Daddy Long Legs

It seemed like a good idea.

To little Timmy it did, at least. It undoubtedly seemed a very bad idea to the Daddy Long Legs that the boy stalked through his back yard with an open mason jar. The creature scurried as fast as its eight legs could carry it, but its plight was hopeless. Timmy's shadow fell over the arachnid just before the boy scooped it up with the empty jar and screwed on the top.

Timmy examined his catch with satisfaction. One might have thought he had obtained a new and exotic species after years of plodding through the deepest thickets of the darkest jungles from the glee so evident on the boy's face.

He had not caught the creature impulsively. He had a plan for it. Timmy was only five-years-old, but his mother liked to say he was "very precocious" for his age. Timmy wasn't sure what that meant, but it seemed like something good. His mother always told him what a good boy he was and Timmy always smiled when she told him that, but he also knew some things about himself that his mother didn't. He had a secret life and in that life, he wasn't always so good.

He went carefully through the front door and shut it as quietly as he could. His mother was taking a nap and he didn't want to wake her. If she woke up, she would certainly end his experiment before he could even begin. That wouldn't do.

He placed the jar holding the unfortunate arachnid on the kitchen table and thought about what he should do next. He constructed the experiment in his mind and then moved to act it out.

First, he pulled one of the chairs at the table in front of the kitchen sink and stood on it to retrieve another mason jar from the cabinet over the sink. Then, he opened the refrigerator. He pulled out a bottle of ketchup, a jar of pickles, a can of already open beer, a bottle of Worsterschire sauce, and a bottle of apple juice. He placed these items on the table and then went to the pantry. There he chose a bottle of vinegar and some vegetable oil. He took these to the table as well.

He made another trip to the kitchen and found his mother's tablespoons and teaspoons. He knew a little about science. His father had been a scientist. But he was gone now. His father had been dead now for almost six months. He died in a far away country called Ecuador. He remembered the country because his daddy had taught him to say the word before he'd left. Daddy had caught a fever there and never gotten well.

Timmy had caught fevers, but had gotten better every time. He wondered if only the fevers a person caught in that place called Ecuador were the kind that killed people. He wanted to ask his mommy, but she got sad when he mentioned him, so he didn't dare ask. He tried not to think of his daddy very much himself because it made him sad too. But sometimes it made him happy too to think about him. He thought it was funny that thinking about the same thing could make him feel happy and sad all at once.

Daddy had been an entomologist. He knew that was a big word for a five-year-old to know, but he had learned it just the same. When he'd asked Daddy what an entomologist was, his daddy said it meant he was a bug doctor. Timmy wanted to know what kinds of medicine he gave to bugs. Timmy's daddy had really laughed at that. Now it made Timmy smile to think about it.

One day when Daddy was home, Timmy had gone to work with him to his lab. The lab was full of beakers, Bunsen burners and microscopes that Daddy and the other scientists used. Daddy said they used all these things to learn more about bugs. Everyone there wore funny-looking goggles, plastic gloves, and white smocks. These people liked to mix things and they never just threw something in a container. First, they measured it and wrote down what they measured.


Timmy was a scientist too and he would do the same thing. He found a legal pad and a pen in a drawer in the kitchen and then sat down at the table to conduct his experiment. He put in a tablespoon of ketchup and two teaspoons of pickle-juice in his empty mason jar. He added two tablespoons of vinegar and the same amount of vegetable oil. Each time, he added an ingredient, he wrote down the amount as carefully as his five-year-old hand would let him. He didn't deem his brew to be ready until every ingredient had been used and the jar was half-full of an opaque, brownish, noxious smelling mixture.

Timmy leaned over the top and sniffed. The odor was so strong that he coughed and his eyes watered. He sat back down and eyed the Daddy Long Legs in the other jar. He smiled and felt excited. Then, as an afterthought, he added a teaspoon of salt and pepper. When these last items were added, he got his mother's big stirring spoon and stirred it until the brew was a consistent color throughout the jar. When he was done, he eyed Daddy Long Legs.

Timmy thought it must have suspected what was coming because it seemed to be frantically seeking purchase on the side of its glass prison, trying its best to escape. But its fate was sealed. Without ceremony, he picked up the jar and dumped the creature into his potion.

He had expected some dramatic event, maybe a puff of smoke or a small explosion, but instead there was nothing. Daddy Long Legs only walked on the top of the noxious mixture seemingly unaffected by it. Timmy was disappointed. This just wouldn't do.

He watched it for several minutes, hoping for some change in it. Maybe it would shrivel and die at any moment, or spontaneously explode. Maybe it would shoot venom at him through the glass or mutate to seven times its present size. Anything would be better than nothing. Timmy watched and waited, but the thing only walked contentedly back and forth across the potion's surface.

Then Timmy heard a small creak from the back of the house. Mother was probably getting up, he realized. His time for experimenting and living his secret life was swiftly drawing to a close. Decisive action was needed.

He picked up the stirring spoon and used it to press Daddy Long Legs into the gunk. Then he stirred the concoction briskly. He watched Daddy Long Legs struggle beneath the surface as he spun the potion round and round. Finally, the arachnid folded its over-sized legs and withered into a tight ball. Timmy stopped stirring and watched the stuff continue to circle after he'd removed the spoon. Daddy Long Legs made no attempt to resurface.

Then he heard the spray of a shower from Mommy's bedroom. He surveyed the kitchen and saw he had lots of work to do if his experiment was to remain a secret. He made haste to put the ingredients on the table back in their proper place. He took the jar full of his terrible brew and the daddy long-legs he had murdered into the yard. Mommy had a flowerbed beside the house under his bedroom window. There, he dumped out the brew along with Daddy Long Legs. He bent over and studied the remains of the creature for just a moment before going back inside. He felt ashamed of himself. He had wanted to create something magical, but instead had only drowned an innocent creature.

Mommy was already in the kitchen when he went back inside.

"Hey, good boy!" she said to him when he came inside. "Have you been playing outside all this time?"

"Most of the time," Timmy said. He hoped she wouldn't ask him very much. He couldn't lie to his mother, but he didn't mind leaving out things if she didn't ask.

"Did you have fun?"

Timmy strove for honesty. "Yes," he said. "Mostly."

"Mostly?" she asked, raising her eyebrow and giving him a puzzled expression.

"Yes," Timmy replied. "Mostly."

"Why only mostly?"

Timmy couldn't think of how to answer that, so he only looked at her and shrugged his shoulders.

Timmy's mother didn't know quite what to make of that. She knew he was a very smart boy for his age, but sometimes he was strange. She suspected he was still trying to deal with his father's death. She'd been feeling strange herself lately. For one thing, she knew she'd been drinking too much.

"I see," she said, even though she didn't. She reasoned that a mother didn't always have to know everything. Sometimes it was better if she didn't.

She remembered the half can of beer she'd left in the refrigerator and went to get it. She opened the door and immediately noticed that everything there had been shuffled about. She picked up her half can of beer. Was it just a little lighter than she had left it?

"Did you move some things in the refrigerator?" she asked him.

"Yes, Mommy. I got some things out, but I put them all back."

She closed the door and studied his face as she sipped her beer. He was a good boy, she decided. He'd been through a lot, but he was a real good boy. She ruffled his hair.

"I love you, Timmy. Did I ever tell you that before?"

"You told me that a bunch of times, Mommy. I love you too."

She kissed him on the cheek and walked outside to drink her beer and smoke a cigarette. Timmy took a deep breath of relief, thankful Mommy hadn't asked too many questions. He went outside with her and made his way to the place he'd dumped out his potion and Daddy Long Legs' body. The potion had disappeared into the ground and Daddy Long Legs was nowhere to be found.

'Maybe it hadn't died after all,' he thought. 'Maybe it had revived and walked away.'

That thought made Timmy glad at first, but the more he thought about it, the less glad he was.

'What if it knew what he'd done to it? What if it knew and wanted revenge.'

His father would have told him that Daddy Long Legs weren't smart enough for that, but Timmy wasn't so sure, and his father wasn't around to tell him.


That night, he lay in bed staring at his window. His blinds were closed, but a street light illuminated it from behind. Timmy kept imagining the shadow of Daddy Long Legs silhouetted against it. Mommy was still up. He could hear her talking and laughing in the living room. He also heard voices of people he didn't know. Mommy would often make him go to bed early on nights like this. "I've got company coming tonight," she'd tell him. "So it's early to bed for you!" Timmy hated going to bed early. When he was alone in the dark with his thoughts, his imagination had too much room to roam.

He continued to stare out his window as the night passed, convinced that Daddy Long Legs was out there just waiting for him to sleep; just waiting for the chance to slide through the cracks in his window and eat him. The potion probably took its time in working, he reasoned. But when it did, Daddy Long Legs would grow and grow until it towered over him. It would grow fangs too; fangs dripping with venom and eager to devour him. He imagined being awakened by the sounds of shuffling legs to find it leering over him, the venom dropping from its jaws against his body, eating through his skin and dissolving his bones and organs until they were mush and easy, soupy eating for Daddy Long Legs.

He drifted off to sleep in spite of his best efforts. He dreamed.

He was in the living room with Mommy and her company. But Mommy wasn't Mommy. She was Daddy Long Legs. Her company were Daddy Long Legs too. There were five of them besides Mommy, all holding cans of beer in one leg, a lit cigarette in another. They were speaking a Daddy Long Legs language that Timmy could not understand. It was all snicks, slurps, and shuffling noises. He didn't know what was being said, but he knew they were talking about him. He was afraid of Mama's company. He wanted to snuggle with Mama, but there was nothing to snuggle against except long spindly legs that held no comfort. Timmy realized he was holding a jar of his potion though. It was all he had to protect himself.

Suddenly, all the Daddy Long Legs began to shuffle towards him, clicking their fangs together as they came, making a sound like grinding teeth. One's spindly legs wrapped itself around his foot and he held back a scream. He dumped the potion on its head. The Daddy Longs Legs screamed as the acid liquid burned its body. Timmy tried to run past them all and out the door, but he moved in slow motion the way he always did in dreams. The Daddy Long Legs wrapped their limbs around him and dragged him down. He twisted on his back, trying to fight them off as they loomed over him with their poison mandibles poised to kill him, to avenge their fallen brother. He screamed to his mother for help, but she only watched, drinking her beer and smoking her cigarette, oblivious to the destruction of her only son.

Then her voice reached him beyond the dream. "Timmy! Wake up! Wake up, right now!"

He opened his eyes and saw her standing above him, worry written all over her face. He was breathing fast and his body was covered in sweat. She was holding the beer just like in his dream, but she was his mother, not a Daddy Long Legs. She leaned over and hugged him tight.

"It's okay now, Timmy," she said. "It was just a dream."

"I know, Mommy. I'm okay now."

"What did you dream about?" she asked him.

Timmy looked at her. Her eyes were bloodshot and the beer smell was on her breath. Timmy hated the beer smell just like he did her company. For some reason, he didn't want to tell her about the dream. But he didn't want to lie either.

"It was about monsters. Monsters were trying to get me," he said.

"Don't worry, Timmy," she said. "There are no monsters here."

"Okay, Mommy." But Timmy didn't believe her.


The next day, he searched again for the Daddy Long Legs' body. But it was nowhere to be found. If he could only see it, he would no longer be worried about it at night. In the daytime, all of his fears about the Daddy Long Legs seemed foolish. They were just spider things that didn't hurt anybody. They were kind of funny looking actually, kind of like the guys on stilts at the circus. He used to catch them sometimes and let them walk over him. He liked how their little legs tickled his bare arms.

But after his dream last night, he didn't think he would do that anymore. He wasn't going to scream and run away when he saw them like a scared little girl, but he also wasn't going to seek them out. He was done with Daddy Long Legs.

In the night though, the same fears came back again. A tree branch would blow in the breeze outside of his window and make a shadow like grasping legs against the shade. He would will himself to look away from the window and to think of something else. But his mind wouldn't budge. All it could think about was Daddy Long Legs.

He dreamed of millions of Daddy Long Legs crawling all over his body eating him just a little at a time. He dreamed of giant Daddy Long Legs so big that they shook the ground when they walked, searching for him. He dreamed of Daddy Long Legs in his pants and in his hair, of Daddy Long Legs covering every crevice of his room. Every night he woke up screaming and every night his mother came to comfort him with bloodshot eyes and alcohol breath.

Timmy could tell Mommy was worried about him. She would ask him about his dreams, but he could never bring himself to tell her about them. He didn't know why he couldn't tell her. Maybe it was because he thought of the dreams as part of his secret life and he didn't want to give away that part of himself.

One night, he managed to stay awake until the sun came up. Mommy came to get him out of bed that morning and knew he hadn't slept after one good look at him. It was a day that Mommy usually went to work and he went to the baby-sitter.

"You didn't sleep last night, did you?" she asked.

"No," he admitted.

"You were afraid of having bad dreams weren't you?"

"Yes."

Mommy reached across the table and took both of his hands in hers. She was already dressed for work and Timmy thought she looked very pretty. He thought she must have not drunk any beer last night.

"I'm not going to work today," she said. "You and I are going for a trip."

They got in her car and drove to the cemetery where Timmy's Daddy was buried. When they got there, Timmy waited for his mother to get out, but she didn't. He looked at her, wondering what she was thinking about.

"Go talk to your daddy," she finally said.

Timmy didn't want to at first. It seemed like a scary thing to do, especially without Mommy beside him. But finally he worked up his courage and climbed out of the car.

He looked at Daddy's name printed on the headstone and thought about it. The last time he saw him, he was waving goodbye to he and Mommy before getting on the plane that took him to Ecuador. Timmy wondered if he still would have gone if he'd known about the fever waiting for him there. Daddy had been happy and excited that day, wearing a boonie hat and some flowery shorts that Mommy always said made him look like a Hawaiian tourist. Daddy was tall and skinny and had a long, skinny nose too. Daddy told him he was going to bring back the biggest, ugliest bug he could find over there and let Timmy keep it for a pet.

Mommy thought that was funny, so Timmy had laughed too.

Timmy wasn't sure what Mommy wanted him to do at Daddy's grave, so he started telling him all about the Daddy Long Legs experiment. He told him about how carefully he'd written all the ingredients in the potion down and what color it was when he was done. He told him he wasn't sure if he'd killed that Daddy Long Legs or not and if he hadn't, he was afraid it was going to come back to get him for hurting it. And even if he had killed it, he thought its ghost might be haunting him now, making him have scary dreams every single night. He wasn't sure why Mommy had brought him here today, but he thought it was probably because she thought his daddy might know how to stop the bad dreams.

Timmy thought it was probably hard for people who were dead to talk to people who were alive, but that he would close his eyes tight and concentrate so that his father could tell him something if he needed to.

He kept his eyes shut so tight for so long that the sun made him squint when he opened them again. He was disappointed because Daddy hadn't spoken to him at all.

But then he saw something on top of Daddy's headstone. His eyes opened wide and his mouth dropped open. He stepped closer to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

A Daddy Long Legs stood on top of the marker, as still as the stone itself. Chills ran up and down his back and tears popped into his eyes. He placed his palm beside the creature and it scurried into his hand and up his arm. The sensation of its eight, fast-moving legs moving against his skin tickled, and Timmy couldn't help but giggle just a little.

He let it crawl across his chest, down his other arm and all the way down a leg until it touched the ground again. Then it crawled to the center of Daddy's gravestone and stood still. Timmy stared at it until his mother finally called him from the car.

"Timmy, are you okay?" she said.

He didn't answer, but decided he'd been here long enough. His daddy had heard him and sent the Daddy Long Legs to send him a message. He walked back to his mother's car and climbed in.

"What happened?" she asked when they were almost home.

"Daddy talked to me...in a way," Timmy said.

"Well I'm glad," his mother answered. Timmy heard the tears in her voice.

That night he went to sleep and dreamed again.


This time, there were no Daddy Long Legs in his dream. There was only he and Daddy. They were walking through a thick jungle. Daddy was chopping their way through with his machete and Timmy was wearing his father's boonie hat. Timmy felt happy to be with his father in the dream. He wasn't at all frightened by the jungle.

"You sent the Daddy Long Legs at your grave, didn't you?" Timmy asked.

"Yes," his father answered.

"But I still feel bad about killing that other Daddy Long Legs from the yard," Timmy said. "I still think it might be waiting to get me. I'm still afraid, Daddy."

"I know you are," his father said. "I don't blame you for being afraid."

"But I don't want to be afraid, Daddy. Tell me what I can do so I won't be afraid anymore."

Timmy's daddy didn't say anything for awhile. He just kept chopping his way through the jungle while Timmy walked beside him. He was quiet like this sometimes, and Timmy liked it when he was. It always gave him a nice, peaceful feeling.

"You just have to do what I'm doing," his father finally answered.

"What do you mean?" Timmy asked. "You're just chopping your way through a jungle."

"That's right. Look behind you, Timmy."

Timmy did. His daddy had made a path through the jungle with his machete. If someone had come along behind them, they wouldn't have needed a machete at all. Timmy remembered one of the sayings his daddy liked to say. He said it so much that it became a little joke between Daddy and Mommy. Mommy always pretended she was irritated when he said it.

"Some trod upon the beaten path while others blaze their own," Timmy said.

His daddy smiled and ruffled his hair. Timmy's eyes brimmed with tears. He was so happy to be walking with his father.

But in the next instant, his father was gone. Timmy stood still in the jungle and called for him, but there was no answer. For a moment, he was afraid and thought he would cry. But then he noticed that he carried his father's machete in his hands.

With a determined expression, Timmy started hacking his way through the jungle.