Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss

“Okay, Stag. You can play your game, but I’m right next door in the bedroom. I hear one peep out of that girl and I’ll be here in a second. So keep it above the belt, baby.” He got up, carried his drink into the bedroom, and closed the door. He did not hear Stag place the chair under the knob and force it tight, effectively locking the door.

When Marlene came out of the bathroom her face was radiant. Stag was sitting on the sofa, and he smiled his best lithographed poster smile. “C’mon over and sit down, Marlene.”

A quick scurry of alarm passed her features, and then she shook it off as she was enveloped by the glamour of the suite, the nearness of Stag Preston. She sat down beside him. His arm went over the back of the sofa. Again the scurrying of frightened feelings. Then he talked to her. Slowly, cajolingly, interestingly, getting nearer.

When he leaned down and kissed her, she was startled at first, not because he had done it, but because Stag Preston, after all Stag Preston , was also human. In a moment, though, she reacted, and it was pleasant. She cooperated.

Right up to the moment he tried to slide his hand inside the front of her peasant blouse. Then she heard the alarm bells and tried to remove his hand. But Stag Preston was not a fumbling adolescent in a movie house balcony. He was Stag Preston, the king of the rock’n’roll singers, a voice in his time, a figure to be contended with—and what was more, he knew how teen-agers thought. He knew this chick wanted some kicks, he knew she was only trying to put him off so he wouldn’t think she was a tramp, he knew there wasn’t a girl built like her in this day and age who hadn’t gotten it somewhere along the line. He knew , because he’d seen them, every day, the little chippies dancing on the tv rock’n’roll shows. He’d seen them flipping their bodies at him. He knew how depraved kids were today.

After all, wasn’t he a kid, and wasn’t he the same way?

Which was what bothered him about the way this Marlene was fighting. She wasn’t making noise … a grunt or a gasp or two, like that, but mostly silently, mostly real intensely trying to pry his hand off her tit. She had him by the wrist, and she strained, her face white with terror—too melodramatic, as far as Stag was concerned. She was putting it on. She was only giving him a hard time, and after all the easy lays he’d had, that only made Marlene more interesting. A little fight always helped to juice a guy up.

He struggled with her.

For a moment there was only the sound of her grunts of exertion, soft uh’s and half murmured please’s as she wrestled with him on the sofa. Then she got her face away from his, her breath pulling deeply, rasping. “P-please, please , Sta—Mr. Preston … d-don’t, uh, p-puh-please…”

“Aw, now sheet , chick! Don’t put me on like that … uh … god dam it, take it easy, stop pullin’ like that, it’s gonna be nice … come on dammit! Knock that crap off!”

He shoved her heavily, annoyed at the way it was going, and that did it. Marlene was not a virgin; Stag had been correct, she had known boys. But they had done it in clandestine ways, in furtive places, and she was a virgin in attitude. It was the 1961 code of ethics. Give it away but only after you’ve convinced your conscience that you love the guy, that he loves you, that it’s wonderful, not quick and sloppy. But Stag was pushing it; the thinking had not been right—the attitude had not been given enough time to switch. She was capable of being made … but not this way. She wavered, and would have relented, soon, but he forced her.

She went back over the line.

It was as though she had never been touched before.

The virgin screamed.

Then she jammed her thumb into Stag’s eye. Her peasant blouse ripped down the front as Stag lurched away, his hand still caught in the thin fabric. It ripped down with a harsh sound and revealed the pink and black lace brassiere she wore. Half-aroused and half-infuriated Stag came back at her, one hand at his eye, the other groping for the girl.

She tried to pull the ripped blouse across her chest, and it only accentuated her body the more. She shouldn’t ’a done that ! was all Stag could think, the words crimson against a crimson background emblazoned on a crimson field of blood that backed his eyes. He reached.

He caught her by the ponytail and dragged her up against him, and she got her nails into one cheek, ripping down, leaving three blood-welling furrows and one shorter, shallower one where her little finger had traveled ripping through the skin. Stag howled.

In the bedroom, Shelly heard her first scream, and the Scotch spattered against the wall as he dropped the glass and leaped to the door. He wrenched at the knob and shoved inward but it only bowed slightly, and would not give. He threw himself against it, realizing Stag had barricaded the door, and terror flicked like a running greyhound through his mind as he heard Stag bellow in pain, then the rip of something tearing, and shorter more painful shrieks as Stag did something to the girl.

“Open this door! Open the door, you sonofabitch !" he screamed, slamming his fist against the solid paneling. “Stag! Stop it, stop it you bastard, let her alone! Open this goddam effing door, you stupid rotten— open this DOOR!”

In the living room Stag took his hand from his reddened, watering eye, and wrapped it in the material of what was left of the peasant blouse. He put one hand in the girl’s face and shoved her as hard as he could. The blouse ripped away completely, leaving two huge strips hanging down her back and a fistful of fabric in Stag’s hand. She screamed again, very high, like a bird in pain, and stumbled back against the wall. Red welts appeared on her skin. There was open, unhindered terror in her face. The red hair was flying loose now, the body a hopeless, unmuscled jumble of thrashing legs and arms.

“Stag! Open the door !" Shelly bellowed as he threw his shoulder against the paneling. Unlike the movies where it seemed so easy, he bounced back, a shattering pain in his shoulder. He hit it again and once more rebounded. A third time, a fourth. One of the panels began to bow outward, then split. He launched himself at it again, fanatically, lost in any thought but getting out into the next room where the screams were coming closer together—like labor pains.

Stag advanced on the girl and wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug. She tried to bite him, pleading incoherently now, not giving a damn if he was Stag Preston, out of her mind with horror at the mauling and the blood all over her— but mostly his blood. They wrestled for a moment, stumbling backward, just as the paneling of the bedroom door shattered and Shelly’s face appeared in it.

The publicist took one look and his face went white as the shock wave of violence smashed him. He screamed wordlessly, and ripped at the chair blocking the knob. It fell away.

Stag and the girl caromed off the wall, still locked in each other’s arms, her legs covered with abrasions and blood from where he had tried to wrap his legs about her. They hit the wall a second time, bounced off it and fell back, striking the French doors leading to the balcony.

They crashed the doors open, snapping the delicate tiny lock-decoration and thrashed out onto the small balcony over Broadway. He had a grip on her shoulders, was digging his fingers into the white flesh where the blouse had torn away, and this time all the songs in the world could not win this girl for him.

Shelly reached through and turned the knob, came storming into the living room just as—