Daddy Longlegs

Claire recalled the time she was passing through Possum Prairie on an unseasonably warm night in January. It was well over a decade ago when she was in her twenties and fresh out of college. She had just moved the Quad City area for her first job as a social worker and it required a lot of trips out into the rural areas. The temperature took a sudden dive and the sprinkling rain created a sheet of ice over the road. Claire slowed her car down to ten miles an hour but it was impossible to avoid sliding off into the ditch.

She remembered digging into her purse for her phone and that it was pointless. The cell phone coverage back on those days was nonexistent in those areas. Claire turned off the engine and looked around in every direction, spotting the only potential help down a nearby gravel road. It was an old two-story farmhouse and a window on the second floor was illuminated. Claire gathered up the courage to approach the house. She remembered how much her hand was shaking as she reached for her car door handle.

The tea kettle screamed at Claire from the kitchen, tearing her away for her memory. Claire put down her laptop and rushed into the kitchen to turn off the stove. She decided to skip the tea and get ready for her Saturday night routine.

In her bedroom, Claire removed her bra in front of the mirror. She was proud of her voluptuous figure and long ago made peace with being a few extra pounds over her "goal weight." Her breasts were larger than average for her frame and they had just enough natural sag to prove they were real. She pulled down her panties and stroked her fingers through her bush. It had grown out wildly over the last few months. She thought about Kate's hairless crotch and the pain that she must put herself through to maintain it.

Claire went into the bathroom and plugged in her hair trimmer. She decided it was time for some self-care: trim the bush, shave the pussy, and then off to church.

"He is to splash the blood against the altar of the lord at the entrance to the tent and burn the fat as an aroma p-p-pleasing to the lord." Father Brennan cleared his throat and continued with his gospel reading.

Claire could almost feel the nudge—her husband pressing his elbow against her arm every time Father made a stutter.

"They shall no more sacrifice to goat d-demons, after whom they whore. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their g-generations."

Another stutter. Another nudge. Claire would never forget the night her husband developed sense of humor out of thin air, at church of all places. He always took church so seriously, but on that particular night he didn't seem to have a care in the world. It was like he knew it would be his last.

Claire knew it was mean and immature but she could never contain herself. James kept nudging her at every stutter until she cracked up laughing. Everyone in the neighboring pews was staring at her. They were staring on this night as well, because she was crying.

Claire wiped away her tears and remained in her back row seat for the rest of the mass. She skipped communion and the kneeling and the singing and the chanting like she always did. Church was just some place to go on Saturday night. A place to sit quietly and peacefully with her thoughts. A place to help her remember James. She was still in her seat after everyone had left, thinking about the car crash. The blinding headlights that tore through the driver-side door like it was made out of paper. The glass and metal painted in red and the ringing in her ears that didn't go away for days.

Claire heard the sound of approaching footsteps. She was all alone, surrounded in complete darkness. A door opened in the distance and the silhouette of a man took shape, obscured by the light that was beaming from behind him.

He stepped forward and closed the door, returning everything to darkness. His footsteps increased in volume as he approached her. Each step seemed to echo off into infinity. Claire could feel her heart beating like a drum against her ribcage.

"Claire," a voice whispered in her ear.

Claire wanted to get up and run but she couldn't move. It was so dark that she couldn't tell if her eyes were open or closed. The footsteps came to a stop and a hand rested on her shoulder.

"Claire, please stay as long as you like," Father Brennan offered.

Claire yelped and jumped up from her seat.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to st-startle you."

"It wasn't you, Father. I think I fell asleep." Claire sat back down and put a hand against her chest, attempting to catch her breath. Her eyes adjusted to soft light of church as she looked out over the rows of empty pews.

"Sorry, I am making myself a little too comfortable here," Claire said.

"Nonsense," Father replied. "You are always welcome. There are no closing hours in the house of God, if I have anything to say about it."

"I appreciate it. I don't like Saturday nights alone."

"I understand," Father said with a solemn nod. "I'm in no rush. I have all the time in the world if you want to stay and c-chat about James or about anything at all."

"Father, have you ever heard of Slender Man?" Claire asked, eager to change the subject. She couldn't endure another conversation about her husband waiting for her Heaven and how she needs to give herself to Christ and blah, blah, blah.

"Slender man. Slender man," Father Brennan pondered, taking a seat next to Claire. "I read a news story about the s-stabbing in Minnesota. I don't recall anything about the man."

"He isn't real. He's a modern myth and possibly some form of mass hysteria," Claire explained. "Has anyone in the congregation told you about a man that sneaks into their bedroom at night?"

"Even if they had, I am not at liberty to discuss it. I'm required to maintain the c-confidence of my parishioners."

Claire looked up at him to try and read his reaction to her question. He looked troubled, but that was more or less his default mode.

"Do you believe in demons, Father?"

"I do believe in d-demons. Claire, forgive me for telling you what you already know."

Father raised an index finger and pointed it at his head.

"They live in here."

Father's words kept running through her head on her drive home. "They live in here." It was a little condescending of him, she decided. Not to mention, cliché. He was that guy in the horror movie. The wise confidant that would help her solve the mystery by cracking open some dusty books and chanting in dead tongues. Or he was a just a lonely old man in a dress that happened to believe in ancient fairy tales. She decided on the latter.

Back in her dining room, Claire ate dinner alone at her kitchen table. She washed it down with the second half of a bottle of wine that she opened the night before. The house always felt a little too big for two people, let alone one person. The way that she was paying extra attention to all of the natural creaking noises in the house made her realize that she was still spooked by her hypnosis session with Kate. It was the first time that one of her client's nightmares truly got to her.

Before going to bed Claire worked her way through the entire house, checking every window and door lock. On nights where she was feeling particularly vulnerable she took the wedding band out of her jewelry box and wore it to sleep. This was one of those nights.

"Claire," the voice whispered. "Wake up."

Claire awoke in her bed and heaved a deep breath like she had just been resuscitated. Her nightgown was soaked in sweat. She tried to turn her head to check the clock. Her neck was stiff and immovable. Steady footsteps could be heard from the hallway.

"Stay put," the whisper said directly in her ear. She tried with all of her strength to raise a hand and swat at the voice that was tickling her eardrum. It was useless. Her body was frozen and her eyes fixated on her bedroom door.

"Who's there?!" Claire yelled, although her mouth wasn't moving. She could hear her thoughts out loud, bouncing off of the bedroom walls like they were coming from a loudspeaker.

Claire managed to divert her eyes from the door and look down at her hands. She focused in on her left hand to see that there was no wedding band on her finger.

"Stay put," the whisper repeated.

Claire must have heard that command a thousand times from her father, forcing her into her "time out" chair when she was a child.

"It's just a dream," she told herself. "He isn't real. He knows your secrets because he is you. You are him."

"I'm coming in," the whisper assured her. The door handle began to turn and Claire squeezed her eyes shut, causing tears of stress to trickle down her cheeks.

"Wake up! Wake up!" she repeated.

When she reopened her eyes she felt it in her stomach first. Before her vision could even focus on his shape, a tingling sensation ran up her spine. She was breathing so fast and hard that she was nearly hyperventilating.

A tall man with an oval-shaped head was crouching in order to pass under the door frame. He stepped into the bedroom and stood up straight to reveal his maddening height. With slow, steady thuds he walked to the foot of the bed. To look into the face was like seeing into another dimension. There were no eyes or mouth or any human features. The head was a gray sack of skin with random lumps that seemed to be swimming underneath it. His arms were folded behind his back.

The bedcovers pulled down from Claire's body, tickling her skin as they slipped away. Cool air engulfed her body, turning her sweat into ice. Claire focused in on her hands again. The wedding band had returned and she counted five fingers on each hand over and over again.

"This isn't real. This can't be real," she told herself, even if her fingers were telling her otherwise.

Claire felt the fabric of her nightgown rising up her thighs and bunching up around her waist. An intense warming sensation washed over her body. Her vulva was throbbing and soaking through her panties.

Wiggle your toes! Claire remembered. She focused all of her energy on a single big toe and tried to ignore Daddy's whispers.

"Show it to me, Claire."

Her panties pulled down from her waist and grazed across her thighs. She was so wet that she could see a trail of glistening juices on her skin as the panties slid over her knees.

"Wiggle! Wiggle! Wiggle!" Claire repeated until her toe finally broke free from paralysis. The rest of her toes quickly followed and she curled them up. Her panties glided over her toes and landed on top of the bedsheets at the foot of the bed. She focused on her knees next and managed to wake them up enough to arch her legs.

"I'm going to finger you, Claire," Daddy whispered. He reached forward with long arms and rested his hands on the bed between Claire's feet. His fingers where gray and wrinkled and they were moving a manic rhythm like bony tentacles.

"Please don't touch me," Claire begged, momentarily frozen in terror as Daddy threatened her with one of her deepest sexual phobias. She hated fingers inside of her and these were the longest, creepiest fingers she could ever imagine.

Claire focused back on her legs and managed to retract them until the heels of her feet were resting against her butt cheeks. She could feel her ab muscles and her shoulders coming alive and moved her body up against her headboard. Her crotch was fully exposed to Daddy and she left behind a damp puddle from her involuntary arousal on the bedsheet as she wiggled her way up the headboard.

"I'm going to finger you, Claire."

Daddy Longlegs remained perfectly still while his fingers extended and wormed their way towards her crotch. He had at least ten knuckles on each finger and they flexed into odd formations, like gray vines of bone and skin.

Claire stood up onto her feet and instantly lost her balance. She fell back, thudding her head against the wall behind the headboard. The gravity had shifted to keep her on her back. The calves of her legs were pressed against her headboard and her upper back rested on the wall behind the bed. She scooched up higher and higher, kicking the wall with her feet until she was halfway to the ceiling.

Daddy's fingers continued to grow until they made contact with the headboard. They bent upward to scale the wall, creeping their way to Claire's crotch as she struggled to climb up to the ceiling. The fingernails led the way, scrambling like sperm cells on their race to fertilize an egg. Claire could feel the fingers tickling their way up to her toes and climbing over her ankles.

Gravity shifted again when Claire reached the top of the wall and she sprawled herself out with her back against the ceiling. She looked down and was shocked to see herself on the bed below, resting peacefully under the covers.

She pinched herself. She slapped herself in the face. Nothing could wake her up. She squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them only to see that the wrinkly fingers were stampeding across her inner thighs.

"Wake up! Wake up!" Claire screamed.

She recalled a final desperate move: coughing. She let out a few coughs with no luck. Claire squirmed in discomfort and squeezed her thighs together as the fingertips tried to probe their way into her vagina. She breathed in the deepest possible breath forced out a loud cough with all of her strength. The gravity dropped and an intense sinking feeling hit her stomach. She fell down from the ceiling into blackness.

Claire sat up from her bed in a fit of coughing. Her heart was pounding in an adrenaline-fueled panic. She clenched her fists around the fabric of the fitted bedsheet and looked around the moonlit interior of her room like a frightened mouse.

"Hello! Is anyone there!?" Claire yelled.

There was nothing but silence. Her vision cleared up and the reality of her awakened state set in. She jumped out of bed and turned on the bedroom light. Her comforter was piled at the foot of the bed and her discarded panties were resting on top of it. Claire ran out of the bedroom and worked her way around the rest of house, turning on lights and inspecting every door and window.

I have to get out of here, Claire decided. She grabbed her phone to see that it was three am. There was only one person in the world that she could even think to call. She rushed over to her office file cabinet for Kate's number.

After three calls went straight to Kate's voicemail, Claire remembered the "night job." She pulled up the map application on her phone and did a search for Woodys, only to find that it was paired with the words Gentlemen's Club. It was located at a truck stop, fifteen-minutes away from her house. She had just enough time to catch Kate at work.

Claire walked through the first set of doors to the club and found herself in a dark, empty lobby. She noticed the doorman standing behind a booth and handed over her driver's license.

"Sorry, no admittance. We close in half an hour," the doorman said. He was squinting at Claire's license like it was the first time he ever seen a forty-year-old woman with a wedding band trying to get into the club at the last minute.

Woody's was a notorious for being one of the only fully-nude, bring your own beer establishments in the area. The customers were typically very young or very old, but on Saturdays they were almost exclusively college-aged.

"It isn't four yet. The sign says fifteen dollars," Claire said. She fought hard against the temptation to throw in a "young man" at the end of that statement. She pushed her fifteen dollars across the counter.

The doorman stood there with his arms folded, shaking his head. "No one gets in after three-thirty."

A group of men came through the doors on their way out of the club, flooding the lobby with music. It sounded like they were coming out of a nü-metal concert. They were dressed like Claire expected: baseball caps, oversized polos, sports jerseys, and all of the other attire that sounded off her danger alarms.

"It must be MILF night!" one them blurted as they walked by.

Claire ignored them and kept her focus on the doorman. He looked like he was in his twenties and he had the physique of a UFC fighter. He had a close buzz cut and five-o'clock shadow on his face. If he took off that cheesy, tribal logo t-shirt he would actually be pretty hot, Claire decided.

"I can see that you're still open. I'll pay you double," Claire bargained.

The doorman looked her over. She looked like she had smeared on her makeup in the car and her curly brown hair was done up in a crooked bun. Beneath her open raincoat the he could see a t-shirt with the words "Midwest is Best." The movement under the shirt indicated that she wasn't wearing a bra.

"You should come back on amateur night. It's every Wednesday. Seriously. You could make some decent money with that rack," the doorman said.

Claire was still running on adrenaline from her nightmare and was not about to let some muscle-head douche stop her from getting inside. She decided to try a different tactic.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Nate," he said with an amused grin.

Of course it's Nate, she thought to herself.

"Nate, I was thinking about coming to amateur night, but I'm a little nervous about it. I've never been inside the club before. Can you let me in to have a look around? If it looks safe, my girlfriends and I are going come back. We all have a bet to see who is brave enough to show their tits in public."

"Friends, huh?"

"Yeah," she replied. "We get kind of crazy when are out without the husbands. Knowing us, we'll probably go full nude. Can you let me in to check it out? Please?"

"Fine," he agreed. "Don't forget your stamp."

Claire held out her hand for him and he pressed down on the stamper, giving her an ink blot of the classic mudflap girl silhouette on the top of her hand.

Claire rushed into the club was instantly overwhelmed. It was much bigger than it looked from the outside. There were three stages and over a hundred customers, mostly young men and a handful of women. Totally nude dancers were working the main stage and bending over to show off every inch of their bodies. They had kinky Halloween accessories like devil horns and bunny ears. There were strippers in garter belts, nerdy glasses, and schoolgirl skirts that were short enough to show off their bare pussies.

Claire could see that a shower show was in progress on one of the stages. The shower area was lit up by black lights and two women were squirting soap on their breasts and lathering each other up in front of a cheering crowd.

Two topless dancers in g-strings and thigh-high stockings breezed by Claire and one of them gave her a wink. They walked up to a nearby table of men and proceeded to press their breasts against men's faces and sit in their laps. They stuffed dollar bills in their stockings and moved on to the next table.

"Can I offer you a need a seat, m'am?" a polite young man in a US Army cap asked her. Claire looked down at him in surprise. She was old enough to be his mother. All of his friends were staring at her.

"No thanks, I'm looking for a friend," Claire replied.

Men from the other tables were watching her as well, mostly because she just walked into the club and froze up like a deer in headlights. Claire noticed a smaller stage towards the back where a girl was working the pole. It was petite blonde with pigtails. She was wearing a red-riding hood cloak and dropped it to the floor to show off her cute bubble butt.

"Kate!" Claire blurted out loud. She rushed over to claim the last open seat at the stage. The guys sitting at her sides had one and five dollar bills in front of them so Claire decided to pull a twenty out of her purse.