He trailed off, eyes narrowing. There was a spider crawling across his desk and up the wall.
Daffy hated spiders. He’d always hated spiders, ever since the old black and white days when they’d been top-hatted, white-gloved villains in dozens of cartoons. Since he’d only rarely been the hero in those cartoons, he’d always been beat up by them when he encountered them, but that was just…acting. No, the problem had always been backstage. Daffy could get along with just about anyone he’d ever been in opposition to; after all, in the cartoon world, today’s hero was tomorrow’s villain was Thursday’s antihero, so who you were in front of the camera didn’t mean squat about who you’d be behind it. But the only spiders he’d ever worked with had been bullies off camera as well, although nobody else seemed to think so; it was like they were only jerks to Daffy.
And then there had been…The Incident, which had led Daffy to refuse to work with Foghorn Leghorn ever again and also given him severe arachnophobia. Even now, he couldn’t think about it without shuddering. He’d never told anyone about it, and they’d probably put the fact that he’d carefully worked the blocking in Space Jam so he never had to be in the same frame as him down to some weird grudge leftover from an early cartoon—Donald had once accused him of being in kayfabe all the time, which wasn’t remotely true—but it was real, and it had happened, and he empathized very hard with the man who’d been haunted by one all his life. And now there was a spider in his office.
Porky would give him hell about this. Daffy didn’t care. He kept his eyes on the spider as he reached, ever so slowly, for a sheaf of blank paper. A flyswatter or a comically large mallet would have been better, but this was better than nothing.
“C’mere…” he muttered under his breath, casually rolling the papers up. The spider stayed where it was, waving its front legs in his direction, perched on the front of one of the shelves.
“Gotcha!” With a sudden, fierce swing, Daffy raised the roll of papers over his head and whacked it down hard on the spot where the spider was. There was a loud BANG—far louder than paper on plastic should have made—and the reason why quickly became evident as the papers flew out of his hand. Daffy had hit the shelf hard enough to knock the whole unit askew. They held for just a second, then collapsed.
Wile E appeared in the doorway in the way he often did, gripping the frame and peering around it worriedly. “Is…everything all right, Daffy?” he asked tentatively.
“Yeah.” Daffy gestured helplessly at the shelves. “Thpider.”
“A…spider?” Wile E repeated. He came fully into the room, frowning at the shelves.
“Yeah. I tried to kill it. The thhelf collapthed.”
“Are we absolutely these are not an Acme product?” Wile E said, a bit dryly. “Did you hit it?”
“I think tho.” Daffy bent to examine the papers. “Nathty, bulbouth looking thing.”
Wile E snorted. “Well. I shall do you the courtesy of not telling Porky.”
Daffy sighed heavily. “Thank you. I don’t need another lecture on how important they are to the ecothythtem.”
Wile E tilted his head to one side, his eyes narrowing, and shuffled forward, intent on the shelves. Daffy blinked at him, then followed his gaze. “What?”
“Look at this.” Wile E carefully shifted a few files to one side, revealing the wall behind the shelving unit.
Daffy bent down and squinted. The wall had a…dimple in it, like someone had hit it, or had run into it face first, except it wasn’t shaped like a Toon. “Huh. Mutht’ve got dented when the shelf collapthed, I guethth.”
“More than a dent, my fine feathered friend. This goes right through the wall. Look.” Wile E extended one long, skinny finger and tapped his claw lightly at the center. The crack scored, revealing that, as he had said, there was nothing behind it. “I was under the impression that this was an exterior wall.”
“It oughta be,” Daffy said. A cold sweat was beginning to bead along the back of his neck and he couldn’t say why.
“Hmm. I believe this to be nothing more than mere…plasterboard.” Wile E pursed his lips thoughtfully, then began carefully prying at the fragments of wall until he had exposed…a hole. A dark, jagged hole in the wall of his office, a wall that should have led to the outside but instead led…somewhere else. The sweat prickled more.
“Thee anything?” Daffy asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking as he did so.
He heard the wet, squelching sound approaching, even as Wile E said, “No, I don’t believe I do, it…”
The sound got louder, even as he spoke, and Daffy realized what it was a split second before he saw the first glint of wet, shining silvery white in the black of the hole beyond.
“RUN!!!” he screamed.