Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss

Stag tried to pull her close, to drag her back inside, but she shoved against him, as hard as she could; she was redolent of an animal fear that only signaled she had to stay out of his reach. He tripped on his own feet and his grip on her broke … the force of her pushing against him hurled her backward, and she hit the low balcony railing with her buttocks; the force of her fury to remain untouched pulled her up onto the railing and for a moment she flailed there, her arms now reaching for her idol, Stag Preston, to help her regain balance.

He took a confused half-step toward her, even as the scream came silently, filling her eyes with endless wide-open falling, and then the force of her backward fall threw her weight across the railing, and in a flash of legs she went over and was gone.

From where Shelly stood, transfixed, in the middle of the living room, he could hear her screams, all the way to the sidewalk.

It sounded like a ride-out ending to a rock’n’roll number.

Time hung suffocating. It did not move though it struggled inwardly, to grasp air, to reach sanity. Then, in an instant,

everything moved:

Stag fell backward, his eyes maddened, wide, bloody, unbelieving, hot and frantic, utter disbelief on his face, a rag of peasant blouse still in his hand. His other hand was in mid air, at the point where it had rested on her shoulder when she’d pulled loose. He bumbled forward, staring down into the street, in clear view from below, and Shelly could hear other screams drifting up from the street now.

A flight of shrill birds, deathly-white, rising on wide-spread wings into the sky. Screaming. Screaming.

Shelly took three steps and reached Stag. He grabbed him by the back of the neck and violently threw him back into the room. He looked down, and so many eyes stared back up at him it was frightening. She was down there, all twisted up into herself, and at the same time spread out, with the red hair against the dirty gray of the pavement. There was a tight little circle around her.

He saw the ash-colored faces of the Secaucus Stag Preston Fan Club turned toward him. Or were they turned to watch their sister go to whatever Heaven was reserved for foolish rock’n’roll fans? Even as he stared down at them staring up, a girl with a camera flashed light at him, and he knew the whole thing had been recorded.

They had waited for Marlene to step out onto the balcony with her God, to wave the tiny souvenir he would have given her. They had stood, staring up—

—as she fell, twisting, screaming, trying to fly the way they do when there is nowhere else to go but down, and too ripped up the center with their own screams of horror as she plunged down amid them, barely missing a passing tourist. It was all there, and the fat girl with pimples had it on film. Black and white or color Kodachrome, she had it, and it was that thought which sent Shelly scurrying back into the suite. He closed the French doors tightly and relocked them. Then he thought better of it and unlatched them again. This was going to have to be a fast, a perfect. He would have to snap Stag out of it … cooperation was the most important thing, now.

Stag was braced against a high Chinese breakfront, the bit of peasant blouse still wrapped in his fingers. It was a scene from Hogarth, full of madness and the imperative of hurry !

“She—pulled away. She hit me and … went—she went over … I tried to stop—to stop her, but she—she—” The cruel mouth was a baby’s now, the dark eyes dim with confusion and fright. “What’ll they do to me?”

Shelly’s face was made of lead. The lead that was quicksilver, melting and running slowly, reforming. He grabbed Stag by the lapels and forced him to his knees, talking intently into the insanity still lingering on the boy’s face: “Listen to me. Listen, you sonofabitch , listen! That kid is dead in the street down there and you want to know if you’re going to have to pay for it!

“I’d like to beat the hell out of you right now, you miserable effing bastard, but there’s too much to do … God only knows why … give me that cloth … give it to me ,” he said ferociously, ripping it out of the boy’s hand. “Now listen close, you ratty sonofabitch. I want you to go in that bathroom and wash all that blood off you, do you understand? I want you to put on a fresh shirt and a new jacket and comb your hair. Then I want you to come back in here and set up everything you knocked over. And then—so help me God in Heaven you’d better pull it off, you ratty scummy bastard—then I want you to sit down and compose yourself. I’ll tell you what to tell the police when they get—”

“ Police ! Jesus Christ, Shelly, they’ll come, won’t they? They’ll come—Jesus, you gotta help me, Shelly, you got to help me—tell me what to say to them cause I don’t know I mean you’re my friend and you’ve got a piece of the action and it’ll all go down to hell if you don’t—”

Shelly let go of one lapel and cracked him fiercely in the mouth. It brought Stag’s eyes back into focus.

He dragged the singer erect and propelled him through the bedroom into the bathroom. “Move, you ignorant bastard! Move ! And leave this door open.” He indicated the shattered bedroom door. “If it’s against the inner wall I might be able to keep them out of there and they won’t see it. Now do what I told you, and pray, no, forget that, you dirty sonofabitch, just forget it.”

Shelly ran out of the bathroom—it had only been a matter of seconds since she had fallen, though it seemed centuries, slowly dragging—and grabbed up the piece of peasant blouse.

He could not chance running down the hall to the incinerator in the maid’s cubby, but there was the kitchen. He pulled the half-filled bag of garbage out of the pail and thrust the cloth down into the bottom. Then he plopped the bag of garbage on top of it.

Stag had not yet emerged from the bathroom, but in a few minutes the hotel staff, the police, crowds of curious peepers, the world … they’d all be in the suite. He stood the pedestal table upright; the one the girl had knocked over, retreating from her idol. He picked up the ashtray and the unbroken Swedish vase and set them in place. He fluffed the pillows on the sofa. Now, no one had sat there.

Stag came out of the bedroom, his hair combed, his face pink from having been scrubbed. Only the wild light in his dark eyes and the hollows in his cheeks belied the naive adolescence of him.

He was buttoning a fresh blue piqué shirt, a Scotch plaid sports jacket under his arm. “That thing’s too bright. Take it back and get something black, something dark blue. Jump !" Stag turned on his heel, almost an automaton, and a few moments later re-emerged wearing a dark blue blazer with brass buttons. He looked good … reserved … not like the sort who would cause a girl to fall to her death escaping a rape.

Shelly shoved him down in a chair. “Now look,” he said, carefully, so it would penetrate, “when the cops get here your story is that she was invited up for an autograph, a souvenir, a talk because she was the president of one of your fan clubs, and you like to take personal interest in these kids because it’s good business relations and—are you listening, you simpleton?”

“She—she just—fell…” His eyes were glazing again.

The slap across the cheek brought him back and Shelly tried frantically to get it across again. “They will take your ass out and string it up, do you understand, Big Man? They will kill you the way you killed her unless you get control of yourself and start doing some of that acting the critics raved over. Now, dig: she flipped at being with you, tried to make a pass and rip off your jacket, you jumped and she caught you with her nails.” He touched the four furrows still livid on Stag’s face. “You shoved her away and she started chasing you…”