A victim develops a fear of spiders in the most unusual way. Completely unrealistic, right? That's what we all think... until something actually happens.
The internet says you swallow eight spiders in your sleep every year, but no one brings up what feeds them to you.
That's why I was surprised when I woke up in a cold sweat to a sore, dry throat, and a queasy stomach that wouldn't stop moving. A quick glance at my phone told me that it was exactly four in the morning; not early enough to be light outside, and still late enough for me to see nothing but blackness in my room.
Everything except for that horrible thing's shockingly evil eyes were hidden in the dark. It must've been a glare bouncing from my window, I had thought initially, but the curtains were closed. So what were those two beady white orbs staring back at me from my ensuite door?
I wish I could give you an answer, but I've only seen her a couple of times since then. She wakes me hy up every morning at four by dragging smooth fingers over my cheek while humming the same familiar tune; yet her face is anything but motherly, let alone human.
This morning was the first morning I caught it in action. I woke up by reaction a moment's earlier, but didn't dare to stop squeezing my eyelids shut.
“What do I look like?” A wheezy voice drawled out in a murmur, she knew fully well that I was awake. The stench made my nostrils flare- it was a combination of rottenness and pesticide, the smell of a crawlspace in the roof, or maybe like a rotten apple.
Getting no reply made her impatient, so she propped open my lips and dropped a delicate meat in my mouth. I swallowed hard, breaking the crispiness with my muscles to reach the bland, gooey interior. “Open your eyes…”
She craved the attention.
What would happen if I opened my eyes? Would she stop? My heart throbbed erratically, my breath hitching. I could make out that it was hunched over my face with her hands on the side of the bed- and if I focused hard enough, hot air would whistle in and out of seven small gaps in front of me.
This would go on for the next half of an hour before she lost interest. I didn't open my eyes until after I'd heard the door click shut, and would then proceed to gag up what I could until my face burned. She had a similar, distorted version of my mother's voice, which wasn't possible. I hadn't seen my mum since I was six, the evening she left my dad and I with a small suitcase of her things.
This demon and her had one thing in common. That was that they both left me with more questions than answers.
Thinking back on it, I know where I recognize it from. I can recall the memory that is the root cause for all of my night-terrors...
“Her proportions are all wrong.” Father groaned frustratedly. A steady hand would bring up the paintbrush to the canvas and try to correct his mistake. This is what I remember from when I was a child.
“What is it, pa?” I peered curiously over his shoulder before he shooed me away again.
“I don't know. I see her sometimes.” The old man blurted out, unaware that his words would curse my nightmares for the rest of my developing years. The emaciated body with two silver optics were placed where you'd see them normally, but six other eye-sized holes gaped into her forehead. A black silk cloth was pulled over her skull and being lifted up with one hand, while two of her other fingers drifted close to one of the eyelets and grabbed onto a web-weaving insect.
My dad had been a dedicated artist before his passing. The ambulance found him curled up in his prized drawing room, cruelly taken by his own hand. A letter addressed to no one in particular laid near his fingers, it read; she didn't like it. When they completed the autopsy, the coroner was confused as to why there was so much silk webbed across the trachea, and as to why there were so many folded up spiders in his digestive system. As hard as the team tried, they couldn't find a rational explanation why, so they ruled it down to suicide.
My wife still doesn't understand why I feel so stranded when she gets drafted, she doesn't have a fear of spiders like I do. It's been three months since I've seen the thing that makes you eat spiders while you sleep, but my partner left yesterday for another six weeks. Now, I'm waiting. It's three-fifty-eight a.m., and if I listen close enough, I can hear the door creak open.
