Masticators of the Universe

“Eat well, my pretties. Dinner is on me,” said Lara Spider with a grin as her tarantulas munched on potato chips like wild dogs. She could understand the trepidation of the fellow customers around her in the Brew Pub that night. Grown men inching away from her. Grown women twisting their faces in disgust. To be honest, the solitude was alright with her. If it meant no sloppy jowled, beer breathed man was going to hit on her in public, so be it. She even kissed one of her tarantulas and said, “I love you all so dearly.”

Lara didn’t even feel bad about her appearance that evening, nor should she ever have to be. A pretty pink dress made from the finest layers of silk, high heeled shoes that she slid her bare feet in and out of, and flowing chocolate colored hair that looked as delicious as the actual dessert. But once those spiders crawled around her table, she felt safe enough to be bare naked if she wanted to be, which she didn’t. “Looks like it’s just us tonight,” she said with a dainty smile.

The tarantulas scurried and sprawled into her dress once everyone the sounds of vomit-like coughing and snot gurgling erupted over the pub. “Oh no, not him again,” whispered Lara. Such wishful thinking never came to light. Bursting through the front door smelling like blood-flavored whiskey and pus-scented perfume was Tor Vemola, the bastard son of the once prominent celebrity family, the Vemola Dynasty. His blond hair covered in sewage, his blue skin ripped and shredded, his clothes disheveled and moldy, if he wasn’t royalty, he could have easily passed as a bum on the streets. “At least the bums need the money more than he does,” Lara thought to herself.

Those disgusted sentiments echoed among the pub customers, each of them backing away and holding napkins over their mouths and noises, making just as sickening noises as Tor did before skulking in the establishment. “Bunch of fucking drama queens! Har-har-har!” snorted Tor before gagging on his own snot yet again.

The young barmaid slowly approached him and struggled to get her words out as her lips trembled. “Um…what can I…get you…today?”

“I want two big fat breasts!” bellowed Tor, which caused everyone’s eyes to shoot up in horror.

“Um…pardon me?” squeaked the barmaid.

“You heard me! I said I want two big fat chicken breasts! I’m an American, I can eat big fat breasts if I want!”

“Oh, uh…hehe…chicken breasts, of course…we actually have some coming out of the oven right now…let me go check on them.”

Before she could leave, Tor grabbed her by the wrist and burst out, “Wait a minute! Aren’t you going to ask what I want to drink?”

“Uh…I think you’ve had enough to drink already, Mr. Vemola.” The zombie-like creature growled at her before she said, “You know what? Here, have some beer. Heh…” She poured him a pitcher of golden ale as fast as she could before hurrying to check on the status of the chicken breasts…or look for an exit, either one.

Tor took a long liquidly snort of the beer and Lara’s insides grumbled like a machine as she held her hand to her mouth. She could feel her dinner rising to the surface when the creature guzzled his beer and made throat noises like a double bass drum solo. Within seconds, the beverage was swimming and sloshing in his gut loudly enough for everyone to hear. Some patrons got up and left, making throaty noises of their own. Not Lara. She sat at her table and watched this piggish man with cruel intentions.

The barmaid hurried to the counter with a plate full of chicken legs as big as telephone poles. She giggled nervously and said, “Enjoy your meal…Mister…Vemola…” He tried to grab her wrist to ask for something else, but she hurried out the door screaming in sheer terror.

“Wonder what that bitch’s problem is,” barked Tor, much to Lara’s cringing disgust. If she thought she was in an unappetizing mood before, she finally had the misfortune of listening to Tor chomping away at fried chicken and smacking his lips together as hard as he humanly could.

Lara believed the next time she opened her mouth would be the last time anything of substance stayed in her stomach. But she had to say something, if not for the other customers than for her own sanity. A few lip smacks later, she said, “Please! For god’s sake! Chew with your mouth closed!”

“It’s a free country, you feminoonoo. I can eat however I want!” Another alligator bite, another long minute of his lips and tongue smacking together like crash cymbals. And another bite. And another. And another. For somebody who could finish a beer within seconds, he sure loved to take his time eating a plate of fried chicken.

The bile rising in her neck, Lara mustered up the strength to say one more time, “Chew with your mouth closed…or else!”

Tor turned around in his stool with a green-toothed grin and said, “What are you going to do, report me to the Social Justice Police? Maybe you’ll want to make a citizens arrest or some shit like that. Why don’t you come on over and…slap some cuffs on me!” The last sentence was punctuated with a swirl of his pig slop tongue.

Lara couldn’t keep it together any longer. Her stomach pounded and throbbed. Her blood and sweat ran colder than her sweet iced tea. She leaned over and puked all over the ground, losing what could have been an enjoyable meal had it not been for Tor Vemola and his gross eating habits. She puked again. And again. And again, until her mouth tasted like battery acid.

“Hey, sweet patooties! Barf with your mouth closed! You’re triggering me and offending my sensitive areas!” mocked Tor before hee-hawing and slapping his bloody knee.

“You think that’s sick? You haven’t seen a damn thing yet!” growled Lara as she extended her long sleeve and unleashed her tarantula magic upon the “patriotic” zombie. The little creepers scurried and tap-danced across the wooden floor, yet Tor’s facial expression amounted to a simple “meh”.

“Is this hocus pocus shit supposed to scare me?!” he bellowed before scooping handfuls of arachnids and eating them like candy, venom oozing from his already sloppy sewer hole. There must have been a whole army of little buggers and Tor just devoured the whole lot of them….all while smacking his lips and clicking his tongue for extra effect.

Lara could only drop to her knees and stain her dress with what was once a delicious meal. She quivered, “No…no…not my babies…not my beautiful babies…”

Tor’s expression softened, but Lara didn’t want to believe it behind her damp eyes. “Now, now, darling,” said the burping zombie. “If it’s a baby you want, I can give you that. I believe we should all be making babies, including a pretty little thing like you. It’s all part of the master plan.”

As he slowly approached her while squishing spider corpses beneath his boot, Lara crab walked away from him until she was trapped in the corner of the restaurant with nowhere to go. This man was so disgusting that the place had completely emptied out on account of nobody wanting to be around a man who ate like that. “What am I doing here,” Lara muttered to herself. “I need to get out of here…what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you, sweetheart. In fact, I love you just the way you are. If you’ve got anymore of them spiders handy, I’d love to have them chicken fried. I bet you’re a goddess in the kitchen! Actually, probably not since you came to a restaurant tonight instead of staying home.”

Tor pulled his jorts down and revealed something resembling a burned sausage with warts and pus protruding everywhere, maybe even a mushroom sprouting in the forest of greasy hair. Lara covered her eyes and squealed, but the zombie paid no mind to her fear and advanced forward. “Come on, baby girl. Let’s do this for the man upstairs. Let’s make some babies!”

Lara slowly removed her hands from her eyes and took one last look at the diseased organ. A shy smile crept upon her face as she crawled over to have a better look. On her knees with a bigger smile than before, she said, “You’re right…let’s make babies…You heard him, Pepper!”

“Huh? Pepper?”

In one fluid motion, Lara grabbed Tor’s peter and ripped open one of his pus-filled wounds before inserting her last tarantula. The zombie screamed and danced as the little bastard crawled inside his flesh, chewing, digging, burrowing, injecting poison like an inoculation for the social disease, laying eggs for “the man upstairs”.

“You sick prick!” shouted Tor as he dug inside his wound to try to get the tarantula out of his system. Lara’s grin turned mischievous as poison rotted her foe inside out. Poison sprayed from every open wound in his body. Goop sloshed on the floor like a wading pool. It looked as though he was going to drop dead at any moment. And then…

“I’m just messing with you,” laughed Tor, much to the wide-eyed horror of his victim. “What? You actually thought that little shit kicker was going to do me in? I’ve got more diseases than a chemical weapons factory. There ain’t nothing you can give me that’s any grosser than what I’ve already got!”

Knowing her spider magic could only take her so far, Lara shot up to her feet and bolted for the door, only to be tackled to the ground by a powerful force. “No! Get off me!” she shouted, secretly wishing Tor would just get this over with. But oddly enough, the sloppy odor was replaced with a French perfume smell. The barmaid! With one shotgun blast, Lara screamed her head off yet again as blood, pus, and sewage sprayed the inside of the restaurant. A resounding thump on the ground signaled the end of this would-be rape struggle.

Lara felt a gentle hand pat her on the back while saying, “It’s okay…it’s okay…you can get up now. He’s gone.” The barmaid helped her to her feet and the two of them surveyed the damage to this once lovely restaurant: vomit, blood, gonorrhea goblins, god knows what else.

The barmaid lowered the shotgun and tearfully said, “The board of health is going to kill me for this…if not them…then that damn Vemola family. Bunch of do-nothing celebrities think they own everything. Famous for being famous and rich enough to sue our asses off…what have I done?”

Lara hugged the barmaid and said, “I’ll bet you anything those other Vemola jerks aren’t as diseased as their bastard son was. I’ll bet they’re just a bunch of posh snobs.”

“So what? That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, but I think it does…” Lara broke her embrace and smiled at the barmaid. “If they can’t handle their own bastard son…what makes you think they’re going to be able to handle a little…arachnomancy?!” Lara punctuated her sentence with a wink. “They can take us to court all the want. They can bend the legal system to their wills. But they wouldn’t last five seconds on a giant spider web without having a heart attack. Trust me, babe, there’s more where that came from!”