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.
