Twisted Flesh and Broken Bone

By JV O'Connell

Prepare yourself for the sights ahead; a town afflicted by the spider's curse, the infection wrought by an eldritch fungus, the corrupting will of unknowable beings.
All this and more in the first collection of short horror stories from trans author Jennifer O'Connell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780244771379

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Twisted Flesh and Broken Bone

Twisted Flesh and Broken Bone

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © J O’Connell, 2019 All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form on by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN 978-0-244-77137-9 Edited by Max Broggi-Sumne

Curse of Arachne

In the quiet town of Dowinn, just east of Innver, there had always been a strange social taboo. The people of Dowinn do not kill spiders. It went utterly unspoken, but it seemed almost instinctive to the locals. Even the animals of Dowinn seemed to avoid the eight limbed creatures like the plague for fear of accidentally trampling one. One of my earliest memories of life in the town was being scolded by my mother, who had caught me about to step on one of the arachnids as it crawled across our kitchen floor. I had never seen that kind of horror in her eyes, that primal, instinctive fear that couldn’t be learned, a mother’s fear for the life of her only child. I can still vividly remember the scream she let out, the piercing shriek that froze me in place like my body was a rigid marble sculpture. Once her panic subsided, a fury unlike anything I had seen from my mother, or have seen since from her, made itself known. The whole world seemed to shake as she roared and babbled about never, ever stepping on a spider. She punctuated her ranting with a fierce smack that left a bright, pink handprint seared into my face for days. I never stepped on a spider, not knowing that what I had seen was only the result of an attempt.

Some years later, after I had started school, one of the boys in my class, Jack, spoke about the spiders. It was only the second time I’d heard anyone acknowledge them, the first being my mother. He insisted that the behaviour of the people in the town was bizarre, and the behaviour of the spiders more so. He noted that many of them were not native to the country, and while none of our native spiders were venomous, most of these foreign species were. Stranger again, many of the species he had personally identified were known for their intricate web building, but not a single web was to be seen throughout all of Dowinn. It was odd, I realized. The town was full to the brim with spiders, but never in my life had I seen a single, solitary web. Jack’s father had come from Innver and had moved back there shortly after the birth of his son. Jack would often stay with his father on weekends or holidays and stay with his mother while in school. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps because of his fondness for questions, Jack was often treated as a social pariah, shunned by fellow students and ignored by teachers.

The last day I saw Jack was not a pleasant one. The clouds had grown to darken the sky and swallow the sun, while rain rattled against the classroom window and a powerful wind threatened to tear the tiles from the roof. Jack hadn’t been to school in almost two weeks, and rumours were rampant about what may have happened. All the hypotheses and gossip ceased as he came through the door 10 minutes into class, white as a sheet and emaciated beyond belief. His flesh clung to his bone and his eyes sunk deep into their sockets. He limped through the classroom, everyone silent and staring at the husk of a boy. Every movement seemed to be a struggle and every breath was heavy and laboured. He collapsed at his desk, directly beside mine. His glasses magnified his dark, miniscule eyes as he glanced at me. He mouthed a few words but seemed to lack the strength to vocalize them. I managed to pick up step and spider, which was enough for me to understand what he was trying to say, but the delirious ravings seemed to have little to do with his present condition. I wondered in that moment if he was trying to say one of the venomous spiders bit him and he stepped on it. My wondering was brought to an abrupt halt as the teacher spoke, hesitantly, breaking the silence.

J-Jack?

His gaze rose from me to the front of the room and seemed dazed and unfocused as he began to mutter. He… h-here… he managed, before unleashing a torrent of blood and bile on to the desk.

He was rushed to the nurse, who called his mother. We were told in an assembly the next day that he was very sick, and that he wouldn’t be coming back for quite some time. His funeral was two months later, closed casket. I was forced to see a therapist for several years after the incident, but the trauma eventually subsided, and I managed to get on with life. Years later, after I finished college, I left the small town of Dowinn to pursue bigger things. It was a short five years after I left that a lot happened. My father died, I married a girl I’d known since college, Marie, and my mother got very sick. This culminated in me returning to Dowinn with my wife to take care of my mother in what we expected to be her last few years. Within a week of arriving, things began to go horribly wrong. Marie wasn’t familiar with the strangeness of Dowinn and didn’t think twice about stepping on the spider crawling slowly across our floor.

She laughed when I attempted to explain the strangeness of Dowinn to her, and she scoffed at the superstitious nonsense. Oh, sure, she exclaimed mockingly, the whole world’s gonna come toppling down because I stepped on the itsy, bitsy spider, good one, honey. My sleep was broken and fitful that night, images of Jack’s blood-spattered desk and the sound of my mother’s ghastly howls plagued me in those nocturnal hours. It was only four in the morning when I read the clock. I buried my face in the pillow and retreated to kitchen, figuring that if I couldn’t sleep, I could at least have an early breakfast. It was only an hour before Marie woke, stumbling into the kitchen like the shambling dead. She looked pale and sickly, her skin slick and shiny with sweat. She managed to drop herself onto the seat across from mine at the table. She groaned as she lay her head on her arms and mumbled, I feel like crap…

I helped her back to bed and grabbed her a glass of water and some painkillers. She murmured something so jumbled I couldn’t understand, and I offered to schedule a doctor’s appointment for her. She declined, slurring something like, I’m fine, just… lemme sleep… I patted her shoulder and asked her to call me if she changed her mind or needed anything. Before I left she managed to weakly say, I love you.

I love you too, sweetie, I said to her before I walked out of the room. Within minutes