Tony DiTerlizzi, "WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?" SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY...

#00 Venomous

"Will you walk into my parlour," says a fifteen-year-old Scout DeWitt, her voice a birdsong that refuses to break, even over the sound of her mother's frantic packing and her sister's endless tears. "says a spider to a fly. 'Tis the prettiest little parlour that you ever did spy."

Entranced by her sister's voice, Spencer—barely eleven—stops crying. Scout looks down to her, forcing a smile as she wipes a tear from the girl's cheek. What Scout has in common with her father is brutality; what Spencer has is blood. She looks far too much like Dexter DeWitt for Scout's liking. Spot the difference—you couldn't. They had the same mouth, the same nose.

If they had the same look of fear, Scout did not know. She had never seen her father with the emotion Spencer wore on her face. She had never seen her father with any emotion at all.

Perhaps, except, anger.

"The way into my parlour is up a winding stair, and I have many pretty things to show when you are there." Taking her sister's hand, Scout leads her away from the living room, where their mother kneels by the bookshelf. For the past four years, Shiori Sato had been collecting valuables, stockpiling them within the cut-out pages of her books and hiding them in the many nooks and crevices of the apartment. It didn't matter what it was she hid, as long as it could be sold—necklaces, bracelets, rings, the various artefacts and trinkets her husband brought to her in lieu of love. She did not care for these presents nor for their attached sentiment; she cared only for what they could bring her and her daughters.

In this case, it was a new life. A new life far, far away from Dexter DeWitt, one that would be bought and sold in the halogen-lit front room of a pawn shop on the edge of town.

That was the plan. Raid the apartment of all that could be resold and get the fuck out. Start running and never stop—never look back.

"Oh, no, no! said the little fly, to ask me is in vain. For who goes up your winding stair—"

Spencer finishes the verse's line as they reach the bedroom they share. "—can never come down again."

"Good." Scout drops her sister's hand and sits her down on the bottom bunk—Scout's bed, since Spencer begged for the top mattress—and steps away. Her back turned, she pulls open the drawers of Spencer's dresser, grabbing her clothes and stuffing them unceremoniously into a bag. Spencer has her favourites—her leaf-green raincoat, her beetle-and-butterfly-printed tights—but Scout must be mercenary.

She packs the necessities. Nothing more, nothing less. Survival comes first; once they're out of the city, the state, the country—and they're set up somewhere new—Scout will buy her sister a thousand raincoats and tights to make up for the ones she must leave behind. Spencer isn't the only one who has to go without; Scout's precious cello must remain, too. "I'm sure you must be weary, with soaring up so high. Will you rest upon my little bed? said the spider to the fly. There are pretty curtains drawn around, the sheets are fine and thin. And if you'd like to rest a while, I'll snugly tuck you in."

Scout wants to tuck her sister in. Wants to wrap her up in a cocoon and spin its silk strong and sturdy so the world may never touch her.

"Stop, Scout." Spencer begins to cry again. "I don't wanna go."

Oh, no, no! said the little fly, Scout finishes in her head, for I've often heard it said, they never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed.

"We have to go, Spence."

"I wanna stay with Dad."

Like venom, the word Dad paralyses. Dexter DeWitt is many things, but he has never been Dad. "No you don't, baby. C'mon. If you stop crying, you can take one of your favourite dresses with you."

"Scout—" Spencer begins to whine, but Scout cuts her off.

"C'mon, Spence, you gotta choose. Or I'm gonna choose for you—I'm gonna choose the ugliest dress you have and then you're gonna be stuck wearing that forever."

Silence.

"Forever and ever," Scout emphasised.

Spencer, childishly horrified at the idea of her older sister's fashion sense, is up in an instant, practically shoving her away from the dresser. Scout continues the poem as she scans the room for anything else she might need, the words more for herself now than for her sister.

Said the cunning spider to the fly, "Dear friend, what shall I do,
To prove the warm affection I've always felt for you?
I have, within my pantry, good store of all that's nice;
I'm sure you're very welcome – will you please to take a slice?"
"Oh no, no!" said the little fly, "kind sir, that cannot be,"
I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see."

Scout retrieves her knives from the top drawer of her desk. Slender and needle-like, she counts them, one by one, ensuring every piece of her collection is in its place. Her father—Dexter, Dad, the Huntsman—has always favoured his poisons, but knives come a close second; creative if nothing else, he often combined the two, coating his blades in vicious concoctions developed in the privacy of his personal lab.

Scout has seen the test subjects. Often, the flesh wound kills before the toxin can, but her father has perfected the art of drawn-out death. One such death stands out to Scout: one of her father's marks, a nameless, faceless man who had committed a grievance against someone equally anonymous—someone equally anonymous who had then sought out the Huntsman to exact revenge in exchange for a small fortune.

Scout had come home to find a chair in the kitchen, strayed from the matching suite that held court in the dining room. In that chair was a man, bound and gagged. Seeing Scout, who was then barely eleven, his eyes had widened and through the cloth balled between his teeth he tried to cry for help.

She could not help, even if she wanted to.

Her father had slipped past her, wielding a knife as thin as paper. Scout had half-expected him to force the blade into her hands, coerce his precious protégé into taking the cut. The Web was a family business, after all. But that night, he had wanted Scout to watch.

To witness.

The first cut was upon the man's forearm. The second, this throat. Neither wounds were deep enough to kill him immediately. But killing the man quickly, mercifully, had never been the Huntsman's intention. In Scout's experience, mercy never was.

Loxosceles laeta, known as the Chilean recluse spider, possessed tissue-destroying venom. As do the rest of its kind—this is what Dexter DeWitt tells his daughter as he wipes the blood off his knife. The venom, with its effects accelerated by his numerous experiments, will produce necrotic lesions. The man in the chair is in for a painful death. His cells will die and his skin will rot.

And we, Dexter said, placing a hand on his daughter's shoulder, will watch.

Scout can remember the sight of these wounds. Black, like bruises, rapidly-forming and rapidly-spreading, crawling up the man's arm and neck like a thousand tiny ants on their way to feast upon a bigger insect's corpse. The knife wounds should have killed him quickly, but the venom—much like its creator—likes to take its time. It eats his victim slowly, bite by bite, cell by cell. Finally, the rot reaches his bloodstream, and his bloodstream carries it to his heart.

"Sweet creature!" said the spider, "you're witty and you're wise.
How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!
I have a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf,
If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself."
"I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you're pleased to say,
And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day."

The Loxosceles laeta, funnily enough, is not an aggressive species. They have been observed to exist peacefully, occupying the corners and crannies of human homes without causing any problems. It is only in the hands of the Huntsman that they become deadly, that they become killers, that their venom makes a man's body eat itself alive.

Scout wonders if the venom of the Loxosceles laeta is what Dexter uses now, what he coats his knives in before he slices open Eiken Ito's skin. Scout can imagine that, in his anger, Dexter will focus on Eiken's face, the point of his blade following the sharp lines of Eiken's cheekbones, the sharper angles of his jaw. The lesions are as clear to Scout as they would be if it were her under the cut, if it were her bloodstream the L. laeta toxin would be entering and not her mother's lover's.

Shiori Sato could not find love in her husband, nor in the gifts he brought her. So she found it in Eiken Ito instead, a soft-spoken man with gentle hands and a gentler smile.

She found it in Eiken Ito, and now he will die.

If Dexter DeWitt returns before his family are able to escape, they will die, too.

The spider turned him round about, and went into his den,
For well he knew, the silly fly would soon come back again.

What had Dexter said that day?

I am venomous, he'd prefaced, his hand on her shoulder. As are the rest of my kind.

As are you.

But she wasn't one of his kind, was she? That was why Eiken Ito had to die. Because he had known Shiori Sato since they were children, loved her since they were teenagers. Because the lines of his face were just like Scout's, sharp here and sharper there. Because unlike her sister Spencer, the only thing Scout had in common with Dexter DeWitt was his brutality.

The only blood they shared was the blood they spilled.

Scout had no time to think of her parentage, of her mother's mistakes and the man—her father, who now probably existed in the past tense only—she had made them with.

So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner, sly,
And set his table ready, to dine upon the fly.

Spencer waves the dress she's chosen in Scout's face, drawing her sister back to the task at hand. Scout takes the dress and shoves it into the bag. Then, she zips it up and slings it over her shoulder. One hand holds Spencer's, the other holds the knives. "Let's go back to mom now, baby. She's gonna tell us where we're going for our trip."

"I don't wanna go on a trip, Scout."

"We can go somewhere sunny." Scout brushes off her sister's complaints as she tugs her out of the bedroom. Out of habit, she closes the door behind them—and with a click their childhood, or whatever constituted it, is gone. "You've never been to a beach before, Spence, but I know you'd love it."

"Scout, I don't wanna go." A pause. Spencer peers up at Scout. "And I don't know how to swim."

"I'll teach you." They reach the living room, but the moment Scout crosses through the doorway she knows something is wrong. Their mother is nowhere to be seen.

"I wanna stay with Dad," Spencer says again.

"Good," a voice echoes from behind. Panic grips Scout by the throat as she spins around to face the man she thought to be her father, the big bad Huntsman in the ever-violent flesh. He dwarfs Scout by a foot, and his youngest—only—daughter and wife are even smaller in comparison. Betrayal looks brutal upon his features—because that is what they have done. Betrayed him. Shiori first in her adultery, however justified; then Scout, by merely existing. Spencer was the only innocent one in all of this, but that wouldn't change a thing. A backstab was a backstab; you were going to bleed regardless of who buried that blade between your bones.

You were going to bleed regardless. The question was: were you going to make them bleed with you?

The only thing Scout had in common with Dexter DeWitt was his brutality, and the only blood they shared was the blood they spilled. No-one said it couldn't be her own.

"You're not going anywhere," Dexter says, and beside him stands his wife. Shiori's face is splotchy, both from crying and the bright red welt that blooms across the side of her face. Judging by the look in Dexter's eyes, Scout doesn't think her mother will live long enough to see it bruise.

Scout doesn't think she will, either.

Then he went out to his door again, and merrily did sing,
"Come hither, hither, pretty fly, with the pearl and silver wing;
Your robes are green and purple—there's a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead."

In the corner of her eye, Scout can see the television. Muted, it still plays its broadcast from earlier this morning: there are aliens in New York, like the Incident (with a capital I) of 2012. But instead of mindless footsoldiers, they are intelligent—they serve a higher purpose. This news update is a viewer-submitted video of the Sanctum Sanctorum in New York City, where one of the aliens—a greyish, husk-like thing—challenges Doctor Strange.

The invasion, though no doubt causing mass panic, was meant to have worked to the Satos' advantage. With Dexter pursuing Eiken and his men securing assets in New York, this would have been—should have been—the perfect distraction to cover a perfect escape.

Who cares if the world is ending? Scout DeWitt certainly does not. All that matters to her is the little girl that cowers behind her, and the little girl that cowers inside: the little girl she was before Dexter DeWitt began to spin his Web, the little girl she was before Dexter DeWitt took her childhood and turned it inside out.

The little girl she was before her father turned her into a killer.

Because, brutality and blood—or the lack thereof—aside, that was what Dexter DeWitt was, and what he would always be. Her father.

And she would always be his daughter, whether she liked it or not. Wasn't that always the way?

"Now I know, Scarlett, that this isn't your fault." Dexter flexes his hands, and Scout can see the blood that stains his fingertips. Who does it belong to, she wonders. Is it Eiken's? (What she means, is: is it hers?) "What your mother has done, I mean. Or, should I say—whom she has done. For the past fifteen years, as it turns out." Dexter pauses, then, and turns to his wife. The silver in his hair glints in the overhead light. "Is Spencer mine? Or am I childless?"

The only thing Scout had in common with Dexter DeWitt was his brutality, and apparently even blood wasn't enough.

"She's yours," Shiori said, her lower lip quivering. Then she goes silent.

"Right. Well," Dexter looks back to Scout and Spencer, "I don't blame you, Scarlett. And I don't love you any less, despite the realisations that have dawned upon me today: bastards never asked to be born. And bastard or otherwise, you've always been mine, and you always will be. You and your sister both."

Scout says nothing.

"You might have his blood, but it's me that brought you up. Me that made you who you are, what you are. Do you know what you are?"

She has a million answers. Your weapon. Your daughter.

Your kind.

"You're like me. You always have been, regardless of blood or breeding."

I am venomous. As are the rest of my kind. As are you.

"Am I?" Scout finally asks.

"You are," Dexter confirms. "So you're going to do something for me."

Reflexively, Scout nods. This is her life, and it always has been. One thing after another; one thing, one task, one kill. Anything her father asks, anything he orders.

"You're going to kill your whore of a mother, and then you're going to pack your and Spencer's things and you're going to come with me."

"No," Scout says abruptly. "I won't."

Dexter disregards this. "Pass me one of your knives, girl." He says it casually, as if he's only asking her to pass the butter at the dinner table—as if this is just another day for the DeWitt family, as if this is perfectly normal behaviour. "I said, pass me a knife."

She does as told. Out comes a blade. It gleams in the light. Glares. Scout's hand, now empty, comes to rest idly at her side. "I won't do it."

"You will."

"I won't."

"Yes, you will. You are my daughter and you will do as you are told."

It calls Scout back to her first kill. A man in a dark room, weak, whimpering. It was easy to kill him, to take the knife her father offered her. It was easier still to let the knife fly from her fingertips—as if it had a mind of its own and it wasn't Scout that made it kill that man, made it bury itself in the centre of his skull.

He had been begging for mercy up until the exact moment the blade pierced his flesh.

Shiori will not beg for mercy. Scout, who doesn't know her father, isn't sure she knows her mother either. But she knows Shiori will not beg. Her husband is a killer and he always has been; she is disposable and was marked for a victim the moment they met. She's already dead and she has been for a while.

Spencer will beg, though. Scout can sense the implication, as tangible and tender as flesh caught between teeth—if she does not do what she's been instructed to, it will be her sister that suffers the consequences. Spencer will beg; she will beg and sob and cry those snotty, childish tears, and even as her sister carves her into a corpse she will not understand what is happening to her, or why. Scout inhales sharply as she feels a tiny hand take hers—she looks over her shoulder to see Spencer looking up at her, her brown eyes as big as a grave, her fingers curled around Spencer's.

Her hands are so small. So clean.

"I won't do it."

In an instant, Dexter has grabbed Shiori and crushed her against his chest, one hand keeping her in place while the other presses Scout's knife to her throat. Shiori squeezes her eyes shut; she's a small little thing, an intricate beauty with features far too delicate for a man like Dexter, who bruises—breaks—everything he touches.

Scout, perhaps in spite of her birth, is made of something stronger. She always has been.

"I've wasted my last fifteen years with this woman. Don't make my last fifteen years wasted on you, too."

Scout opens her mouth to reply, but she's cut off by a whisper, a tug at her sleeve. "Scout, I'm scared." Spencer is smart enough to try to whisper, but her words are audible to everyone in the room. Her hands shake. "Scout, I want to go now. Please. Scout, I want to go."

Scout doesn't turn around. She just stares at her father, meets the eyes that she now realises do not resemble her own. "We'll get going in a second, Spence. Just give me a moment to figure this all out."

"Scout, I want to go. Please. I want to go."

Scout's frustration is a timebomb ticking down. "I know, Spencer. Just give me a second."

"Scout—"

Tick, tick tick. "Spence—"

"I wanna—"

"Spencer, shut up." Boom. Scout snaps, and her sister whimpers, and then she is silent. Scout can't bear to look at her, to see the hurt on her face—so she doesn't. She just watches her father, watches the knife, watches the blood beading thin and bright at her mother's throat.

"You can't make me hurt her." Alas, alas! How very soon this silly little fly, hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by.

"I can and I will. Like calls to like, filth teaches filth. You are what I've made you."

I am venomous.

"You'll never make me your daughter."

As are the rest of my kind.

"Excuse me?" The knife at Shiori's throat only presses harder. Scout can feel the weapon as if it's in her own hand. She can feel her mother's body, feel the tension in her flesh as it waits for the cut. That's all she is—flesh. Flesh and blood, the only currencies that Dexter has ever really cared about. Money is nothing if your wife welcomes another man into your marriage bed.

"You'll never make me your daughter," Scout repeats. "You can hurt her as much as you like. You can split her clean open, I don't give a fuck. Do you know why?"

Dexter was not expecting this resistance—or any resistance, at all. Why would he?

"Why?" he asks. His voice is cold, but curious.

"Her blood you spill—that's the same blood that flows through me. And none of it is yours. Not one fucking drop." With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew. Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue—thinking only of her crested head, poor foolish thing! "You can kill us all. Fill us with poison or shoot us point-blank. That doesn't change the fact that another man fucked your wife and you had no damn clue."

At last up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast.

"Look at my face, Dad. Do you see yourself?"

Dexter said nothing. What was there to say? She had never seen him with any emotion on his face. She had never seen him with any emotion at all—except anger. But he could not even bring himself to be angry.

"You can make me a killer. But I'll never be your kin. Not really. Can you live with that?" She was damning her mother to death; Scout knew that. But neither Scout nor Shiori could pretend, not even for a second, that Scout wouldn't trade her mother for Spencer's safety. She'd do it in a heartbeat. She'd do it without hesitation. "Do what you want to Mom. But you'll let me and Spencer leave. Because if you really believe you and I are so similar, then you know what I'm capable of. You know what I'd do to protect my family—my real family. Spencer."

Spencer.

With the absence of her voice or her father's, the apartment is silent. Spencer has stopped crying. And she's let go of Scout's hand.

Scout turns around, and the next moments pass in slow motion.

There are ashes where her sister once was—there is dust. Scout feels Spencer's hand crumble to nothing between her fingers, greying and fragmenting and then disappearing entirely.

Scout turns back to her parents. Even Dexter looks horrified.

Looks human.

Scout opens her mouth to speak, to scream, to cry—but nothing comes out. Something inside her shifts, changes, shatters, and she looks down at her hands only to see that they're crumbling too, and the world is growing dark, and the world is dark, and—

She's gone.

The last thing Scout sees is the knife, its blade glistening red as it draws across her mother's throat.

🕸

He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,
Within his little parlour—but she ne'er came out again!

The world is dark. The world is dark, dark, dark, and then—

Scout blinks alive and she's back in the apartment, hand outstretched to stop the blood that's about to spurt forth from her mother's throat. But she blinks again and her mother is gone; where Shiori Sato and Dexter DeWitt stood just moments before is empty space, a darkened foyer with no woman, no man, in sight.

And now, dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed.

The apartment is completely empty. The walls are a different colour—white, when Scout remembers painting them a pale yellow when they first moved in—and the furniture is gone. The couch they'd picked out from the catalogue on their first night here, the shelves where her mother had tucked away her valuables, the dining table and its matching chairs, one of which Dexter had dragged into the kitchen to tie that man to so many years ago.

But it's all gone. So is Dexter.

And her sister is—her sister is right beside her. Face wet with tears and voice saturated just the same. Scout leans down and hugs her wordlessly. Spencer's sobs fill the apartment, like they have so many times before—and even though Scout can't explain what just happened, or why, she can feel in her bones that something has changed.

Dexter is gone. And he is right—he is venomous, and so are the rest of his kind.

But Scout is not his kind.

Unto an evil counsellor, close heart, and ear, and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.

She never was.

🕸  it is 3am and i did not proofread this. we die like men. i will edit in the morning. please excuse any typos and if you think that scout and spencer's names should be switched around at points, you're probably right.

🕸  errors aside, i hope you enjoyed the prologue. unspun will pick up in chapter one, post-blip. let me know what you thought 🥰🥰 all comments and votes are appreciated!