Caught in the Web Emmy Ellis (best ereader for textbooks txt) 📖

listened to his gut. Those memes had told him to do that. To love himself. Search for what he wanted and go for it. An inner calling, some might say, but he preferred to think of it as a careful inspection of his goals in life, his aims, and realising that the unconventional was the path for him when things got to be too much. That he was an odd duck in an alien pond and should embrace it rather than try to be someone he wasn’t.

Whoever had written those sage pieces of advice, putting them in handwritten font onto a background usually showing a calm and reassuring scene, were geniuses. He followed a Facebook page that posted an inspiring quote every day. Downloaded them onto his phone where he saved them in his images folder so he could look at them if things weren’t going well. They brought him back into happiness mode again for a while, but they couldn’t compare to what he’d just done, what he’d accomplished.

Sleep had eluded him so far. Since leaving Anita Jane Curtis on her cobblestone stage, he’d been wired, ready to party, dance like no one was watching, but no clubs were open at this time of the morning. So he’d returned home and danced on his Chinese rug in front of the fireplace, scrunching his toes on the flattened pile and sipping fake champagne. The bubbles, how they’d gone up his nose. The taste of the celebratory drink was long gone, though. Toothpaste sat in its place on his tongue, and the sweat of the night’s exertions, as well as dancing, had been washed away in his shower. He smelled of Anita Jane Curtis’ flowery bodywash and spicy perfume, mementoes he’d taken from her house last week along with her toothbrush.

The bristles had been soft on his gums earlier.

The crash of his high was gripping him now, though. Fatigue crept into his body, its stealth taking him by surprise. He allowed his muscles to relax, his mind to drift as he closed his eyes on the city scene. Maybe he’d wake up to bright sunshine—the sunshine after the storm. That was what Anita Jane Curtis had been. His life just prior to meeting her had been tumultuous, thunder and lightning emotions ravaging his mind, rain soaking his face with salty droplets, the electrical buzz of a tornado whipping around him. For the sixteen years prior to that, it had been serene. Normal. But all his life before that… Well, best he didn’t think about it.

The sun was definitely out now—maybe not beyond the window, but in his flat, in him. Warming. Comforting. A glow that couldn’t be surpassed.

Sleep. There it was, drifting along on gentle slippered feet, tucking him in and kissing his forehead. Singing a lullaby that soothed him. Stroking his cheek until nothing else mattered except surrendering to it.

Beautiful. So bloody beautiful.

“Fuck my life,” she said. “And fuck you.”

He blinked, tears prickling.

“I think you’re such an ugly little fucker.”

Curling her top lip, she loomed over him, breasts spilling out of a red low-cut top, great mounds of flesh he’d never had as comforting pillows during the times he’d been afraid. Her brown hair was styled in a blunt bob, the ends reaching her jawline, the fringe dead straight. Why couldn’t she have lovely blonde wavy hair like that fairy godmother in the story he’d read at Gran’s the other day?

“You need to go to bed. Get out of my face.”

He trembled, not knowing whether she meant now or if he should wait for her usual signal. Going too soon would mean a slap around the face or a painful kick up the arse, the toe of her trademark stilettos connecting with his tailbone. He was always bruised there. Always sore.

“Do you know,” she said, “how much I wish you weren’t here?”

He knew. She told him often enough.

“Do you know how much I wish I’d never listened to your gran and had you?”

He knew that, too.

“Oh, piss off. Go on. Just. Piss. Off.”

She held an arm out, pointing towards the door.

The signal.

He turned and left the living room, walking without any rush, and quietly, as he’d been taught. It wouldn’t be good to run—running created too much noise and had the neighbours thumping on the dividing wall.

Drawing attention wasn’t allowed.

The stairs seemed too long a journey, each step taking him away from her too slow. He needed his bedroom as much as he needed a hug, and the only one he’d get in this house waited for him there, in the form of his thin quilt, the cover decorated with images of spiders. He’d hated it at first—she’d bought it to scare him—but he’d had no choice and had just needed to get used to it. Accept the critters as friends.

The Spider Incident still chilled him. She’d shouted for him to ‘come and kill the little bastard’, knowing he was afraid of them. She wasn’t—he’d seen her pick one up with no trouble and deposit it outside in the garden. He’d gone into the kitchen and stared at the creature, which had sat on the wall beside the fridge as though it belonged there. Large, it had been so large, the size of his palm, its leg span far too long for his liking. The body had been the worst of it.

Fat. Meaty. Hairy.

“Take that out into the garden,” she’d whispered.

Don’t think about that anymore.

He shivered, pushing it from his mind.

The urge to rush up the stairs took over now, and he went faster, but not fast enough that she’d follow him, whispering in that sinister way that if he didn’t tread carefully she’d smack the shit out of him. And he’d have to endure any punishment in silence—no crying out for him, no