A Ceramics Factory

A Ceramics Factory

Jaqueline Kelly had been a "masked adventurer" for fifteen years— since her grandfather passed on an old necklace. It was threaded with some kind of silk, with glass beads and a copper centerpiece depicting a spider carrying a small clay wad. When her grandmother realized Jack had the necklace, long after Grandpa Kelly had passed on himself, Nana Kelly explained the significance with curt clarity:

"You remember the stories about the spider I told you when you were young?"

"Of course. What does that have to do with the necklace, though, Nana?"

"Then you know what a spider can do. Maybe people need a little spider."

It took Jacky a bit longer to figure out how things worked from there, but when she sneezed and involuntarily unleashed a cascade of webs from her palm things started to make a bit more sense. So too did it make sense when she woke up half-way up the wall.

She didn't sleep with the necklace on anymore.

The Vespa underneath her purred quietly as she came to a stop. She had been keeping track of a string of local disappearances for a few days now. A friend she had at a cellular company left a door unlocked for her one night, and she was able to get ahold of some of the information the police had been holding out of her reach. Not much in the way of infrastructure in the hills outside of the city, but one of the missing folks' phones had pinged this tower a short while after they had been reported missing. A long day of bouncing from rural home to rural home had finally offered up something that felt a little bit more substantial; Jacky was now staring at the shadow of a sun-bleached, crumbling brick building with a tin roof.

She threw down the kickstand, dismounted, and slung her helmet over one of the moped's handlebars. A glance of assessment in the mirror was all she could spare.

Black pants with a thick leather belt, big black combat boots, a comfortable black sweater, and fingerless gloves with the palms open. Her brown hair was back and up, braided tight inside of a beanie. A matching medical mask, not entirely out of fashion, kept her face hidden. Not seen, but a comfort nonetheless, was the red-blue-orange sunburst spider she had painted on the back of the sweater a few years back.

Jacky took comfort in how hard to see she could choose to be, and then let loose a line of web to pull her to the building. She tumbled loosely through the air before angling to land on one of the ancient walls.

The whole building moaned.

She put her feet beneath herself, taking comfort in the flexibility of the amulet's magic and its allowances. She would have given up the thick boots if it meant retaining her ability to cling to surfaces, but the thought of stepping on a nail put a particularly potent fear into her.

The building interior was mingling with the exterior. Near the back a wall had collapsed in, giving way to the wilderness. Rubble and old factory equipment was strewn about. It was hard to tell what was made here.

Jacky descended from the wall and began to slink through the room. From the ground the main entrance was clearly arranged such that business affairs would have gone one way, upstairs, while the floor workers would have gone deeper. A greeter's desk stood silent sentinel. She crept around, digging briefly through the desk's drawers. What was left had succumbed to mold and time.

She walked up the stairs.

She stopped half-way. She looked back over her shoulder, and then back up the stairs.

The old linoleum tiles were cracked and dusty. The dust ahead of her was disturbed, however. She retrieved her flashlight— a heavy-duty steel one— from her lower front pocket. The illumination confirmed her concern, and the quiet began to weigh on her.

Probably an animal.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight, and her muscles quickly tensed.

Probably not an animal.

The tension left her body, and the necklace released an affirmative warmth.

She pushed up, and found that the few offices were themselves collapsing. Old sheets of insulation eaten away at by moisture and exploratory critters. A great big plexiglass window covered in muck looking out over the factory floor, and a door hanging off of its hinges leading down a steel staircase onto the same. Her light scraped across the room and into one of the larger offices. A beanbag chair, a twin-sized mattress. One of the old desks had been cleaned up and pushed into a corner, where it displayed a host of figurines.

Each of the figurines was a little clay person. Painstaking detail was put into their poses and outfits. They were not dissimilar to the many plastic collector's toys one could buy of pop-culture icons, or the occasional Sell-Out Superhero.

They were women.

Jacky jammed the flashlight under her arm and dug out her phone. Pictures of the missing women were at the front of her reel. A few moments of arranging the figures and comparing them yielded the result she was worried to find. Whoever was sculpting these was using the women as their model.

She stowed her phone and stepped out of the office and onto the steel staircase descending into the dark.

For just a moment, illuminated by her flashlight beam at the bottom of the staircase, was a pale man with shaggy hair. Khakis, a pink button-down, leather shoes.

As fast as the light passed over him he had slipped out of view, over the rail.

Jacky leapt hard and fast, catching the ceiling with her free hand and feet while scanning the room with the beam of her flashlight. Old throwing equipment, mounds of clay sealed in plastic, a handful of pottery furnaces. The man was nowhere to be seen?

Had he even been there?

The necklace exploded with warmth, almost startling her. She tightened, and yanked herself to the rear wall with a long length of thread.

Another scan of the room.

There was a basement, or a loading dock. She couldn't tell. Just saw stairs down, towards the right-hand side of the building.

Her hair stood on end, and she yanked herself to the ground, rolling to a sudden stop. The flashlight revealed that where she had been on the wall was now a still-oozing hunk of cold clay. It had slapped against the wall as she landed.

She leapt down the nearby stairs, disappearing further into the dark. She shut off her flashlight and started into a dead sprint down the steps. Then, she slammed into a thick door.

She fumbled with the handle, before finding a push-bar. She slammed against it.

The necklace pulsed cold, and Jacky rolled flat across the ground. A wet slap ahead of her. She put both hands down on the ground and spun her legs through the air, kicking the door closed. A loud grunt and the sound of scrabbling against concrete on the other side confirmed her concern.

Jacky spoke as she pulled herself up: "Need to call the cops at this point, I think."

The necklace chilled harsher.

"What do you mean no? No as in I can't, or shouldn't?"

Warmth.

"Fuck. Basement."

Another warm pulse.

Jacky turned and let a storm of webbing coat the door. She let the webs stack thicker and thicker on the hinges, piling up hard and pushing into every crevice. She ensured a thick net covered the whole of the door once the hinges had been jammed. A useful "just-in-case".

With the flashlight returned to hand and a dull hammering beginning to sound from the door, she scanned the room.

Storage. Boxes. Old. Moldy.

And statues. Life-like clay molds of the kidnappees. Built to scale.

A cold burst poured across her chest from the necklace.

"No?"

She stepped nearer to one. The woman depicted was just a bit shorter, with coarse hair. But the clay was stiff. She was posed in such a way that it looked as though she were trying to rip her own skin away. Most of the women stood in some variation of the poses.

Another great cold pulse. Her hair stood straight.

She glanced towards the door. It was holding. Then the clay wad on the wall, which had begun to dry. It was large. As big around as she was tall. The only way someone could have thrown that was if they were enhanced or super.

A warm pulse.

A pit formed in her stomach, and nearly climbed right of her esophagus. She turned to the "statues" and began to rip the dry clay from the nearest one. Starting at the arms. There was another pair of identical arms underneath, which quickly began to scrape and hammer away at the rest of the clay.

In a few moments the rest of her was cracked free, gagging and coughing as she scraped clay from the inside of her mouth. She collapsed.

"Breathe. Breathe." Jacky snapped to catch the woman, pulling her close.

"Th— Thank you."

"Of course. Can you tell me what he did?" The hammering on the door was growing louder, now.

"He um. I was walking back to campus and— and. It was just. Grey? All I could see was grey. Like. I never saw him. Just a grey thing." She pulled closer into Jacky as she spoke, beginning to cry. "And I couldn't move. I'm so tired."

"I know. Hush now. Hush now. Can you help me with something?"

"No! No, please."

"I know. I need you to help the others out of the clay."

"Others?" The door groaned. The hammering had stopped, replaced with a dull metallic tension.

Jacky gently turned her head towards the dozen other clay cages in the room. "The others."

"Oh god. How long have— What is happening?"

"I just need your help now."

"Okay. Yeah, okay. What about—" The door burst open, exploding off the hinges with a thunderous pop. Clay was beginning to ooze out around the bends and through the web-net which was now the only thing between the kidnapper and the rest of the room.

"I'm gonna deal with him."

"O— Okay."

Jacky released her to her feet and zipped back to the entrance. The clay was squirming. It was alive. Like a mass of grey death creeping closer. More webbing would stall, but it wouldn't help.

She retreated to the wall opposite the weakening door and tagged either side of the door with web. She held on, closing her spinnerets to sever the fibrous thread without letting go.

Then she pulled. Hard. Angling against the ground.

The door moaned.

She wrapped the thread around her arms two or three times. More. It was all she could do to remain in place. Meanwhile, the clay seized up around the door and the webbing, bending the thin steel door into two halves. The web net snapped away with it.

Jacky released her grip. Not on the webs, but on the ground.

She hurtled through the air, up the staircase. In the dark she felt the presence of the man and felt something slam against her foot as she passed it, putting an uncontrolled spiral into her motion. She twirled through the air, curling her back, as she flew out the rear collapsed wall and into a tree with a loud thud.

Moonlight revealed the moving mass of clay lurching towards her as it stood on two gangly legs, with two poorly constructed arms.

The whole thing was barely humanoid.

It slammed into the tree with a great clay fist. Jacky yanked herself between its legs with a threadline just in time to avoid the worst of it, and then yanked herself up to the roof with a second line. She was faster than it by a long shot.

It turned towards her.

And it was suddenly a shaggy man in khakis again.

"Stop this! Who are you? And why are you attacking my home?" Shaggy spoke pointedly.

"Who am I?" Jacky was clinging awkwardly to the edge of the roof, and took the moment to roll back and perch on the edge of the unstable tin. "Who the fuck are you?"

"I'm—"

"Don't actually want to know! You kidnapped all those women?"

"No! God, no!"

"Then why were they in your basement?"

His brow furrowed. His features began to sag. He said nothing.

"Hey Fuck! No answer?"

The man collapsed into clay once again, pulling himself into a larger, semi-humanoid shape.

As he did that, he lobbed another burst of clay at Jaqueline. With clear lines of sight and visibility like this it was easy for her to evade, and she did so with an aggressive approach. She hurtled towards The Sculptor on a thread connected to the ground and redirected with a second thread attached to a nearby tree, hurtling towards him feet-first.

She cleaved clean through.

A Jacky-sized hole in his chest-analogue left her grinning.

Pain for a monster like him deserved some early jubilation: "And stay down!"

The amulet chilled against her chest. Her grin dropped.

A massive clay fist swung around and slapped her to the side, sending her rolling across the ground. The clay she had caught in her boots and the clay from the impact began to flatten against her body and rapidly harden.

By the time she had rolled to a stop the clay had covered a good third of her.

She pushed herself up on her hands and knees, dug her flashlight out of her pocket, and hammered the hardened clay into shards. The creature was approaching, just slow enough. Jacky yanked herself along the grass with a thread, stowing the flashlight in her pocket once again.

Another wad, this one evaded with a roll. The necklace warmed.

In Nana Kelly's story, a spider retrieved fire from a burning tree. It gave fire to humanity.

Jacky's minds went to the kilns, the clay. And she opened her mouth as the clay hulk lurched towards her.

A great wave of heat, red-hot fire, licked through the air and slammed into The Sculptor. Wave after wave of heat. He was stunned, that much was certain. Jacky rolled her sleeves up, otherwise maintaining her concentration on the blast of fire.

She was forced to take a breath. In the gap the clay monster swung a fist around. Jacky jumped, landing on the fist and kicking down hard at the "wrist", if one could even call it that.

And the wrist broke away from the arm, bringing the fist with it.

It was completely hardened beneath her boots.

The beast's other arm swung down, an overhead strike, towards Jacky. She zipped onto the nearby wall. The overhead fist collided with the severed arm Jacky had been standing on, shattering both.

Another gout of flame, while Jacky had the opening and the breath for it. Orange-yellow-white danced through the air, cascading around the clay beast while it twisted and squirmed in place.

And then it stopped moving.

Kelly, now maskless, slumped against the wall she clung to and closed her eyes.