Short Story

A short story - The Spiders

It started at a party, early in the evening. The house was rather big, an older model of a mansion that had been abandoned for years until it was remodeled recently and sold to a fairly wealthy middle class family. The house was three stories tall and the refurnishing had made it more modern looking, like an upper class luxury get away cottage. The owner’s son had been allowed to throw a party here in celebration of graduating his exams. Brody didn’t know him per say, he had been invited through a mutual friend and they were way out in the middle of no where almost into cottage country. The smell of alcohol and pot hung in the air as fellow graduating students danced to the music reverberating throughout the house.

He didn’t even know what he was thinking when he bumped into that short scrawny guy who did not look like much of a fighter. He was just kind of dancing around when he hit something well, someone who happened to have spilled his drink on himself when he was jolted into. Looking up Brody noticed that the guy was furious and he flinched expecting a punch to come. After a second he realized that it wasn’t coming. The guy was just staring at him really mad and wasn’t making any motion to punch him whatsoever. Then he heard “You’ll get what’s coming to you anyways you little prick.” Brody backed off, raising his hands in quasi-surrender to disarm the guy and avoid anything getting out of hand.

Odd enough no one else seemed to have noticed the small altercation. In fact, no one bothered to comment either way which was weird as at a party sometimes the biggest entertainment was the possibility of a fight. It was roughly a half an hour after that when he noticed colours becoming more dark and obscure the reds and greens seemed to stand out more. Playing beer pong with the standard cups they glowed bloodshot for a second as he threw the ball causing him to miss. The thunk came as a shadowy figure crept up along the wall. Glancing up there was a small spider that he had never seen before crawling around the top of the ceiling, it had a pattern on its hairy body, with light green and dark red colouring.

Shivering Brody left the room ignoring his buddy who had driven him, trying to get him to play wing man. He left for the back where the pool was. The sun was in the lower quarter of it’s zenith, blood red setting the stage for a silhouette of a dark red sky. The air was crisp like a cool summers night would be if it wasn’t still early enough for the suns heat to be there still. He was outside in the back by the pool and was trying to work his magic on a girl around his age, when he saw several of them crawl out from behind her shoulder.

When he warned her that they were there she shrieked at the top of her lungs and started to swipe at her shoulder. Missing with every single attempt she looked at him weirdly and asked if it was some extremely awkward pass at her. No he tried to explain they had probably jumped off when she had tried to get them. “So where are they now then?” She replied looking around hesitantly. He scanned around as well with a sinking feeling that they would not be seen again and he just threw away his chance of getting anywhere with her. Moving away from her as she started ranting about immature boys he drifted back into the house.

The living room was crowded with people and the main stereo system which had speakers that had been placed all throughout the house. The music seemed to pound louder then before and the colours seemed more vivid this time if darker with the reds and greens glowing to the music. He figured he’d try and head to meet back up with his buddy to get a lift back. Going through from the living room he made his way past the open kitchen and made it into the hallway. As he walked through to the stairs that were up ahead on the right those spiders started showing up in the halls. To make matters worse the colours of the halls themselves, which at one point were a bland white, were turning into the same dark bloody red and light green colours. So the only differentiation he could make from the spiders and the walls were that there was movement and the shadowy outlines of their bodies.

Troubled further he started to pick up his pace careful not to run into anyone as he half jogged half stumbled through the house dodging anyone in the way and those damned creatures. As he got outside he realized that his friend who had driven him to the party was gone. Furious he went to get his cell phone out of his pocket, when someone near him at the front of the house started to shriek in pain. One of those spiders had bit a girl around his age on the neck and her veins were protruding. He could smell a fowl scent as if she was decomposing as quickly as she had died or maybe it was poison? He wasn’t sure, following the veins with his eyes he noticed that as the poison spread throughout her body each vein would bulge out. She fell down turning pale quickly. By now he was completely torn between going to help calling for an ambulance and running as far away as possible. Suddenly all around him there were screams of agony. People around the front yard and throughout the house were falling down with the same bulging veins.

His decision made, he started running from the party as fast as he could. He started to move quickly but before he could he noticed the guy he had bumped into previously grinning wickedly at him from a window on the second story of the house. Brody blinked and he was gone, knowing he didn’t have much time to waste he started as he saw a large grouping of the spiders make their way towards him. He ran down the road on the main street hoping to find someone who would be able to give him a ride back to town. He needed to get help to the people still there as he ran he tried pulling his phone out of his pocket. As he did he saw one of the spiders gripping his phone and crawling towards his hand.

Panicking he threw his phone away, continuing to run noticing that the spiders were starting to come out of the trees which had dark red tinged trunks and light green leaves. The road itself slowly turned from dirt brown into a darker crimson as it twisted him towards the main road. He reached the main road and heard a car heading his way in the distance turning he ran towards it. Shouting for it to stop, eventually it slowed down and stopped the driver, an older man inquired about his situation. Going as fast as he could and glancing around for any more spiders which mysteriously had disappeared when he had hit the main road he blurted out “Listen sir, I need a ride I need to phone for help! I was at a party and there was this guy and I guess I upset him and now there’s these red and green spiders that keep following me, they started appearing out of no where!”

The man looked disturbed he rolled up his window, as he was doing so Brody heard a choking noise and saw the man’s jugular start to swell. Terrified now he noticed a crimson leg scuttle from out of the man’s coat. Brody bolted as fast as he could away from the car and proceeded to make his way down the main road. As he glanced back he noticed the car itself started to glint with an eerie reddish tinge now and a small army of those freaky spiders began to flow out from the car window and the sides of the door and windshield. Looking in front again he noticed that the woods started to turn into a darker green of a bog with hints of red in the water from the dark red sky. Brody felt an itch in his hair and franticly began to swat it then raked his fingers through. A clump of hair came out dry and stiff like he hadn’t showered in days. It suddenly began to feel moist and he dropped it out of shock. Looking down it’s colour changed from sandy blonde to burgundy and emerald he shrieked as it transformed into one of the arachnids that had been following him. Going into full tilt he looked around and from the bog at the sides of the main road heard loud crunching sounds and watched as giant arachnids, roughly the size of small dogs started to poor out. He was terrified and could see them slowly beginning to surround him. He noticed a small bridge through the swampy area that seemed to be clear of them. Taking the opportunity, he swiftly ran towards the bridge, jumping and zigzagging to avoid the spiders nearest to him.

As he started to cross the bridge his heart pounded throbbing so loud it echoed in his head... it was a trap all around him they were springing out leaping at him as if they were able to stand solidly and launch themselves from the water itself. Feeling the sweat begin to drip from his palms he continued on his way slowly running out of breath and energy dodging ducking and rolling on the bridge. Then he realized he could see the end, the last part of the bridge through the bog was ahead of him. Ecstatic he put his last ditch effort into making it to the end as he did he heard a voice in his head. It was female and sounded light and almost angelic “It’s a good thing you didn’t fall into the bog.” Slightly distracted momentarily by the what seemed like heavenly congratulations he barely noticed a lone spider the size of a dog lunge at him from the side cutting him off diagonally.

He stepped back…and lost his balance, falling backwards into the bog. Petrified he found he was slowly numbing from the bog, or maybe one of the spiders had bitten him when he had fallen in. Either way he could no longer feel his elbow as he was sure it was sinking in. The numbness continued all around his body until he couldn’t feel a thing at all. While all around him huge now horse sized spiders gathered biting into him with piercing fangs. He realized he was vanishing when he looked turning his neck to see nothing, he was no longer being supported by his elbow the bog was eating him alive and in his last moments as he was numbing and petrified he heard the groveling voice of the guy at the party in his head. “At the very least everyone else will get funerals and buried. You on the other hand will vanish.” That would be the last thing Brody ever heard as he vanished his consciousness and body disappearing into the midst of the now light green and dark red bog surrounded and being crawled on by spiders as his world went blank into nothingness.

It was a bit later into the evening when someone stopped to look into why a car was parked at the side of the road on a major rout into the city. An older man in his late sixties was found dead with his veins protruding almost unrealistically from his body, half rotten as if he had been sitting out there for days. The police were called immediately to investigate the matter. After several specialists were called in the cause of death was never confirmed. There were no cuts or markings on the body for the blood to have left by, not even the smallest incision by a needle. Roughly twelve hours after that, there were several reports of missing young adults which the police went to a rather large house off of the main route where the car was found. All of the people there were dead in the same way as well, everyone of the missing persons had been found no marks no cuts with half rotten bodies and entirely drained of blood. There was one exception a young man by the name of Brody Dunn had gone missing without a trace. With no witnesses and no one able to confirm any sightings of him his case was left under a cold missing persons case after a month of searching. No evidence of where he went or how he had vanished ever came up.