her skin with a static-like cling. Her legs and arms were intertwined in the web, as if it had grown around her while she lay stunned. Wide swaths of the thin mesh circled her body, and as she moved it seemed to tighten, pressing her high, firm breasts and even pulling up against the crotch of her panties with a gentle touch ("why does everything that's dangerous around here have to be so stimulating," she groaned to herself.) She rolled forward, and was pulled back and more deeply entangled. She tried pushing back, and found she hadn't the strength to pull the web loose from its moorings - but did manage to more hopelessly entangle her athletically-muscled legs. Attempts to climb the web by grasping the mesh only lifted her off the floor and left her dangling, with even less freedom of movement. Soon Carrie was reduced to writhing futilely in the web's insistently tightening hold, unable to stand or disentangle herself, and at all points firmly bound in the unbreakable trap.
Finally, exhausted, she lay still, her very breathing seeming to pull the mesh more tightly around her sensitive breasts and more deeply into her pulsing womanhood. "If I orgasm," she thought, "I'll get even more tangled. But every attempt to untangle myself brings me closer to orgasm." For the first time, she knew despair.
And still Charlotte waited patiently for her prey to render herself completely helpless.
In exhaustion, she looked up. There hung the GI Jeff doll from the night before. Now, horribly, his head turned and he regarded her with sunken eyes, from a face withered and drawn. "He's been almost completely drained," Carrie thought. "I wonder how long it will be before I look like that." The Jeff doll looked away, uninterested in her struggles.
Finally Charlotte descended, hovering on her drag-line inches above Carrie's heaving breast. "You tried very hard, dear," she said kindly. "Don't feel badly that you didn't escape. Spiders are the most efficient hunters in the animal kingdom. We have had millenia to perfect our techniques. And you humans have not had much practice at being prey, you know."
"Are you going to eat me now," Carrie gasped out. ("I will not cry," she said to herself fiercely).
"No, dear, nothing like that. I'm about to become a mother, and I need a - well, a nursery - for my child. I can't think of anyone I'd rather have do me the honor than you."
And with that, Charlotte daintily put one pipestem leg on Carrie's breast and lowered herself onto her helpless prey. Finally her entire body sat on Carrie, perched comfortably between Carrie's breasts (drawing the mesh which surrounded them more tightly around her, spreading new waves of pleasure washing through her body. Despite herself, Carrie writhed in response, drawing the mesh more tightly into her womanhood in a chain reaction which brought her agonizingly close to orgasm).
Then Charlotte scuttled lightly down Carrie's flat, taut stomach until she was poised over her belly button. Her touch was dry and light, and very gentle; and when she raised herself off Carrie's body and back into her web, a bundle of web like a cocoon was woven into the mesh stretched across Carrie's abdomen. It rose and fell gently with her breath.
In just minutes, the small bundle began to stir. Carrie watched in horrified fascination as a small rip formed in the top, and grew down toward the side. First one, then another, and another, until finally eight very thin, black tendrils extruded from the rent. They set down gently on Carrie's skin (tickling slightly), then they firmed, grew straighter and developed definite joints. Finally the budding legs pulled away from the deflating sac, and a small, mis-shaped body like a sock half-filled with tissue papers emerged. It was bright purple, and Carrie heard Charlotte's delighted intake of breath from high up in her web.
Carrie watched now with interest. So far, this wasn't so very bad. Perhaps she could be a nursemaid to Charlotte's child ("as long as I don't have to nurse it," she thought wryly). It wasn't even so bad when the tiny plush predator-baby started to crawl over her skin toward her legs.
She became alert again when it stopped at the band of her panties. When it extended one leg beneath the waistband, she became alarmed. And when it pulled it's entire body beneath the silken surface and continued to crawl down, its dry and gentle touch almost a caress, she started to struggle again, in desperate fury.
But the web was still too tight, and she was now too exhausted and nothing she could do would impede the velveteen spider's progress toward the dark mat between her thighs. Even as she strained at her bonds, she knew she was helpless to stop it as she watched it creep toward her most private anatomy and settle over her tenderness for a moment. And then as it tentatively pushed itself between her quivering lips she was finally given the release that had eluded her; her vision went black as paroxysms of electric pleasure shot throughout her body. She writhed and rolled in the web, sending vibrations from her reactions out through every tendril and to Charlotte's far-flung webs throughout the Mall.
Went she came back to herself moments later, the spider-child was inside her. She could feel its body moving inside hers, passing up through her torso, clambering over her inner organs. "This is impossible," she thought, as she felt its touch on her stomach, felt it brush past her ribs, physical and yet not ("just like Susie, but in reverse," she thought). She stole a look at Kaa; he watched with frank and almost childlike interest.
Finally the inner spider came to a stop at her heart -- her pounding, runaway heart. Carrie started to writhe again, this time very slowly, as she felt it begin to spin a web around her heart where it beat in her breast. First one strand, encircling its victim; then another, at right angles to the first, forming a cross on the surface of her heart. She could feel the strands as it encircled her protesting organ with strand after strand. And she felt as the web began to contract around its frantically pulsing prey, felt her heart begin to slow, as if unsure how to respond to the assault.
Tighter and tighter; slower and slower. Carrie felt the margins of her vision begin to close in, until at the last all she could see was Charlotte, looking down with love and maternal hope and fear. She felt a twinge of pain when the spider-child pierced the major vessels of her heart and fixed itself to them, gorging itself on her blood. And was surprised to find the spider still fed her captive heart, keeping her alive. "Of course," what remained of Carrie thought with wonder. "I'm the nursery -- not the nurse".
She came to understand her future, and the future of the spider-child, when she looked up at Charlotte again, and this time saw her with the love of a child toward its mother, and felt the presence inside her mind of the Other, the inheritor of Carrie's second, and final, gift to the literary spider.
By B. Ferrett