Authors Note: SPIED HER is about a husband who comes home unexpectedly to discover his wife has a secret. The exact genesis of the story is forgotten, but it’s original form had a completely different character dynamic between a boy and his stepsister. SPIED HER won a writing contest. It also got rejected by every place I submitted it to over a period of about 20 years. That pretty much sums up fiction writing. The whims of editors hold sway over all. So, might as well release the story into the wild to roam free instead of languish forgotten on a hard drive…

SPIED HER: a short story by Steve Ruthenbeck

Believe it or not, things got worse after Rodney saw his wife drink a cat.

Rodney (who could have been a Dr. Phil lookalike if Dr. Phil only ate three hamburgers a week) went to the dentist for his annual checkup. While waiting his turn, he perused a stack of magazines. Dr. Parker was an avid outdoorsman and assumed his patients shared that interest, as well. Most of the magazines were about hunting. Rodney wasn’t into killing defenseless animals, however. He was sensitive.

That’s why Athena loved him.

And he wanted to keep her loving him.

Rodney found a woman’s magazine buried in the pile. Don’t let your marriage fizzle, one of the articles advised. Even though Rodney had only been married to Athena for a month, he wanted to get a jumpstart on the fizzle avoidance.

Surprise your spouse, the article suggested.

Rodney crept into their house with a bottle of wine and a bag of romantibles: scented candles and perfume. Nothing overly original to be sure (and perhaps a bit too odor-centric), but the article said it was the little things that mattered.

Rodney removed his shoes and tiptoed down a hallway. Samples of Athena’s gift for needlework decorated the wall: doilies, yarn samplers and sewn silhouettes. As Rodney neared the kitchen, he heard Athena humming. A few steps later his sensitivity kicked in. Surprises were good, but heart attacks were not. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to leave work three hours early, sneak into the house and creep up behind Athena in this day and age. Rodney opened his mouth to announce his presence and snapped it shut when he heard a cat yowl.

Odd — they didn’t have a cat.

Odder — the cat stopped yowling and started screaming.

Oddest — the cat’s scream was cut short by a chopping sound.

Rodney rushed to the kitchen doorway and spied her. Athena wore the pink bathrobe he bought her for her birthday. Blond hair dangled in a ponytail. Slippers clad her feet. A quarter moon of cheek was visible, dimpled with a half-smile as Athena went about her wifely duties, which currently consisted of holding a decapitated cat over a bowl and draining its blood. After squeezing out the last few drops, Athena threw the cat’s carcass on a cutting board and took a butcher knife to it. Her hands knew exactly where to cut and how much force to apply. Once the cat was cubed, Athena scraped it into a blender.

WHRRRRrrrrrrRRRrrrrrRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Athena raised the pitcher to her lips…

The bottle of wine fell from Rodney’s fingers and clunked on the linoleum.

Athena spun, red-mustachioed. “Rodney, it’s not what you think!”

Rodney had to work to get his lips to form words. “You…drank…a…cat.”

Athena threw the pitcher into the sink, wiped her face on a dishtowel, glanced at its red stains and hid it behind her back. “Let me explain—”

The kitchen began to spin, and phantom centrifugal force sucked any words Rodney might have spoken back down his throat. Floating away on the mental maelstrom, Rodney had his arm grabbed and was led to a chair. Once seated, the world stopped spinning with a gear-stripping clunk that Rodney felt in his head. Suddenly, everything was too clear. The bowl of blood was still on the sink. Cripes, he used that bowl for popcorn! And that smell — it would be on Athena’s breath. Rodney mewled as Athena stood over him. He put his hands up in a warding-off gesture, still clutching the bag of romantibles.

“Get away from me!”

“Don’t, Rodney. Please. I love you.”

Athena spoke with that voice she had, the one pitched just right to make Rodney’s heart thrum like a tuning fork. The fact that she was near tears made things worse. Sure, she drank a cat, but she was still the woman Rodney married. She was the woman whose hand he held. She was the woman who thought he was sensitive, not weak. She was the woman who wanted to start a family with him.

The words came out of Rodney’s mouth by reflex. “I love you, too—”

“For better or worse,” Athena said. “Remember?”

The weight of their wedding vows pulled Athena down as she spoke. The neck of her robe hung low, and she pulled it tight under her chin. She was always shy about her body, which was something Rodney found wonderful about her. Modest, she only gave him glimpses in gloom, saying their love was about who they were on the inside. Rodney was grateful for that because he wasn’t anything to look at from any side.

Rodney pointed a shaky finger at the sink. “But how can you explain that? Is it a kosher thing or something?”

Rodney was a Lutheran, but Athena expressed no opinion on such matters. He tried to get an idea of her beliefs while they dated, broaching subjects like heaven, hell and Romans chapter eight. When that didn’t work, he tried bringing up polarizing secular issues like abortion. Still nothing. Now that they were married, Athena attended church with him willingly enough, and she didn’t roll her eyes when he mentioned Jesus, but Rodney still had no idea what she believed.

“That’s right,” Athena said (too eagerly, Rodney thought). “It’s a religious thing.”

“What kind of a religious thing?” Rodney couldn’t think of many good answers that included cat drinking — zero, actually.

Athena turned a cold shoulder. “Why won’t you trust me?”

“I trust you,” Rodney stammered. “…but you drank a cat…”

“And how is that going to affect things?”

Athena’s matter-of-fact question caught Rodney off guard. He doubted any magazine articles covered the problem he now faced. How should he handle it? Take her to the doctor and have her stomach pumped? Take her to a psychologist? Rodney let Athena have her way with most things, but this wasn’t hogging the covers or spending too much money on shoes.

“I don’t know,” Rodney admitted. “Maybe I should call the pastor.” He wobbled his way to the phone on knees that felt cast from Jell-O molds.

“You shouldn’t,” Athena said.

“I have to call someone,” Rodney insisted. “This is a problem for me.”

Athena arrested Rodney’s motion with glittered eyes. The color of her eyes always reminded Rodney of a green beetle’s shell. He never told her that, of course. He was inexperienced with women but not naive enough to believe that any of them wanted their beauty compared to an insect’s carapace. Besides, it wasn’t the color of Athena’s eyes that Rodney now noticed. It was how he could never look into her eyes previously. They only reflected and never invited. But now Rodney saw something in their depths, something that bordered on ruthlessness. It was like seeing the object hidden inside those 3-D pictures — one moment a clever camouflage, the next a revelation.

Athena sighed. “I’m sorry it came to this, Rodney.”

And that’s when things got worse.

Athena’s mouth stretched open in a hiss. Her tongue rolled back and a fang telescoped out from underneath it. She shrugged off her robe, and a shriek highballed up Rodney’s throat when he got his first full naked glimpse of her. Athena had six arms. Two sets of spindly limbs unfolded from cunning seams around her rib cage. From what Rodney could tell, they were her rib cage in disguise. That’s why he never noticed in the dark. Athena aimed her abdomen at him and webbing shot out of her belly button. It landed across Rodney’s arm where it burned like acid, melting into his flesh. Athena pulled on the webbing, and Rodney found himself being dragged into her six arms with implacable strength. Her fang dripped amber poison.

Rodney screamed louder. His free arm grabbed and threw the first thing he could find. The bowl of cat’s blood hit Athena in the chest and spilled on the floor. Her slippers skittered in the mess and slipped out from underneath her. She fell and released the webbing. Rodney turned and ran, mindless in his desire to get away. He entered the utility bathroom and locked the door behind him.

“Cripes, my wife is a spider!” he whimpered.

The insane reality of that statement entered Rodney’s mind with all the violation of a suppository. Athena was no longer the woman he married. She was the spider he married. She was the spider whose hand (or was that hands?) he held. She was the spider who thought he was sensitive, not weak. She was the spider who wanted to start a family with him. That one-word change crumbled pillars of existence.

Rodney bent over the toilet, and vomit gushed. He gasped for breath and let the toilet seat cool his brow. He noticed he still clutched the bag of romantibles. He dropped it like it was hot. He had enough romance for a while.

Nausea became overshadowed by a different kind of illness. It was all gone now, lost in a way that even Rodney never could have imagined, and he had seen hopes fade with the regularity of pop songs in many different knee-to-the-gut ways. Yet, that one final hope never did go away — to be with someone and have a family, to chase children around a lawn and hear them cry, “Catch me mommy! Catch me daddy!”

Then along came Athena to make it all come true.

Then along came a spider to make it all—

“Come out, Rodney.”

Rodney’s head jerked up. Athena spoke from right outside the door. He looked around and realized his mistake. He trapped himself. The only way out was through that door. And Athena waited on the other side.

“I said, come out!”

Rodney noticed the webbing was still attached to his arm and trailed under the door. His eyes widened as the webbing went taut, and then he was jerked along the floor, skin squeaking across the tiles, cheek smashed up against the doorjamb. The pull on the webbing increased. Just when Rodney thought his face was going to punch through the door, the webbing tore free with a twang, taking a large chunk of skin with it. Blood poured down Rodney’s arm. No pain, though. The area felt injected with Novocain. He grabbed the hand towel and wrapped it around his wounded limb.

No sound from outside. Spiders waited, Rodney knew. They waited for prey to blunder into their webs. He remembered watching a nature show once that featured a breed of spider that preyed on ants by making itself look like an ant…

“Athena?” Rodney called. The name seemed so alien now. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m not going to do anything to you. Come out.”

Rodney’s eyes crawled over the half-bathroom, searching for a weapon. No plunger, not even a medicine cabinet. He never used the bathroom himself. It was Athena’s domain. Plastic flowers stood atop the toilet tank. Ceramic fish hung on the wall, mouths agape in sympathy. An air freshener and a bottle of soap stood on the sink. Rodney clawed open the sink’s cabinet. Maybe there was a can of Raid in it or something — nothing, just pipes and extra toilet paper.

“What are you doing, Rodney?”

The flowers on the toilet tank stuck out of a vase. Rodney grabbed it, thinking of bar fights and beer bottles. He threw the flowers away and hit the vase on the edge of the sink. It didn’t break. He hit it harder, mewling. It still didn’t break. Rodney raised the vase to shoulder level and brought it down again. The container exploded, leaving him with nothing more than its end cap. Porcelain shards littered the floor. Rodney spotted a piece behind the toilet the length of his finger. He got down on his knees to retrieve it. Once he held it, he realized just how pathetic a weapon it was; he tried not to weep. Weeping was something he gave up after marriage.

“Rodney?”

Athena still had that voice; only this time it made Rodney’s heart thrum with fear. His eyes rolled in trapped circles for an escape hatch and settled on—

Frowning, Rodney crawled to the open cabinet and took a closer look at the strange thing he spotted. Attached to the bottom of the sink, out of sight unless a person happened to be sitting on the floor weeping — it looked like a bunch of tennis balls. Rodney leaned in further and bit down on a curled finger to keep from gagging. They weren’t tennis balls. They were egg sacs — six of them. Something moved inside of them, their walls pressing in and out like beating hearts.

“No, no, no…” Rodney repeated and backed away from the sink. Drool fell from his slack mouth. “No way, huh-uh…”

“Come out, Rodney!”

The door shuddered in its frame.

“Come out now!”

The door buckled and bulged under Athena’s assault. The pounding came at a machinegun tempo. Athena had three times the normal number of arms to work with, after all. Rodney guessed he had a minute to think of a plan.

Amazingly, he did.

“I’m coming out.”

Rodney took a deep breath and looked in the mirror. The deep breath made him cough because the air was cloying with perfume. He washed his hands until he thought they might bleed. He didn’t think they’d ever feel clean again after what they just touched. For an absurd moment, Rodney remembered his first date with Athena, standing in front of the mirror just like this, preparing to meet a girl he got to know through the Internet personal ads. He tried to make everything about his appearance as perfect as possible even though it was a lost cause. His hair was too thin. His nose was too big. His face too narrow and chin nonexistent. Rodney got the feeling today was a lost cause, too, but the moment finally comes when all a person can do is go out there. They are who they are and that must be enough.

Jesus, God, help…

“You said you were coming out, Rodney.”

“Back away from the door!” he cried. “I mean it!”

“Fine.”

Rodney lit a candle with the complimentary book of matches the cashier of the candle store gave him. It was pink with a heart on it. Inside the cover it said, I’m burning for you. He picked up the romantibles bag and opened the door.

Athena, face lowered and glowering through her eyebrows, wore her bathrobe again. Rodney always liked it best when she was dressed casual. It made him forget she was a goddess and remember she was human.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

“If you touch me, they burn.” Rodney held the candle under the romantibles bag. The smell of perfume went before him in an almost tangible wave.

Athena tensed. “Who will burn?”

“Your eggs. I found them.” Rodney shook the bag, and the egg sacs jostled inside, resting on layers of toilet paper soaked with perfume — flammable perfume. He held the candle in a tight fist, its flame ready to set the bag alight at a moment’s notice.

Athena’s face went from glowering to distraught.

“I’m going out the door,” Rodney tried to inject toughness into his voice, but the plastic flowers in the bathroom were more convincing. “I’ll leave the bag on the step.”

“I can’t let you go.” Even though Athena’s eyes were green, they seemed to flash red. “You’ll tell someone. They might even believe you.”

“Who’s going to believe my wife is a were-spider?” Rodney asked. “I’ll tell them we got a divorce. They all thought you were out of my league anyway.”

Despite Rodney’s leverage, Athena stepped closer.

Stricken, Rodney brought the candle nearer the bag. “I’m warning you!”

“Would you kill your own children?”

Rodney’s face worked like he took an illegal punch.

“That’s right,” Athena nodded. “It takes two.” She held out an arm — just one this time. “Give them to me, Rodney.”

A sensation of falling swept through Rodney’s chest. “My children?”

Catch me, mommy! Catch me, daddy!

“I won’t hurt you,” Athena said with that voice.

Rodney found himself deep inside Athena’s eyes for the second time that day, and a memory glinted in their depths — the night she whispered his name over and over in his ear until he fell asleep. Only a woman could do that, not a spider. Whatever horror Athena was, she was still the closest Rodney had ever come to happiness. Everything before her was emptiness, and that’s all he had waiting for him even if he did make it out the door. For better or worse, Rodney set the bag on the table.

Athena snatched it up, rushed to the sink and ran water over the eggs. “The perfume might make them sick,” she explained.

Rodney sagged once Athena’s gaze ceased to hold him up. “What are you?”

“We blend in,” Athena said. “It’s everywhere in the animal kingdom — predator and prey disguising themselves to survive. Yet, people never guess that something could be blending in with them. They think it only happens in the jungle, not in the suburbs.”

“Which are you?” Rodney’s voice wavered. “Predator or prey?”

Athena faced him. “We hunt, but if the world ever learned we existed, we’d be hunted. Regardless, I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Because you care?” Rodney marveled at that part of himself that still desperately seized the smallest reason and dared to hope things could work out. He never realized just how blurred the line could get between optimistic…and pathetic.

“Caring makes it harder. If it means anything, you’re the hardest one yet.”

A lump welled up in Rodney’s throat. Athena had told him he was the only man she had ever been with. “There have been others?”

Athena nodded.

“Why am I the hardest?”

Athena drew closer. “Because they never saw it coming. They got to be happy for a little while after being lonely for so long, and then it was over for them without them knowing anything even happened. Just a little sting in their sleep and that was all.”

Rodney tried to back into the wall. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I won’t.” Athena gestured toward the egg sacs in the sink. “You’re for them. They won’t hatch for another week. Until then, I’ll wrap you up like a casserole in the fridge.” The fang telescoped out of Athena’s mouth, and her breath smelled like a carrion pit as she leaned in. At that point, the marriage unavoidably fizzled.

Rodney reached into his pocket, pulled out the porcelain shard and stabbed it underneath Athena’s chin. Screams and blue blood. Athena’s extra arms sprung out from under her robe, and she threw Rodney across the kitchen.

Athena removed the piece of porcelain from her flesh and snarled around her gleaming tooth. Her eyes turned red. “Come here, little fly!”

Rodney tried to dodge her webbing, but it snagged his collarbone. Six arms yanked, and Rodney’s stocking feet slid across the tiles. Knowing he had no chance, he charged, putting his shoulder into Athena’s gut. The webbing went slack. Rodney tried to run and an extra hand snatched his ankle. He grabbed the edge of the sink and kicked free of the alien grip. Meanwhile, the double sink was right under his nose. The egg sacs pulsed on one side. The cat-drinking utensils cluttered the other.

Athena got to her feet and lunged, her many arms spread. She looked like the giant hand of Satan closing in. Rodney grabbed the butcher knife out of the sink and spun around as Athena reached him. The blade sank into her malformed chest up to the hilt. The fury abruptly went out of her, and her eyes searched Rodney’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Rodney said.

Athena staggered backwards and into the refrigerator. Magnets clattered to the floor, and a note that said Buy Twinkies fluttered to her feet.

“Weak,” she gasped. “That’s why I picked you, Rodney. Weak is safe. You have to find a safe place if you want to blend in. But you only look weak.” A genuine smile creased Athena’s face at the end. “You blend in, too…” And then she collapsed.

Rodney dropped the knife and turned away from her crumpled form. Wailing and lunatic laughter jammed up in his throat.

Meanwhile, the egg sacs pulsed in the sink, defenseless, and the switch for the garbage disposal was on the wall. Rodney stood there as the setting sun threw slanting rays into the kitchen. The rays contained no warmth. Their shafts seemed hard as prison bars. The clock ticked. In an alternate reality, Rodney should be getting home soon, and Athena should ask him about his day. Athena laid silent on the floor, however…

Horror and emptiness. Strength and weakness. Better or worse.

“Her,” Rodney said. “Predator.”

“Me,” Rodney said. “Prey.”

Night fell as his tears fell on the eggs.

“Them,” Rodney whispered at last. “Family…”