2 AM AT A MOTEL IN THE CITY

A child looks up at him, a boy no older than nine dressed in overalls. There's a small messenger bag slung over his shoulder.

"Come in."

The boy steps past Jake over to the round table by the shuttered window. Jake closes the door, shutting out the scream of a motorcycle along deserted city streets, and engages the latch before joining the boy at the table. The boy places the bag down and retrieves from within a lidded mason jar, sets it on the table. The lid is pocked with small holes, and a spider—what Jake has always taken to be a spider—the size of his fist writhes within the jar, filling it completely. Its hairy legs tap audibly against the glass.

The boy looks to Rory; she's curled her legs onto the mattress, wrapped her arms around her knees and pushed herself against the headboard. He sighs, turns back to Jake. "Is she ready?"

"No," says Rory. "I'm not."

The boy snatches the jar from the table and prepares to return it to the bag.

"Wait," says Jake, seizing the boy's arm. He's never touched the boy before. He senses something beneath the surface there, not physical, but something nonetheless. He wants to ask how old are you but fears the boy leaving, never coming back. He releases the boy's arm. "She's ready," he says, glances over to Rory. "She has to be."

Rory looks from the boy to Jake. Back to the boy. She scoots forward, and lays back.

The boy unscrews the jar's lid, and the spider skitters up and out, barely fitting through the opening. The boy pinches its bulbous middle between his fingers and holds it away from his body. Its legs flail wildly, jerking the boy's arm this way and that. He nods to the empty jar. "Bring that."

Jake takes the jar obediently into his hands and follows the boy to the bed. Looking down at Rory, the way she lies there, he feels strangely like a mourner at a funeral service.

The boy leans over Rory's face, stares expectantly at her mouth. The spider quivers between his fingers as, with his free hand, he guides Rory's shirt up, revealing her stone-gray flesh, the indications of her suffocated ribs. He begins to massage her stomach, gently at first, then going deeper, working his fingers over her skin, weaving them to her chest, to her neck. He rubs at her throat until her mouth opens wide and she gasps.

A set of thin legs sprout from between her lips, weakly shivering. The boy deftly lifts from Rory's mouth a saliva covered spider, this one like a limp, wet rag, and drops it into the jar in Jake's hand. It twists momentarily, then stills.

Rory's eyes grow vacant, her chest motionless.

"Hurry!" Jake cries.

The boy places the new, lively spider, still gripped between his fingers, over Rory's empty mouth. It probes at her lips, at the darkness between her teeth, and then savagely works its way inside. Jake watches, tears in his eyes, as the lump descends down her throat, explores beneath her flesh.

As the boy packs the depleted specimen into his bag and departs without a word, Jake kneels beside the bed, takes hold of her hand, and waits for Rory to breathe.