This whole mess started only a few days ago, and with a damned spider, of all things.
I suffer from a severe case of arachnophobia; I can’t even look at pictures of spiders without despairing or panicking. Even when I’m talking about them, there’s this lurking fear in the back of my mind.
I’d planned to spend the weekend relaxing after a long, stressful work at university, but this idea evaporated when I found a spider web. It was right next to a tiny hole in the door frame that led into my kitchen. I vacuumed it away and sealed the hole as best as I could. I tried to convince myself that was it, but my mind wouldn’t have any of it. Paranoia crept back in like the lingering spiders it told me had invaded my apartment. It wasn’t long before I thought I heard the sounds of small, skittering spider legs.
Half an hour later, I checked the entire place. After that, I ended up vacuuming the entire apartment twice. I just… couldn’t help it. Yet like so many times before, I found nothing: no spiders, no webs.
When I went to bed, I was still somewhat anxious. Finding nothing could mean there were no spiders, but it could also mean I just hadn’t found them. Soon enough, my thoughts went in a different direction. The hole. Did it mean there were spiders inside the walls? I lay in bed, telling myself I was being silly. Spiders couldn’t dig, especially not through walls. Suddenly, I felt the familiar rush of anxiety. My heart rate sped up, and I began feeling dizzy. I must’ve laid in bed, trembling for at least an hour before I drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
I was awoken by noise all around me. As I lay there, it felt as if the bedroom walls had become alive. They were shaking and moving; the wallpaper stretching like a membrane. While I tried to understand what was going, I suddenly heard the skittering of millions of tiny legs. Then the walls burst open and I was drowned under a never-ending wave of eight-legged horrors. I jumped off the bed screaming in terror, swatting at my body before I realized it had been nothing but a dream. I fell to the floor, a sobbing mess, hugging my body, and cursing my brain for conjuring up this terrible nightmare.
Sunday was nothing but a blur. I spent it huddled up in a blanket in the center of the living room, as far away from the walls as possible. I was a shaking, shivering mess. One minute, I told myself there were no spiders in the walls, the next I listened for even the tiniest sounds. In the evening, I passed out from sheer exhaustion.
When Monday morning arrived, I felt mostly like myself again. I was still somewhat wary of the walls, but the panic had subsided. I guess my brain finally realized how silly it was to be afraid of them. Somewhat tired, and still scatterbrained, I dropped my keys behind a small cupboard in the hallway. Cursing at myself, I crouched down to find them. I reached out with my hand and felt around. Right at that moment, I felt something brush over it. I screamed in surprise and pulled my arm back. Shock turned to despair when I saw a spider sitting on my right arm. Still screaming, I shook my arm and began beating at the spider with my left hand. I was out of it, beating against my arm repeatedly until the spider finally fell to the ground. I stomped on it until nothing but a disgusting mush remained.
Then I rushed to the bathroom and let warm water run over my arm while scrubbing it desperately with a washcloth. At this moment, I noticed a tiny world on my arm. I told myself I was wrong, and that I must’ve scrubbed it too hard, nothing else. After a while, however, I couldn’t fool my mind anymore. There was absolutely no doubt. It was a spider bite.
My mind was running at lightning speed. What if it had been a poisonous spider? Was there poison cursing through my veins right at this very moment? I felt strange instantly. My heart was pounding in my chest, I almost couldn’t breathe, and the moment I stepped out of the bathroom, I almost keeled over. In the hallway, I threw over the damned cupboard, picked up my keys and rushed outside. Air. I needed fresh air. More importantly, though, a clinic was nearby. My entire body was shaking, my legs were weak, and I felt like my mind was slowing down. For a moment, my vision grew blurry, and dark spots appeared in front of my eyes. It’s the anxiety, the panic attack. You’ve got to calm down. Yet there was this tiny voice in the back of my mind that doubted my every word. What if that spider actually was poisonous? What if you’re dying right now, Sandra?
The first thing I remembered was pacing back and forth at the clinic. A doctor eventually approached me, asked me what was wrong, and told me to sit down. I couldn’t. The moment I did, my heart felt like it would explode at any moment. Breathing became impossible, and my arms and legs tingled. No, I had to keep moving.
“I was bitten by a spider!” I finally screeched at him.
At first he was confused, but quickly gave me a shot to calm me down, and led me into his office. He assured me I was completely fine. All I suffered from was a tiny wound on my arm, nothing else. He also prescribed me an ointment to prevent infection.
What he was more concerned about was my mental state and asked me if I’d suffered from similar episodes before. He said it wasn’t normal, even considering my arachnophobia. I groaned, made a few excuses, ripped the prescription from his hand, and left.
I hated doctors, especially psychologists. Ever since I was a little girl, Mom had dragged me from one to another. Constant visits and endless conversations about things I didn’t want to talk about became the norm. They all waited for me to open up, but there was no hidden secret. I was just scared, a scared little girl. Eventually, they diagnosed me with a generalized anxiety disorder. It was common in children, they said, as if that would make it better. It didn’t. Spiders were an ever-present thought, always lingering in the back of my mind. I cried whenever I saw one and panicked when they skittered towards me. Yet every doctor said the same thing: it was just a phase, and I’d outgrow it, eventually. Instead, I just got better at hiding it, but the fear was still there, hot and raw.
These thoughts went through my mind until I’d gotten the ointment and made it back home. When I opened the door to my apartment, I was on edge instantly. It didn’t feel like my home anymore. Instead, it felt like I was entering a place full of invisible enemies, lurking in the shadows. I rushed towards the bathroom and scanned every surface before I locked the door. Only once I felt safe did I administer the ointment. I knew I used too much, and bandaging the arm was ridiculous, but it helped to quiet the voices in my head.
When I still hadn’t calmed down by noon, I gave my friend Lisa a call. Lisa and I go back forever. We became friends in middle school, stayed close in high school, and now even attend the same university. We couldn’t be more different, though. Lisa’s the fun, outgoing type, a party girl, while I’m an introverted nerd.
Yet Lisa had always been there for me. When I suffered from a bad panic attack during high school, she stayed by my side and comforted me until Mom arrived to pick me up. Since then, she always helped me when things got too bad. Either with words of encouragement, or a bit of weed. Sometimes, she even suggested something stronger, a bit of acid, or a pinch of coke, the type of stuff the always-partying Lisa seemed to get her hands on so easily. I wasn’t into substances, but Lisa convinced me, and I had to admit, they helped me forget my terrors, if only for a bit.
The moment she picked up, I asked her if she had something that could help me calm down. She asked me what was going on. When she heard about my freak-out over a mere spider bite, she burst out laughing.
“All this over a spider bite? Really, Sandra?”
“You know I can’t help it, Lisa…”
She sighed, but told me she’d be on her way.
Once she’d hung up, I made my way back to the living room. I booted up my laptop and put on a few random YouTube videos to distract myself. Only minutes later, curiosity got the better of me, and I looked up information on spider bites. The images I found… dear god. I can’t handle gore, and what I saw made me freak out. Infectious wounds, necrotic tissue… it was too much. Just before I slapped the laptop shut, however, I read something even worse: spiders can lay eggs under human skin.
“That’s bullshit!” I yelled at the now closed laptop. “It’s just an urban legend. There’s no such thing, and even if not here!”
When Lisa finally rang the doorbell, I jumped up and rushed to the door.
“Jesus, what’s the matter with you?” she asked.
Instead of answering, I hit her up with the one question that mattered.
“Can spiders lay eggs under human skin?”
“What the hell, Sandra? How did you even-?”
“I read it on the internet, and-“
“Oh god,” she cut me off, throwing up her hands. “You had me all the way coming here because of a spider bite, and now this?”
“No, I mean…”
“Just stop.”
“But, Lisa…”
“You’re fine, all right?”
She sat down with me and began telling me some funny stories, but she noticed how nervous and jumpy I was. When I asked her to repeat herself for the fourth time, she handed me a container of pills. I gave her a questioning look.
“The stuff you asked for,” she said.
“But that’s not weed… What’s in them?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “You know I’m not into that stuff.”
Lisa rolled her eyes.
“Alpraz… no, wait, Lorazepam? God, what does it even matter?” she said, waving me off.
When I gave her a skeptical look, she groaned.
“Look, it’s just medical jargon. People take them all the time, and they knock you out pretty much instantly.”
“I’m not sure…”
“So you want to spend the rest of the week a paranoid mess, huddled up on the couch?”
Finally, I nodded and accepted the container, but I heard Lisa sigh.
“I know we’re friends, but… I can’t just do this for free all the time. I told you-“
After I’d handed her some money, she thanked me, told me I’d be all right, and promptly left.
I told myself I’d wait till evening before I’d take any of the pills. If they’d really knock me out, I’d finally get some real sleep. I put on a Netflix show and tried to relax, but my mind kept wandering. The thing I’d read it couldn’t be real, right?
A second later, I began tearing the bandages off my arm. I took a deep breath, and a shudder went through my body before I removed the last layer. For a second, one of the gruesome images I’d seen popped back into my mind, and I swallowed hard. Then I removed it. What I saw was the complete opposite. It was a tiny, almost invisible swelling. I even laughed when I saw it. I pressed it for a bit, and some blood leaked from it. It stung, but everything else was normal. I began tearing at the corners, but that only made it sting and bleed more. After a while, I forced myself to stop. By now, the small wound was almost twice its original size.
“Stop toying with it, you idiot,” I chastised myself.
While I readjusted the bandages, I took one of Lisa’s pills. Otherwise, I might soon be toying with the wound again. So much for waiting till evening, I thought as I swallowed it. At first, I felt nothing, but after half an hour, I felt not only calm but also tired. I realized I’d not eaten all day, but I could barely keep my eyes open. Just a quick nap, I told myself. I’ll eat something later.
I don’t know when I fell asleep, but it was already nighttime when I woke up again. I was covered in sweat and suffered from a terrible headache. The moment I got up, I felt exhausted and hot, almost burning up. I made my way to the bathroom’s medicine cabinet and took an ibuprofen to fight the headache.
I was about to go back when I noticed something strange. It was a bump below the bandages, as if my arm was swollen up. As I stared at it, the memory of a dream slowly crept back into my mind. In it, spiders had infested my arms and legs, and I’d been… eaten alive by them. I clung to the sink retching, close to throwing up. I instantly took another one of Lisa’s pills and told myself to lie back down, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead, I tore the bandages off my arm and found a giant pulsating blister. I gagged when I saw it, but then I could make out movement inside of it, below the skin. I screamed. How could this…!?
I dashed from the bathroom and into the hallway. Dark spots appeared in front of my eyes, and for a moment, my legs buckled as I lingered on the edge of consciousness. When I’d made it to the kitchen, I slumped down on the floor. I felt dizzy, and my entire body was tingling.
The moment I could move again, I got a hold of a knife on the counter. It almost slipped from my shaking, sweaty hands. For another second, I stared at the disgusting bump on my arm. Then I closed my eyes, pressed the knife against it, splitting the skin. The cut was shallow, but the pain was much worse than I’d thought. When I opened my eyes, I saw only blood pouring from the cut. I watched, half in a trance, as it trickled down my arm and onto the kitchen floor.
It’s fine, I thought, there’s nothing there. But then I saw them. The tiny white things that came forward with the blood. Eggs, I realized. And then, finally, dozens of small eight-legged horrors crawled out from below my skin. The knife clattered from my hand, and I scrambled back, trying futilely to escape the horror I was seeing, the horror inside my own body! The blood kept flowing, the eggs, but I watched in terror as the spiders vanished again, dug into my flesh once more.
With all the force I could muster, I fought myself onto my shaky legs, put my ravaged arm into the sink, and poured hot water over the cut. I clenched my teeth, but soon enough I was screaming in pain as my arm was scalded. I hoped, prayed, that the hot water would wash out and burn up all those spiders. I forced myself to keep the arm there for what must’ve been minutes, suffering through the worst pain of my life.
Yet when I finally pulled it back and slid down on the floor, the spiders were still there, digging their tiny tunnels inside my flesh. The knife was in my hand again, and this time, I cut deep into my flesh. Before long, I grew accustomed to the pain, but the blood kept flowing, almost gushed from my arms. Nothing helped! The more I cut, the deeper I probed… more tunnels! In an onset of maddened rage, I began carving away the infected flesh and skin. I cut wildly. Deeply. Almost randomly. Up and down. Left and right.
I only stopped when I couldn’t see any of the spiders or tunnels anymore. Looking down at my body, I saw I was covered in blood. The floor around me was a mess of torn skin and junks of my own flesh. My eyes grew wide. Had I just… done that?
For a minute longer, I stared at the fruits of my labor. I almost gagged when I saw the deep gush in my arm, and the whitish scalded skin and flesh. Yet, I was almost euphoric. The spiders, they were gone! I’d done it!
Then I found a kitchen towel and began tying it around my arm. It was surprisingly… easy. There was a pulsating, throbbing pain in my arm, but it was distant, not really there. Once I was done, and I fought myself to my feet, I realized how exhausted I was. My entire body was shaking, and I was covered not only in blood, but in cold sweat.
Eventually, I’d made it to the bedroom, but I couldn’t help but think about the spiders. What if they were still inside of me? What if they were digging through me right now, digging through every part of my body? No. Stop. I took another one of Lisa’s pills, but sleep didn’t come. The pain was still there, more intense now, but the worst was my mind. I couldn’t help but linger. If those spiders came from inside a wall, it would be easy for them to dig through flesh, right? They’d be able to get anywhere, and… In an instant, I turned on the night lamp, and ignoring the pain, tore off the kitchen towel. It was wet and sticky, and copious amounts of loose skin and flesh came off with it. I didn’t care. I had to see! I had to know!
Yet I saw… nothing. Nothing but the gruesome bloody mess that had once been my right arm. No tunnels, no spiders. I sat there, staring at it with wide eyes, shuddering. Had there even been any spiders? Maybe it was all in my head? Maybe I’d mutilated myself for no reason at all! But I’d seen them, felt them, and… I just didn’t know anymore!
I lay in bed, a shivering, shaking mess. My entire body felt cold, almost icy, but my mind was going haywire. In one second, I was telling myself it had all been my imagination, in the next that there were still spiders inside of me.
Suddenly I felt something on my thigh. This time, I didn’t need to turn the lamp back on. I felt it right away. A big fat lump, close to bursting. The spiders. They were there again. I felt them. Pushing against the skin, diligently working. I retched, and a moment later, threw up all over the bed sheets.
This couldn’t be real. It wasn’t. But… what if it was? What if…? No, I had to be sure. I fought myself to my feet, and on shaking legs, returned to the kitchen. The knife was in my hand. Skin tore. Spiders gushed out. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Yet mere moments after they were just… gone? Only blood. There was only blood. Had they been there at all? It was just a dream, I told myself. None of it was real!
My body felt so itchy, so sweaty. I was trembling. Poison, I suddenly thought. What if the doctor had it wrong, and it was poison? That’s why I couldn’t see them anymore, why I can’t feel them anymore. Oh god, what if that’s it, and they are still there, still digging?
With trembling hands, I reached out for the knife again. I couldn’t stop. I had to be sure. My hands shook so much. I was so weak. My vision blurred. Everything was getting worse. It had to be the poison. The spiders… I knew it. Otherwise…
I cut again.
Another slice.
And another.
I couldn’t feel anything anymore.
Was I even cutting…?
Was I done…?
