Tracy’s Party Doesn’t Go as Planned

By Rick Sherman

          The magician was dressed in black. His t shirt said “Tricky Ricky” in big white friendly letters. He wore a top hat. And Stan had to admit he was pretty good. Right now the kids were rapt as he made a softball sized silver sphere float under a shiny black cloth. Stan looked at his daughter Tracy sitting right up front and thanked god she was smiling.

          “She seems to be digging it,” said Melinda standing next to him. She had been against the magician idea. She had wanted to rent a bouncy castle. But Tracy had seen Tricky Ricky at another party and loved him. So here he was. Tracy was an only child and Stan and Melinda just wanted everything to be perfect for her. So they had hired the magician and prayed he didn’t suck. Last year, at her seventh birthday they had hired a clown. Wrinkles the clown. He was in his eighties and was a living greasepaint nightmare. He had made the kids cry and the party was a disaster and Stan and Melinda swore that would never happen again. And now, thankfully, everything seemed to be going swimmingly.

          “What’s up with that girl in the back?” said Melinda, “what’s her name? Nia?”

          “Yeah, yeah Nia…” Stan muttered as he checked the girl out. She seemed separate from the rest of the kids, her own little island. She wasn’t laughing or clapping at Tricky Ricky’s antics, she just sat there with her hands clamped over her mouth. Her eyes looked troubled. Like she might start crying at any moment. Stan prayed she wouldn’t, he couldn’t take it if another party was ruined. Last year being such a disaster.

          “What is she doing? Is that normal?” Melinda was preoccupied with the ‘normal’. She wanted everything to be normal. But was anything anywhere truly normal? “Normal is just a setting on the washing machine,” Stan liked to joke. Melinda never found it funny.

          The kids continued to enjoy the magic show, Tricky Ricky was now making the pictures in a coloring book color themselves in by magic. But that girl in the back, Nia, she was pressing her hands so hard against her mouth that her face was turning red. “Are we going to do something about this girl, Mel?”

          Melinda let out a heavy sigh. Everything was going so well, why did this weird kid have to mess it all up. Why couldn’t she be more…normal?

          “Mel, if it was Tracy at someone else’s party I’d want the parent to intervene.”

          “Intervene?”

          “Yeah, you know, see what’s up.”

          Melinda crossed her arms over her chest.

          “But it’s going so well…”

          “But we gotta, Mel, sweetie, we kinda sorta of gotta.”

          The kids were sitting on the rug in the living room, about twenty of them. Stan and Melinda had been watching from the kitchen nook and now they made their way over to the girl, Nia, to see what her deal was.

          The girl had her hands clamped so hard over her mouth that her cheeks had swollen red and puffy. Her eyes were wide and damp, like on the verge of tears.  Melinda gave Stan a look and tilted her head towards Nia, like, do something!. The girl was beginning to make quiet little gagging noises. Stan walked up behind her, hopefully he could get her away from the other kids and then work out what her problem was. At the front of the room Tricky Ricky was pulling colorful paper streamers out of his mouth. The kids all ate it up. Well, except for Nia. Stan crept up behind her and reached out and tapped her on the shoulder. The girls snapped around in her place and looked him in the eye. This was one intense kid.

          “Nia, is everything okay?” Stan asked in a whisper, not wanting to distract the kids from the show. The girl just slowly shook her head from side to side. No, everything wasn’t okay. Stan reached out and took her gently by the upper arm. “Come with me sweetie, into the kitchen.” Some of the other kids looked back to see what was going on. Sensing he might be losing his audience, Tricky Ricky set his wallet on fire. The kids cheered and refocused on the show. Stan pulled on the girl’s arm but she resisted and made a “Umm-mmm” noise. Then she made that sickly, wet, gagging noise. Was she choking? Stan looked at Melinda his eyes saying, Well now what? Melinda placed her hands over her mouth in imitation of the girl and then removed them.

          “Ok Nia, let’s see what the problem is.” And Stan took hold of her wrists and began to pull her hands from her mouth. The girl fought him and grunted as they struggled. The other kids began to turn around again. This kid was stronger than she looked but Stan was now determined to get her hands off of her mouth. He didn’t want to hurt her, he had to be careful, but putting his weight into it he managed to pry her hands off of her mouth. The girl’s eyes bugged and she pushed her lips together.

          That was when the first slim, segmented, hairy joint emerged from her mouth. The segment poked out of her mouth followed by another and another and another. Her jaw dropped open a bit more and the spider crawled out of her mouth and down on to her chin. Stan recoiled and fell back on his ass. The spider was brown and looked like a cross between a spindly Daddy Longlegs and a furry tarantula. And it had crawled out of her mouth. Stan was trying to process this when another set of legs poked out of her mouth and another spider crawled out. Surprisingly the first scream didn’t come from one of the kids. It came from Melinda who was totally batshit phobic about spiders. She let out a shrill blood curdling bellow of total panic.

          All of the kids’ heads turned at once. They just sat there watching the spiders creepy crawling out of Nia’s mouth. Melinda was just standing there screaming and screaming. The spiders had reached the floor and Stan began to stomp on them, turning them into wet, red and brown splotches on the carpet. How will we get those stains out? he thought crazily. And then he lifted his hand to brush the hair out of his eyes and noticed the spider poised on the back of it. He shook his hand vigorously and was surprised as a pain flared and lanced through his hand.

          “Ow! Goddamn!” he shouted and flicked his hand, dislodging the spider which fell to the floor and crawled away. Melinda’s shouts became even more hysterical and he noticed the spiders crawling up her legs. One of Tracy’s friends stood up and pointed and in an ear piercing wail screamed, “Spiiiiiderrrrsss!”. At this point the spiders were flooding out of Nia’s mouth in a torrent of undulating legs and gleaming eyes. And they were fast, swarming over the other kids before they could run away. Stan paused to look at his hand. There were two mean looking holes in it and the surrounding skin was turning red. My god, are they poisonous? And now Melinda was running around in circles as the spiders crawled up her chest towards her face.

          And then Tricky Ricky went into action. He had a comical oversized fly swatter that he had used as a prop in his show and now he was using it to splatter the spiders. He flung something silver at Stan who reflexively caught it. He looked down, it was a roll of duct tape. Tricky Ricky was busy swatting spiders and now the kids were going apeshit. They were all running around batting spiders off of their bodies. Their shrieks were high pitched, vibrating with sheer terror. Tricky Ricky was doing his best to squash the arachnids but there were so many. The magician pointed at Nia and said, “The tape, damnit!” Stan got to the message and went into action. He stood in front of the girl, spiders swarming out of her mouth and tears dripping quietly from her eyes.

          “I need you to close your mouth, Nia.” The girl just stood there. A clump of spiders somewhere was crawling up inside his pants, “just close your mouth, sweetie.” Nothing. So he reached out put his hand on her chin. A spider popped out of her gob and onto the back of his hand. He pushed and her jaw began to hinge upward. As he got it closed the spider bit him on the hand. He moaned through gritted teeth. Then took the duct tape and began wrapping it around the girls lips, around the back of her head and over her lips again and again until her gob was held fast. She just stood there crying but there were no more spiders coming out.

          The kids were running everywhere, slapping at the spiders navigating their bodies. Stan ran over to Tracy and swatted all of the spiders off of her and then picked her up. Tricky Ricky was amazing, the way he was killing off the swarm with his comical oversized fly swatter.

          “You’re pretty good at this,” Stan said in a strange moment of calm.

          “You’d be surprised at how often this happens,” said the magician.

          And Stan stood there holding his daughter as chaos reigned around him. Yeah, maybe this birthday party hadn’t gone so well. Much worse than last year’s clown. Stan brought his foot down hard on a furry eight legged creepy crawly, squishing it.

          He remembered how he and Melinda had planned so much, examined every detail, so eager to get everything just right for their beloved daughter’s birthday party.

          “Fucking asshole spiders,” Stan muttered to no one in particular.