In the Dark

"There's no way I'm this drunk," she muttered, trying to suppress the rising bubble of anxiety welling in her chest. Her free hand slipped into her purse and she clenched the bottle of anxiety medication she kept on her in a death grip. She could taste the staleness of the air and all the fine hairs on her body stood on edge. "I-I just blacked out and fell asleep."

Even though she said the words, she couldn't convince herself. She hadn't drank enough to blackout and she'd already bitten her lip to make sure she wasn't dreaming. She didn't know where she was or how she got there, but everything in her told her it was real.

"What do I do? Do I just sit here and hope someone finds me? How would they even know I'm here? I don't even know where here is!"

Cress's knees wobbled beneath her and she squatted down to hug them. If help wasn't going to come, she needed to try and find a way out herself. Her initial surveyal of her surroundings revealed two things: she was in some type of sandstone tunnel or cave and there were only two directions to travel. She couldn't feel a breeze or hear any water which made both choices equal, so she just started walking in the direction she was facing.

An uneventful half hour passed (she could only tell because of her phone), with the tunnel snaking several times. She couldn't be sure, but her instinctive sense of direction told her that the tunnel hadn't looped around. It was more of a hunch than anything, but it put her at ease. Then again, it could have just been the pill she'd taken five minutes into her exploration after she'd fought down a panic attack.

"It's warm in here…" Cress swallowed hard and tried to ignore the familiar, antagonizing voice in the back of her head. The voice she had worked so hard to pacify through hundreds of hours of therapy. There weren't any spiders. There couldn't be. She was in a lightless cave and she hadn't seen any creatures, rodents or bugs, that a spider could eat. She was safe. Though that didn't stop the skittering shadows she saw in her peripheral.

Hallucinations had been a major issue during Cress's younger years and why she wasn't able to attend school. Just like how other children had imaginary friends or saw monsters in their closets, Cress saw spiders everywhere. Pieces of fuzz threw her into a frenzy and a slowly descending speck of dust had been enough to make her scream and run to her mother sobbing. It even got to the point she couldn't eat or sleep because she was afraid spider eggs were in her food or one would crawl in her mouth at night.

"Just breathe. There has to be an exit. The tunnel hasn't narrowed at any point, so I won't have to worry about getting stuck. The spiders are just in my imagination, just like before. The swarm is just my paranoia."

Cress repeated the words in her mind and rubbed the medication bottle in her purse with her thumb. She couldn't take anymore for a while, especially since she'd been drinking, so she would have to tough it out.

"Dammit!" she yelled, her frustrated voice echoing down the tunnel ahead of her. "I just want to go home…"

She choked back the tears that would do nothing but dehydrate her. Her throat was already dry and she felt light headed from dehydration after vomiting so much. So she took another step forward only to stop as her foot hit something.

"Stupid rock!" She pulled her foot back to kick the damn thing away, but her face went pale when she looked down.

At her feet was a pile of fluff. Black fluff. Black fluff covering the raisined body of the cat she'd foolishly chased earlier. Only then did she see it.

The strands were thin, nearly transparent and it was only because of the light of her flashlight that she was able to see the shimmer of threads crisscrossed across the tunnel in front of her. Her breath caught in her chest and the only thing Cress could hear was the pounding of her blood in her ears. She wanted to scream, run back the way she came, not stopping until her legs gave out beneath her and even then she'd keep crawling to get away.

It had been stalking her since she'd arrived in the tunnel, skittering through tunnels parallel to the one Cress had walked down. It would have pounced already if it hadn't been for the strange light, white and brighter than any torch, in her hand that blinded its eight sensitive eyes. If it weren't for its mistress's irrefutable orders, it might have even avoided the girl. While she wasn't the first human it had hunted, her smell was nothing like the other humans it had encountered. So, since caution did not go against the mistress's orders, it had waited and followed.

But that was then, and this was now. It had followed the human enough to tell the woman had no weapons or magic at its disposal.

This human would be entertaining.

The scream caught in Cress's throat reverberated off of the sandstone walls after she turned around and saw eight glossy eyes and dripping fangs in front of her. She stumbled backwards, tripping over the remains of the cat at her feet and falling onto her rear. The spider covered the entire diameter of the tunnel Cress had come from, its body taking up half the space while its eight, spiny spread out legs obstructed the rest.

Unlike the movies, it didn't make any noise as it slowly bore down on Cress. Somehow that made it worse.

Rolling over to scramble away, Cress only managed to make it a couple feet before one of the bear-sized spider's legs reached past her to bar her escape. She screamed again, though not quite as loud because her voice was hoarse from dehydration. Not that it mattered, she knew there was no one who could hear her.

"I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die…"

The four words ran through her mind recursively, drowning out any other thoughts in Cress's mind. She tried to think of a way to escape, a way to fight back, a way to… anything! But only those four words came to mind.

Then, the opening appeared. Cress wasn't sure if the eight legged monstrosity had been careless or was toying with her, but she ran past the leg that had been blocking her as fast as she could. Adrenaline coursed through her veins and the sound of her pounding heart mixed with the air rushing past her. Her leggings were wet and chaffing her as she ran, but she couldn't stop. She doubted she could outrun the spider, but she had no doubt slowing at all would be the equivalent to death.

"Please!" she tried to cry out. Her throat was sore and her plea came out as little more than a raspy whisper. "Anyone! Please…"

Her legs were giving out on her and a moment later she collapsed, sliding across the rough floor. She could feel several scrapes on her hands, knees, and face already starting to bleed. She hadn't noticed the tears that had been streaming down her face the entire time she'd been running and now that she'd stopped her sinuses were getting fully congested. Each breath was painful and labored, each movement agony.

True to her word, she forced herself to crawl without looking back. She didn't know when she'd dropped her phone; all she knew was the scraping of her body against the rough floor, the darkness of the tunnel around her, and the demon hunting her.

Cress didn't even have the energy to cry out in agony as the heavy leg of the spider crushed the hand she had stretched out into the darkness. Searing, icy pain shot up her arm, smothering all her remaining senses. All she could feel was the incomprehensible pain, all she could taste was the blood, tears, and the suffocating snot dripping into her silently screaming mouth. The only sound in her ears was a static ringing so deafening that she couldn't even imagine something comparable to what was happening to her.

She tried to flail, kick, bite at the spider she could tell was looming down on her, but her body refused to move. Instead, she wriggled like a worm drowning on a rainy sidewalk underneath the creature of her nightmares.

Cress was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it.