She wakes up, her head swimming. Swinging one foot out of the bed drowsily, she feels bile rising in her throat and runs across the dusty hall to the bathroom opposite. She collapses by the toilet and empties her stomach into the bowl. Coughing and retching, she curses her foul luck. The pain pills did not work. How is she still alive? By all rights, she should be dead. Thirty-eight extra-strength painkillers would do that to you, she reasons. She has no time to pursue the matter further, as she vomits again.

She stays home from school that day. After vomiting so badly, she has a good excuse. She sits on the futon and stares blankly at the dark glass on the television screen, a black blanket wrapped around her. Staring at the blank screen, she sees something moving on her blanket. In abject horror, she sees that it is a huge, black spider, crawling up towards her face. She looks down at the blanket in terror. There is nothing there. Her eyes flick back to the screen, looking at her reflection. The spider seems as though it is taunting her, moving slowly towards her face. She looks down at the blanket again, free from dark reflections. The spider has vanished. She looks away from the screen.

Sitting in front of the computer, she stares at the black screen before the machine boots up. She is staring absently at her reflection when she sees another huge spider, this time on her neck. She claps a hand to her neck but feels only skin. She doesn’t want to look at the black screen again. She looks away.

She notices something moving inside the shadowy cabinet. She opens the doors and peers in. A small lizard was in there. It was completely black, and pressed against the top of the cabinet, by the top left corner. She prods it with a pencil but it scurries away. She takes a torch, and spends all day trying to catch out the lizard. She never succeeds. She figures it must be a very flat lizard, to fit between the shelf and the back of the unit like that.

She sleeps on the futon that night, in the living room. It is dark. The only light comes from the hallway, casting shadows over everything. She cannot sleep. Opening her eyes, she lies on her back and, in terror, sees a row of spiders marching along the top of the futon. They have long, thin legs and look almost transparent. Her eyes widen in horror. She tells herself they are not real. She looks to the end of the futon, where the spiders are originating. They are sprouting from the webs that are suddenly draped across the room. The webs are pale and transparent. In places, they shine with rainbows, like an oil spill on a road. She raises her hand up and draws her fingertips through the webs. They stick to her. She can feel the webs. She springs from the futon and rushes to the light switch. She would prove that the spiders were real. She switches the light on. The spiders from the futon and the webs across the room have vanished, but her fingers are draped with the same transparent, rainbow web that was adorning the room. She blinks, and the webs are gone. She sighs.

Turning the light off, she crawls back to the futon and closes her eyes, trying to get to sleep on her stomach this time. But she cannot stop thinking of the spiders. She opens her eyes and sees a huge, black leg creep over the rail. She slaps it away. Two more legs spring up. She looks over the rail and sees a huge, black spider. It is the size of a dinner plate. Her heart almost stops in intense horror, as she almost flies to the light switch. The spider vanished as soon as the light hit it. She is almost in tears. Gathering her blanket, she goes to sleep in her room. It was darker there, so dark that not even the shadow spiders could be seen. She smiled.

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I hope you liked that… It is a 100 real account of what happened to me one time, when I tried to, you know. I did it two years ago but this is the first time I’ve written about it or anything. Before you get all worried about me, don’t worry, spiders are my biggest fear and that one day scared me so much I wouldn’t dare try it again. It was incredibly terrifying.