The umbrella. Turned into a spider. Murdered a dude. And now it’s talking to me.
Let’s see what happens next in our bizarre light novel-esque story!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we use continue the story we wrote during the animated GIF prompt stream
(Be sure to read the beginning there if you missed it.)
Whenever you continue a story, you want to make sure that the next chapter does at least some of these three things:
- Raise the stakes (new conflicts, new discoveries, etc.)
- Broaden the world (new characters, new setting, etc.)
- Payoff some previous setups (meet characters mentioned, Chekov’s guns, etc.)
With that in mind, here’s how we continued it:
My Ordinary Life With Exploding Umbrella Spider Vol. 2
The thunder blocked out my screams as I threw the umbrella to the soaking wet sidewalk. I tried to push myself up to run away, but could only manage an awkward backward crab-walk that made me splash through puddle after thick puddle.
“Hey kid, where’s your manners?” the umbrella rasped at me. “You not gonna say thanks or what?”
Seeing Mason’s blood dripping from the umbrella’s “teeth,” and mixing with the rainwater swirling into the drains, made my own blood start pumping again. Suddenly I shot to my feet and dashed back the way I’d come, the umbrella screeching something behind me that I didn’t stop to hear.
No. I didn’t hear it because umbrellas can’t talk. Can’t run. And definitely cannot eat the school bully.
I didn’t know what was going on. Maybe this was one of those weird YouTube shows where they prank you and put you on the Internet. Makes sense for a jerk like Mason to be a “social experiment” YouTuber. Or that weirdo clerk. I need to go tell them I don’t consent to be on their stupid channel. They’re not getting any ad revenue from Stanley Webber!
I barged into the convenience store, my sopping shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor, ready to stand up for myself for the first time in my life. Tell that skinny plaid-wearing weirdo to back off!
“Uh, can I help you?” came the nervous voice of the pimply-faced clerk in the usual white collared outfit.
I stopped. My hair, shirt and everything dripped nonstop onto the floor.
“Where’s that creep from before?” I asked. “The guy who was here, just a few minutes ago?”
“Uh, it’s just been me here,” the clerk who was just a few years older than me breathed out heavily. He picked up a card from under the counter then started reading off of it. “Do you require medical assistance sir or madam? Shall I contact a medical professional to attend to your needs?”
This guy thought I was crazy. Overdosing on something. I looked around for cameras, to see if this was yet another part of the act or whatever. But aside from an old rinky dink security cam that creaked as it painfully rotated back and forth by the entrance, there was nothing.
I put a hand on the counter between us, to try and stabilize my sanity.
“If you see a guy in an oversized plaid shirt, tell him I want to return my umbrella.”
Hopefully that sounded more sober to him than it did to me. With nothing else to say, I left the confused clerk and headed back outside, the storm now diminished down to a slight drizzle. Even a sliver of the sun was peeking out behind the thick clouds.
Maybe that clerk was right. Maybe I accidentally breathed in something weird. Now that I think about it, I did take a dump at school today, going against one of mom’s rules. She always talks about how tons of riff raff smoke all kinds of crap in there. I probably inhaled their residue or something. Serves me right, right?
Was what I thought, until I saw the umbrella staring up at me on the sidewalk, all of its pointed legs spread out.
“Yo kid!” it barked at me. “Let’s get out of here. I hate being outside when it’s all gross like this. Dry as a desert. My metal’s startin’ to rust!”
***
Have you ever sat on your bed, staring at a sentient, murderous umbrella prowling about your room, touching all your stuff with the sharp ends of its numerous claws?
No? Well, let me tell you what, it’s just a bit strange.
“Yo what’s this?” the thing said, clacking its sharp tip against a lamp on my nightstand.
“It’s a lamp,” I said as deadpan as possible. The only thing bringing me some amount of relief in this entire situation was that I’d had a chance to change my clothes. Everything except my underwear anyway. I wasn’t getting naked around that thing.
“Ugh. Terrible. Looks like the sun. Can you kill it?”
Apparently I was now taking orders. Without thinking too much about the situation, I leaned over and pulled the metal chain, dimming the room. Not dimming any of the insanity.
“Yo what’s this?” the thing said. It tapped against a framed photo, knocking it over. I quickly caught it before it hit the floor.
“Be careful,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that I was telling a spider-umbrella to be careful. “That’s a photo of me at summer camp a few years back.”
The thing bobbed up and down and leaned in closer. “Ooh, who’s that cutie with ya?”
“Kelly,” I said. I think that was the first time I’d actually said her name aloud, not just in my head. Figures it was to a murderous umbrella. “She’s a, uh, friend I like a lot.”
“I can see why!” the thing said, now undulating even faster. “She looks delicious.”
Before I could even process that, I heard the front door open. Mom’s shoes clacked inside, then came to an abrupt stop.
“Stanley Gordon Webber!” she screeched through the house. “Get out here this minute!”
I knew I’d tracked in water and mud from outside, but I’d been a little distracted by the monster following me around. For once, Mom’s wrath about me messing up her carpet was only the second scariest thing. Mom’s wrath about me harboring a bloodthirsty spider-umbrella was a little above it.
“You need to get lost,” I whispered to the thing. It just wobbled back and forth.
“Nah. I like it here. Lamps! Photos! Crazy stuff. There’s so much to see. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
I didn’t have time to deal with this. If this thing wasn’t going to leave, then I had to somehow hide it. And there’s only one way to hide an umbrella.
I pounced on the murderbrella, smothering it as it groaned inaudibly beneath me. Pushing back against its surprising strength, I managed to roll it up like wrestling with a giant vinyl sock, then pulled the velcro strap around it. Now it just looked like a normal compact umbrella, albeit with a few weird shakes and muffled profanities coming out of it.
Quickly tossing it under my pillow, I went out to the living room to embrace my fate.
Mom stood in front of the doorway, the glare in her eyes cutting right through the room and straight at me. She thrust out a single finger to the floor, her earrings and bracelets jangling from the small movement.
“Did you do this?” she said, sucking all the air out of the room. Now that I got a good look at what I’d tracked in, it was really bad. I didn’t even wipe my feet at the door, just stomped in mucky shoeprint after shoeprint, with a sloshing of water dribbling between each, making them bleed like a mudpie murder scene.
“Well?” she said, her words colder than winter rain. “Do you have something to tell me, young man?”
There was never any point in lying to Mom. She could smell my lies. My increased heart rate. I grew your heart inside of me, of course I can tell when it’s lying to me. She always said that. It didn’t matter if it was true or not. It had the same effect.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said, hanging my head. “I… I wasn’t thinking. I forgot an umbrella today, and I needed to get out of my wet things before I got sick. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
Mom’s glare softened to a warm smile. She clacked over to me and held up my chin with her fingers. They were cold as icicles.
“You really do have my eyes,” she said. “They’re good eyes, I would know. Do you understand how it makes me feel when you fail to make proper use of them? It makes me upset, Stanley.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What can we do…” she asked softly, “to help you remember in the future?”
I glanced over at the bucket of umbrellas by the front door. Any of them that I could’ve taken this morning, but didn’t.
Mom didn’t even need me to say anything. She knew what I was looking at. I grew those eyes of yours inside of me. I always know what you’re looking at.
“Excellent idea,” she whispered. She click-clacked over to the bucket, picked out a long, antique-looking umbrella, then clacked back over to me.
“This is for your own good, Stanley,” she said. “When something hurts us, we rarely ever forget about it. Now turn around.”
I was used to this. It happened whenever I broke any of mom’s rules. But, in a way, she was right. I never broke the same rule twice.
With three… no, four… no, five painful thwacks, Mom stopped and told me to turn back around to her. Another warm smile and cold hands on my shaking arms.
“Don’t worry about the carpet stains,” she said. “That’s not a job for a Webber. I’ll call some riff raff to come clean that up for us. You just take this and try to remember from now on, okay?”
She handed me the umbrella and I clasped onto it hard with both hands.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. She nodded and patted me on the shoulder.
“Well, let’s not dilly dally then,” she said. “Get scooting on your homework, mister. I’ll order us something nice from the hot bar from Whole Foods for dinner.”
I nodded and forced a smile, then headed back to my room, walking as steadily as I could until I shut the door behind me.
I barely made it to my bed. The sharp, throbbing pain in my legs, rear and back was like tweezers yanking at my skin all over. I lay there, moaning into the pillow, hoping that at least I’d be able to walk without hobbling tomorrow.
A noise came from beneath my face. Oh. Right. That problem.
I rolled over, wincing, and pulled away my pillow. The umbrella thing was still there, vibrating and emitting some sort of incomprehensible sound. I scanned the thing for its one-dollar price marker, and saw a sliver of it peeking out beneath the velcro strap. I peeled it off from underneath, then slapped it on an unobstructed area.
“Thanks, kid!” it said, smacking its lips. Or whatever the red circle around its flapping price tag was. “Damn, that lady out there sounds like a real Karen, you know? Lemme at her! I got yo’ back. Just loosen this velcro a bit, a’ight?”
Even with the back half of my body in searing pain, I knew better than that. I already had one murder on my hands today, I didn’t need another. And apparently as long as this thing was velcro-ed shut, its homicidal tendencies would be kept in check. One less immediate problem on my platter.
“Okay, so no go on the velcro,” it grumbled. “I see how it is. I save you, you hate me, story of my life. But… hey. Maybe you can, uh, let me have some private time with that pretty parasol you got over there?”
I’d forgotten about the antique umbrella that Mom had thrust upon me. As much as I didn’t even want to think about what a sentient umbrella would do to it, I wanted it out of my sight far more. I pushed it off my bed onto the floor, and gave the thing — I guess I’ll call it Umbra — a push too.
“Thanks, kid!” Umbra said, now out of sight. “Hey sexy granny, which do you prefer? The nub or the shaft?”
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Top image: Pixabay