The Black Widow’s Revenge

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Trigger warning: This fictional story includes references to sexual violence/rape.

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Katie cried into my lap for hours. She screamed, shook, and shivered until her eyes swelled shut and she lost her voice.

It was the worst night of her life. She didn’t go to school for two weeks.

It took a while for her to talk to me about it. But I was patient. Katie’s my best friend.

She was invited to a house party. A party where I knew there would be a steaming pile of jocks, preps, and ungodly amounts of club drugs and alcohol. You could just smell the raging testosterone and sugar-sweet body mist in the air. It wasn’t really my scene. But, I should’ve been there with her.

Katie was assaulted that night. She was just trying to use the bathroom, but they were full up of other high school kids trying their first line of cocaine on the sink ledge, or hooking up without a condom against the shower wall.

So, Katie wondered down into the basement to look. She thought she that was alone.

After six nights, Katie told finally me his name.

Tyler. Fucking. Fitch.

Tyler is about 6 feet tall. The quarterback on our school’s football team and notorious for hooking up with nearly every girl he could get his hands on. He was also the class bully back in our younger years, along with being just a complete douchebag in general.

After the name reveal, my mind went to work on Tyler.

Katie went into great detail about just how rough Tyler was with her that night, how much he hurt her. I wasn’t going to let that slide.

In Katie’s absence, I started to follow Tyler around school.

Monday morning, I wore fishnets, black pumps, and a skirt so short that a breeze would erase all that the imagination could conjure up. This gained Tyler’s attention.

“Hey Tyler.”

“…Hey, uh…?”

“Mary. You know, like the Virgin Mary?”

“Right… Mary. You’re, uh, you’re looking good.”

“So you noticed.”

Tyler licked his lips while he eyed me up and down, like the filthy dog that he was.

“So, listen, Tyler.” I touched the collar of his shirt.

“I’ve heard a lot about you around school.”

“Heard what?” He said coyly.

“That you like to play.” I returned.

“Oh really?” Tyler leaned closer to me, looking down at me like the giant monster he really was.

“So… do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you want to play?” I asked.

A twisted smile sprouted on his face from corner to corner, one that resembled the Black Dahlia, in the flesh.

“My parents are going away this weekend. Meet me at my place Friday night for some playtime?”

I slipped him a piece of notebook paper with an address and a lipstick print smacked on it.

“See you there.” I finished while strutting away.

But then, Tyler grabbed me by my arm.

“Hey.” He said sternly.

I was stunned by his grip.

“Aren’t you gonna show me the goods first? I wanna know what I’m getting into.” He said, squeezing my arm harder.

Terrified, I gulped, but gave in to his request.

“Watch me when I walk away.” I said, trying to hide my fear.

He released my arm, and I could already feel a bruise growing. I clenched my teeth together as I walked down the hallway, and lifted up my skirt a little before looking back at him, flashing him the goods, just the way he liked it.

*

Katie hadn’t left her bed in days. She wouldn’t even answer my calls, but her mother assured me that she just wasn’t feeling well.

It gave me time to plan.

I was never invited to the parties that Katie was. She is a lot more approachable than I am, I suppose. She has normal high school interests like volleyball and art class.

Me? I like spiders.

My father is an arachnologist, so I get it from him. For my first pet, he bought me a banana spider. Katie always hated it.

My latest pet I decided to name Trixie. She’s a black widow. I got her after the Marvel movie came out earlier in the year, and it just felt like the perfect time have her.

Black widows are highly venomous and their bites can be fatal.

The days flew by, and Friday came quicker than I expected. My parents were out to a winery for the weekend, so I really did have the house to myself.

I made an out of character order from Amazon: two pairs of police grade handcuffs, which I latched to my bedposts. A pack of candy bars. A black latex corset to go with my fishnets and heels. They arrived just in time, so I suited up. I wanted Tyler to know that I was serious about what I had said about playtime.

I wanted Tyler to want to hurt me.

When Tyler arrived, it was all action, no talk.

Disgusted with myself, I let him stick his tongue in my mouth after leading him to my room like the filthy fucking street mutt that he is.

“Whoa. Love the get up.” He said, trying to force another disgusting kiss into my mouth.

“Wait.” I stopped him, grabbing him by his chin. He seemed to like being man handled just as much as he liked doing it himself. This worked to my advantage.

“See those cuffs?” I pointed as he turned to them. He flashed a wicked smile.

“I want you in them first.” I demanded.

“Ooh, bad little kitty.” He hissed at me. “Okay, pet. I’ll play along.”

Tyler pulled his shirt off, and I pushed him onto the bed. I climbed on top of him, and cuffed his wrists to the bedposts. He liked it. Steel cuffs attached to steel bars.

Then, I worked my way down his body, thinking that I would give him what he really wanted, when I pulled the covers up a bit, and swiftly latched his feet to the second pair.

“Hey, what the–”

“What’s wrong? Don’t you wanna play with me, Tyler?”

Tyler’s struggle began instantly.

“Hey, what the fuck? Let me go!”

“How ironic of you to say.” I seethed. “What’s next? Are you gonna say ‘no,’ ‘don’t,’ or ‘stop’?”

Tyler began to thrash about on the bed.

“…Because I didn’t think that you knew what those words meant, Tyler. You never did excel in English class.”

“What the fuck are you getting at, you crazy bitch?”

“I’ll get to that part. But first, I want you to meet my friend.”

Inside my closet, I slowly pulled the doors open to reveal the glass terrarium that I kept my Trixie in.

I gently tapped at the terrarium glass and carefully moved her into a bell jar.

“What the—what the fuck is that?!” Tyler shouted.

“This is Trixie, my pet black widow spider. Tell me, Tyler, do you know anything about black widows?”

Tyler’s breathing picked up after that.

“Help!” He screamed it two times, pulling hard at the cuffs as he jerked around helplessly on my mattress.

“What’s wrong? Afraid of a little bug?” I teased, tickling his legs with my hand like a spider’s crawl.

“You can scream all you want, nobody’s going to hear you.”

Tyler was visibly sweating now.

“Gross, you’re making a mess of yourself. I layered out some towels before you got here, try not to sweat through them, okay?” I asked ironically, knowing that much, much worse would soil my towels that night.

All I could see now was a mixed look of panic and anger on his face.

“So, are you gonna answer my question?”

Tyler went silent, nostrils flaring as he breathes deeply through his nose. He looked so pathetic.

“What do you know about black widow spiders”? I repeated.

Tyler didn’t say anything. Instead he grimaced, and then spat at me. I leaned to the right, and dodged it just in time.

“I figured you didn’t know anything.” I said, pulling up a chair to the edge of the bed on top of his drying spit stain.

“You see, black widows are extremely venomous. Enough venom injected into a human body, left untreated, could die within hours. Especially if bitten multiple times…”

Tyler began screaming for help again.

“But they only really bite multiple times when they’ve been severely provoked.” I added.

“You’re fucking crazy!” He shouted at me.

“Crazy? No, no. I believe that the word you are looking for is… malicious. Ever heard of that one?”

I stood up and paced the room, setting Trixie down in the bell jar on a bedside table next to his head.

Tyler stared right at her with fear in his eyes.

“…I know what you did to Katie, Tyler. She told me everything.”

Tyler started panting.

“And I’m damn sure that she wasn’t the first girl, either. Was she Tyler?”

Tyler’s eyes desperately searched the room for an escape.

“Was she?!” I repeated.

I pulled my chair up to his face and was inches away from him.

“I am not crazy, Tyler. Do you hear me? I am every single girl that you ever messed with, hurt, or raped in your entire fucked up meaningless life.”

“AHHHH!” Tyler screamed into my face at the top of his lungs.

“AHHHHHHHHHHH!” I screamed back at him.

He went quiet after our scream off, so I caught my breath, and gave him the rundown of the remainder of our playtime.

“So this is what’s going to happen, Tyler. Trixie here is going to turn you into a little spider buffet. She’s going to bite your arm until it swells into a big pink wad of rotting flesh.”

Tyler’s shouting continued.

“Then, I’m going to sit here and wait until the venom takes over, which it will, and watch you fucking die!” I shouted back.

I was enjoying this too much.

“And then I’m going to call the police and cry into the phone, ‘Oh, please officer, send help! My boyfriend, he’s not waking up!” I laughed.

I put on the distressed girlfriend voice and continued, “’He was complaining about a pain in his arm before we went to bed, officer, but I thought it was just a football injury!’” I smiled and stopped the performance.

“Lucky for me, Tyler, black widow spiders are native to this area, so when the toxicologists look into your mortal wounds, it will look like just another tragedy… And that’s fucking it!”

“Goddammit!” He shouted, desperately pulling his arms hard at the handcuffs.

“Guess I’ll be the real black widow then, with my dead ‘boyfriend’ in my bed!”

“Please!!!” He screamed.

“Please what?”

“Please don’t kill me! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please, please stop!!!”

“…did you stop when Katie begged you?”

But he just whimpered, pouring sweat and nearly pissing himself.

“Didn’t think so.”

Tyler jerked around and groaned at his wrists and feet.

“How poetic for your last words.”

I picked up the bell jar and shook it violently while Tyler screamed.

Then, I set the very provoked black widow loose on his arm while holding the lid over her.

Tyler writhed in pain as Trixie bit his arm in two places.

When she calmed down, I scooped her up into the jar, and dipped downstairs for a moment to let her loose outside.

I walked far out into the backyard.

“Thank you.” I whispered, as I set her free into the grass.

When I climbed back up the stairs to my room, Tyler’s wounds were already changing color.

“You’re, dying Tyler.”

He said nothing. I don’t know if he physically couldn’t or just didn’t want to. But the deathly silence was intoxicating. I checked my phone to see if Katie had called me back, but there was no response. It’s not like I could ever tell her what I’d done, so I let her get her rest.

Then, I went over to my desk where I had the pack of candy bars that I’d ordered. I pulled one out, torn it open, and took a bite.

“Want a bite?” I asked. “Haha, just kidding.”

As Tyler’s life gradually expired behind me, I watched TV. I felt nothing for him. No sympathy, no sadness, no regret for what I had done. Cold-blooded? Maybe. But that was a necessity.

Around midnight, I changed out of my clothes, uncuffed Tyler, removed the towels from underneath him, placed them into the laundry as they were soaked with his final piss, and then called the police.

My theatrics went as planned.

I cried hard. I was the hysterical teenaged girl whose boyfriend died in bed next to her. I was home alone, and I was not to blame. I saved some of the theatrics for the call to my father later, too.

About a week later, the coroner revealed that Tyler had succumbed to a severe reaction from a venomous spider bite. It was followed by a news report on what steps to take if you’re bitten by a black widow spider.

Trixie was a free spider now, and the police never did investigate my room. I didn’t think I could ever keep a pet spider for a few years if I wanted to remain an innocent bystander to Tyler’s tragic, unexpected death.

When the police left my house that night, an officer slipped me a business card with a counseling service on it, so that I could seek help for the ‘trauma’ I’d been through that night. I saved that card, and ended up giving it to Katie.

I was the black widow now, with my dead fake lover being rolled away on a stretcher.

When the ambulance and final police car left the driveway, I shut the door behind me and closed my eyes.