Fine black hair tendrils, drifting in a night ocean, floating through air, drifting, drifting.

I’m channeling a well, a well not filled with water but with hair. And bone. Bones buried under masses of the dead matter that is hair. Black water. Black hair. Strands of hair being pulled out from between a woman’s lips, more and more, thicker and thicker, till she regurgitates the hair like ropy, coarse vomit.

A Web of Black Widows is Showcase number 7 from Peter Crowther’s PS Publishing out of the U.K.

It holds six stories by the writer Scott William Carter and features cover art by Glenn Chadbourne.

Carter is an American writer from Oregon who has seen publication in Weird Tales, Analog, Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Chiaroscuro, Ellery Queen, Fantasy Magazine and in a number of anthologies.

Here’s a grungy little roadside pump station and redneck hellbilly museum out in the back of beyond. You pull in, switch off, listen to the isolated, isolating silence. And as your car is ticking down in the subtly insect-chirping night, this guy in filthy overalls comes out. His name is Cain he tells you, and this surely could not bode well. The overalls are stained with grease and crimson and odd-smelling lube, and he’s got a funny little smile this guy, when he does smile, and black under his fingernails and when he slips that bowser nozzle into your uncapped tank it feels like abuse.