What Happens in Vegas...

Veronica presses her new catch up against the cold brick wall of her home, ravenously hungering over him. His fingers comb through her dirty-blonde hair; another hand slips up her blouse.

She pushes away arm and laughs. “Nu-uh-uh… Let’s get inside.” She steps back, reaches for her purse and takes out keys.

They step into a room painted blue by light from a fishtank. Exotic fish swim amidst an underwater graveyard of pirate ships, treasure, and corral.

She can smell the alcohol permeating off of him as if he crashed a locomotive through a liquor factory. He unzips his fly.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

A self-accomplished grin, seething of masochistic ego, replies, “Getting down to business.”

“Not yet…” Veronica approaches him, feels down his pants. Her lips inches from his. He feels light on his feet. She zips it up. “Just… a bit… longer…”

“What now!?”

Pent-up frustration strikes tension in the air. She walks away, fingers locked in a V. “I’m a bit traditional…”

“Traditional!? That’s a riot! You hitch the first guy you pick up at a bar!”

“Let me finish. I normally don’t get any closer with men unless I feel total trust in them. You must accept all who I am. That also goes for my mother.”

“Your… mother?”

“Me and my mother… We’re really close… It’s complicated…”

“Where is she?”

“Back there… down that hall.”

“You mean you live with her?”

Veronica sniffles, “Mother’s strict in her ways. Please, do this… For me…”

Part of him urges to leave… But if it’s her mother Veronica wishes him to meet, so be it…

The temperature slowly drops with a haunting breeze in passage down the hall. “Which door?”

“The second on the right…”

Light flickers from the edges of the door. He knocks. “Hello?”

Turning the door with great hesitation, he enters.

A television flickers, spilling broken light through an otherwise dark room.

“Hello?”

A woman sits on a bulky chair before the glowing screen. “You wanna see me?”

The door slams and locks behind him. He fights to open it.

Behind him, the woman before the television unfolds, sprouting eight hairy legs, and skitters off.

In failed effort, he turns and sees the lady gone.

Walking across the carpet, something snags his legs. He trips, landing face-first on damp flooring. He scrambles to peel off webbing from his leg.

“Veronica did well…” A voice rolls around. “Quite succulent…”

Eight red, beady eyes shine from the ceiling, where two corners meet.

The man scrambles and trips over something else. An emaciated man’s face, frozen in terror, is enshrouded in webbing. There are five other bulbous forms are about the crooks in the room.

More webbing shoots around him, gigantic arms wrap around him, spinning him as if on a rotisserie grill. Screams of terror go muffled as he is mummified in a great cocoon.

Veronica checks her watch. Daylight breaks in about four hours. Enough time for one more catch.