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Posted by Ben Grader on Wed Jan 19, 2005 12:00 am
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He woke sweating and crying out, then realising that it just been a bad dream again he staggered from his bed to the drinks cabinet and finding amongst the empty bottles one which was half full he swigged down a good treble whisky.
<br>His pyjamas were wringing wet and the sheets on the bed as well. Cursing from the loss of the rest of the night?s sleep he showered and dressed, knowing that he would get no more peace or quiet until the morning.
<br>It had been the same night after night, ever since he had met the man who had named himself King. Who had ever heard of such a thing as the 'King of the Spiders' he had been walking through the park taking a rather unfrequented pathway when the diaphanous wisp of the web had drifted across his face. Instinctively he had brushed it away and then seeing on the ground before him the large garden spider stamped on it quickly, squashing it beneath his shoe sole. Spiders - how he hated them - Hated, hated, hated.
<br>Ever since as a small child he had been shut in the garden potting shed by his nurse for some small infraction of her sadistic rules. Closed in with the drifts of web hanging from the rafters catching in his hair. He had not dared to crouch on the floor because the discarded flower pots had webs all across them as well.
<br>All he could do was shudder at the door pleading in vain to be let back out. For five minutes she had kept him there, a full five minutes of spider inspired terror.
<br>Big black ones which his childish eyes had magnified to the size of tea plates. Afterwards for weeks she had threatened to return him to the dilapidated shed for the smallest infringement of her code of behaviour. Not until the recurrent nightmares had come to the attention of his parents had her behaviour towards him become apparent. She was immediately dismissed but by then it was too late. A hatred of all spiders was deeply instilled in him, hence his stamping on the spider in the park.
<br>Out from the shrubbery came this little man who had asked him why he had destroyed the life of an innocent creature. King of the Spiders indeed. Who did he think he was fooling ? king of the lunatics more likely he had thought, with his speckled coat and wrinkled skin. Then he had noticed that the speckles on his coat were moving, what he had taken to be patterns in his Harris tweed jacket was spiders. He was crawling with spiders, all over him. His face which had a rather mottled weather beaten look was in fact composed of spiders - small ones, creeping all around him. All over him, touching his skin, going in and out of his ears, his nose, his mouth, up and down his neck and down his shirt collar.
<br>The horror caused him to faint away but not before he had felt within his head the message telling him that he would indeed regret needlessly killing one of his, the Spider King's subjects.
<br>When he came around he was lying flat upon his back and standing over him was a worried looking woman. She helped him to a nearby seat and then accepting his assurance that it was only a momentary thing went upon her way.
<br>That night was the first of the dreams, he was once more in the park and lying as he had been previously on the side path. Crawling slowly from the bush from which the Spider King had come was a small host of spiders. He strived to move but was frozen in position. Fascinated he watched them draw closer. They reached him and started to creep over him. No matter how hard he tried he found himself unable to move. He lay there, gradually feeling the tiny feet moving over his skin, inwardly shuddering but unable to resist, or move . They crept across his eyeballs and he found that he was able to see their progress by the blocking of the light, small blobs of things successively tracking over his naked flesh, unable to even shut his lids and block them out.
<br>He woke sweating and could not sleep again that night. Since then it had happened each time he had slept, he had even tried going to bed in daylight but found it of no avail. The dream recurred, he was becoming a nervous wreck through lack of sleep alone. A bare two hours a night for over a week now, He had tried travelling and taken a coach trip hoping to doze on the journey. Even that had failed to work out.
<br>Now with the treble whisky beginning to take hold he would stretch out on the bed, and, whilst he would not be able to sleep he could at least rest his tired body. He turned his head a little on the pillow to cut down the light from the window. What was that coming under the door? NO it couldn't be, he was not dreaming, they couldn't do this to him.
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<br>But slowly the spiders continued to advance.
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Posted by Nate on Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:36 pm
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I hate spiders, so I read this story with great trepidation...
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<br>I think you need to go back and edit this somewhat. The opening sentence is a run-on and needs either some commas added or to be seperated into two, or even three, sentences. The same problem occurs throughout, such as in:
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<br>"Crawling slowly from the bush from which the Spider King had come was a small host of spiders."
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<br>It would read better if you added commas after 'bush' and 'King.' Other places you need to replace commas with semi-colons, such as with:
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<br>"That night was the first of the dreams, he was once more in the park and lying as he had been previously on the side path."
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<br>Overall, though, I liked the story a lot. Of course, I'm terrified of spiders so something like this was bound to scare me at least a bit, but I like how you develop the story and introduced the main character. To some extent, it all seemed very real; if you had opened up right away with the spiders, I think the story would've seemed stupid.
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<br>Nicely done.
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Posted by Bluesy Socrateaser on Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:14 am
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Many spiders do good things. They just didn't count on people being around. Like a mouse to an elephant, we're frightened of things that are so mush smaller than us. The thing is though, we fear them with good reason in some cases. They can be loaded for bear...if you know what I mean.
<br />Reminds me of a Ray Stevens tune, <em>"I don't like spiders and snakes, but that ain't what it takes to love me, you crazy fool!"</em>
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<br />...<img src="http://www.poetsquill.com/images/forums/emoticons/cool.gif" alt='8)' />
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