Danny
I’m in so much pain, Mom.
Danny
How can this hurt so much?
Mom
This is almost over, Danny. What do you see?
Danny
The spiders, they’re all down. Twitching.
Mom
What about the wasps?
Danny
I think they’re dying.
Danny
They’re dropping into the corners of the living room and foyer.
Mom
Once they lay eggs, they die.
Danny
Something’s happening to the spiders!
Danny
Their bodies are splitting down the middle.
Danny
Little worm things are wiggling through.
Mom
Those are wasp larvae. All male.
Mom
We designed them to die a minute or two after wiggling free.
Mom
Just make it to the door, honey.
Mom
The experiment is over, Mama.
Mom
There’s only one way out of this.
Danny
Mom, it’s me! It’s me.
Mom
All of this is about to be over. Just get to the door.
Mom
Bryan is on the other side.
As he does, his mouth cracks open.
Mama surges forward, enraged.
She is so focused on Bryan that Danny is seemingly forgotten as she leaps from the boy’s stretched-open mouth.
She’s the size of a grapefruit.
Her legs span nearly a foot long.
She flies toward Bryan, wrapping her legs around his face.
Mama’s jaws clamp down on Bryan’s face.
She releases so much venom it dribbles down Bryan’s face, scalding the skin in its wake.
He raises his hands to push Mama away.
The venom pours over his hands as well.
It sizzles back the skin and melts the phone still clutched in his hand.
Danny, his jaw broken, falls back in the foyer onto the shells of dead wasps, curled-up spiders and dying larvae as Bryan twitches at his feet on the other side of the open door, on the porch.
Danny scrambles for his phone.
Danny
But I’m going to need so much fucking therapy.
Mom
Is Bryan there? What’s happening?
Danny
Yeah, Bryan is here.
Danny
Mama is fucking eating him.
Danny
His skin is boiling back around where she bit his face.
Danny
I can see his skull.
Danny
How is he still alive? How is he still screaming?
Mom
I’ll be there in a minute!
Danny
You said it was over!
Danny
You said that it would be over when I opened the door.
Mom
I kept you alive, Danny.
Danny
Dead people shit themselves.
Mom
Yes, unfortunately I did.
Danny
I did NOT need to know that.
Danny
She’s wrapping him up.
Danny
She’s twisting his body around and wrapping him up.
Mom
You and Bryan haven’t killed her yet?
Danny
No, I haven’t fucking killed her.
Danny
I’ve been a little preoccupied.
Danny
And Bryan’s been busy being eaten alive.
Mom
You have to kill her!
Danny
How? How am I supposed to kill a giant mutant spider?
Danny
I think she’s dying now!
Danny
Her body is splitting like the spiderlings.
Mom
She’s going to come out of it bigger.
Mom
When she first emerges, her shell is weak.
Mom
You’ll only have a few moments where it’s penetrable.
Mom
Danny, you have to kill her!
Mama emerges leg first from her molting on the porch.
Now her body is the size of a small dog.
Her eight legs are now two-feet long.
They are fringed with long brown hairs and spikes.
She twists toward where Danny still huddles in the foyer on a pile of her children’s corpses.
Mama’s eight shining black eyes seem to take him in for just a moment and then she rushes toward him, her front legs up in the air.
Danny jumps to his feet, front leg bent and slams his foot into Mama’s head, flattening it onto the porch.
He stomps down again and again, crushing her thorax and abdomen.
Danny picks up the phone.
Mom
I’m so proud of you, Danny. It’s over!
Susan
We’ve had an incident.
Susan
Affirmative. At my residence.
Susan
Two. And one minor in urgent need of medical care.
Corporate
Will you need a cleanup crew?
Mom sends a text to Danny.
Mom
Medics are on the way!
Mom
How does your throat feel?
Danny
I don’t have any teeth.
Danny
Half of my face is dissolved.
Danny
I just coughed up spider webs.
Danny
My throat feels better than it did when a fucking mutant spider was wedged inside it.
Mom
We’re going to be okay, Danny. I promise.
Danny
Where the hell were you?
Danny
This whole time, where were you?
Mom texts him her location.
Mom
See, I’m only a block away.
Mom
I had to stay back, Danny.
Mom
Bryan planted Mama on me when I left work yesterday.
Mom
He planted her on my shoe, I think.
Mom
I was supposed to be her target.
Mom
But I checked on you when I got home last night.
Mom
You were already in bed, remember?
Mom
So she latched onto you instead.
Mom
But he had programmed her to hunt me.
Danny
First time since I was 11 you tuck me in, and this happens.
Mom
Mama knew that I’d come to you, to save you.
Mom
If I had gotten closer, the colony would have left the house to hunt me.
Mom
Think how bad that would have been.
Mom
They would have taken over the whole town, maybe the whole world.
Danny
That doesn’t change the fact that you left me.
Mom
No! Never! I was with you the whole time, guiding you through this.
Mom
I told you, I had plan.
Mom
I had to allow Mama to turn you — turn the whole house — into a funnel web.
Mom
One that she thought she was luring me into.
Mom
The farther away I stayed, the better chance that I could keep you alive.
Mom
And convince her that Bryan was the real threat.
Mom
I mean, prove to her.
Mom rushes up the sidewalk.
Seemingly in haste, she trips, sending her phone skittering onto the road.
Just then, a fleet of large white vans speeds toward the house, where Danny still sprawls on the porch.
The tires flatten her phone.
Danny’s head falls forward as he sobs.
He doesn’t see Mom stomp on the venom-smoldering cellphone still clutched in Bryan’s lifeless hand.
Mom comes over to Danny and pulls him into her arms.
Susan stares at Mama’s flattened corpse.
Danny pushes her away and stumbles toward the medics.
