‘Wait, stop…’ she screamed, chasing me down the corridor.
‘Don’t open the door.’
I opened the door and almost lost my breath.
It was the most unexpected sight imaginable. Beautiful, but frightening at the same time.
‘Shut the door!’ my sister screamed, as she ran into me. I fell into the room and she shut the door behind me, locking me inside.
Now what am I going to do?
‘Why are you so afraid? It wouldn’t have appeared if it was going to harm us. Aren’t you curious about its motive?’
‘I don’t normally spend time worrying about the motives of arachnids, I just squash them.’
I headed back towards the door with a shoe –
‘Wait, stop, don’t, you can’t!’
I paused, the shoe dangling uselessly from my hand. The enormous, spider-like creature reached down with its pedipalps, ghosting the shape of my face. I shivered, a sensation between fear and pleasure travelling the length of my spine.
It did seem a little larger than usual. It gave a whole new meaning to the saying, ‘We’re not here to fuck spiders.’ This one was not exactly amorous though and I felt afraid as it lunged at me with the full force of a tractor.
My head shot back, and it felt like my brain rattled in its skull. I let out an unearthly sound that emptied my lungs as I slumped to the ground. In my barely conscious state I heard the piercing, scratching noises it made as it moved away from me and toward my sister. Through the haze of concussion, it sounded like a low murmur of discussion was happening behind me. Raised voices, but with the tenderness of familiarity, urgency and definitely debating some serious problem. My head woozed with a wave of weirdness, the prick of a small scratch and I drifted off, away from the sounds, and feeling a tug on my now crooked leg.
The spider’s mandibles clacked together over my face, like the maracas of doom. I could feel its many eyes glaring at me. ‘It’s your,’ it hissed. ‘Not you’re.’
‘I … I’m sorry,’ I stammered. Just my luck, it was a grammar monster. ‘I was in a hurry and I just … ’
‘And always capitalise the beginning of your sentences,’ it slurred.
‘But it was just a text … ’
‘nooooo!’ the spider’s legs flexed in anger. ‘That’s a poor excuse.’
Everything was becoming dimmer, changing. Words were blending each to the other and time was disappearing. And I woke up. Sometimes I remember my dreams, sometimes not, but this was a nightmare and the relief of waking up was immense… until I looked around at my bedroom…
The lights were out. I could’ve sworn I’d left them on. The monitor before me provided the only light, the words on the screen ending in the obligatory row of nonsense where my head had hit the keyboard. How many hours earlier?
‘Are you okay?’ my sister called from the doorway. ‘I heard screaming, I think? Are you still writing at three am?’
I blinked. ‘I think?’
Then I saw it, just to the left of the keyboard. It was much smaller than in my dream, barely three inches across. The spider, I swear, winked at me, before slowly climbing the wall. I shuddered.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, as I went back to that last paragraph, and checked my spelling. The spider had been right.