Madame Web began as the shape of a human, for all anyone in
town could tell she was born Clarissa Clarmont, lovely heir to the Clarmont
fortune, in a life that Madame Web couldn't even remember, but could only feel
like a phantom pain. Clarissa had a
miscarriage; the respected and very public Clarmont family tried their best to
cover it up. Gossip ran amok in the
prude town. Speculation that she had sex
with a vagrant from out of town ran through the phone wires, that the baby was
misshapen and deformed. Clarissa had
been pulled from school and all but disappeared from town life. Her friends were denied visitation by her
staunch Christian father, Christopher Clarmont.
Chris was with her now, so was everyone that has ever been to
the house and died in its cold embrace.
She could call on him anytime she wants, but he always says the same
thing. They all do, and they are so
boring and annoying. They all just want
to leave her like everybody ever has, until now. They know the answer to their query. Escape?
Never.
Clarissa spent her lonely life looking out windows, always
waiting for people, always wanting company.
Her childhood was spent in the secluded Cider House manor, one of the
first houses built in town, taking advantage of the deep well thought to be dug
by the very first Dutch colonists that settled the land. Her great grandfather and his family of 12
sons built several additions to the old house in the late 1800’s, many of which
survived through the Great Depression.
Some of the additions never made sense to Clarissa. There were doors that led to steep drops to
the basement. Some rooms seem uneven and
tilted; earning the nick name the “Slanty Shanty” from some of the maids that
toiled there. There was a hand cart that
went up from the first floor instead of down to the basement. When she asked her father about all the
strange dimensions of the house he only offered a glib reply and sardonic
smile; something to the effect of “old gramps was quite the prankster”.
To many people around town her great grandfather was more
than an idle prankster. Some speculated
that he made a deal with the devil, got greedy and traded his soul for smiling
dollar bills.
Clarissa was home tutored and kept from school. Her parents treated her as their own personal
treasure, not to be shared or touched. Her
entire universe was the house but she was not allowed to explore it all in the
day time with adult eyes watching. That
was her great secret; during the night she would slip from her covers and
explore the house in the gloom, carefully avoiding the creaky steps and
floorboards she committed to memory, just like a Nancy Drew detective novel she
read. This was her proudest
accomplishment; to slip around the house freely and undetected like a night
shade. Sometimes Clarissa fancied
herself a ghost. Maybe then she could
leave her suburban confines and explore the world beyond the mortar and dry
wall of this aging relic of a house. As
a ghost she could sneak right out the door, maybe visit the local matinee and
see some, oh my gosh, real live boys that seemed to populate her more
perversely colored dreams of late. She
blushed at the thought as her undercarriage moistened, sex was beyond her
nubile understanding but her body reacted to her perversions none the less.
Clarissa would never know what it felt like to have sex with
a man. Clarissa died in her own bed
under her pink polka dot blankets at the age of twenty, still a shut in to the
adult world. The diagnosis was pneumonia
but everyone seemed to think it happened too quickly for that slow
disease. She was her typical plucky self
the day before, practically bursting with youthful energy. Now she was silent and stiff, cadaver showing
no sign of struggle, the maids agreed “at least she died in peace”.
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