Over by the hill, surrounded by big tall trees full of lush red and green leaves, was a small wooden house, modestly furnished with second hand couches and rusting pots and pans. With no electricity or running water and the dust and mould everywhere, this wooden house had the look of it being long abandoned by society. That would be true, except for one man who was standing in the middle of what can only be described as some sort of web infested room. There were cobwebs everywhere. Mark, a tall gangly man with red hair, freckles and glasses, standing in the middle of the room, was staring right at a spider that he could not see. For the whole room was pitch black. The darkness was all around him. He could see nothing, not even his hands. A distinct musty smell entered his nostrils, like that of an old library book. Mark coughed loudly, the dust was starting to enter his lungs. He had to leave the house. He had only come in to get out of the rain. His car, a beat up old ute with a dodgy handbrake, had broken down about 5km from where he was now. He had gone to get help as his mobile phone didn’t have good reception as his car had broken down near a forest. Mark walked for what seemed like miles, darkness slowly setting in and the light of the moon obscured by the trees, until he came across the small cottage. That is when the rain started, a heavy downpour that came from the sky above and absolutely drenched Mark. Soaking his red polo shirt and cream cargo pants. So he raced inside, shut the door behind him and found himself in the middle of the spider infested room and now he wanted to leave it. He wanted to go back to his car and sleep there for a night. Mark slowly made his way down towards the door, or the direction that he thought the door was as he could not be sure in this darkness about his sense of direction. He brushed the cobwebs off. Mark was not afraid of spiders, but have the eight legged creatures crawling up his arm was too much for him to handle. He heard a scratching sound, like a rat clawing at the floorboards. The scratching persisted, getting louder and more frequent. Mark grimaced, the noise was like a jackhammer into his brain, pounding away, digging into his skull…
“STOPT IT!” screamed Mark.
The scratching stopped, there was only silence. It was as if the scratching had never happened. Mark wondered if he had imagined it. He did have a good imagination. But this was real. It must have been, his brain had hurt from hearing all the scratching. However he wanted to leave, so he didn’t have time to worry about that. So he continued on towards the door.
He suddenly felt something crawl up his leg. Something like a spider or an ant. Mark could not be sure. He quickly brushed his leg with his hand. It was still there. He tried again. Nothing. This was getting annoying. He decided to scratch his leg, just to get that spider off him. Nothing. He scratched again, this time much harder. Nothing. He tried to scratch it again. Nothing. It was no use, the spider was going to kill him. Mark, after a few seconds of thinking, suddenly remembered he had a knife in his pocket, so he took it out of his pocket, and started to scratch his leg with it. He screamed in agony, but he knew he had to withstand the pain if he was going to get rid of the spider that was still crawling on his leg. So Mark continued to scratch his leg with his knife, trying but failing not to cry as the blood continued to trickle down his leg. Nothing. The spider was still there. Defeated, Mark slumped to the floor, exhausted and crying, his leg bleeding, and a red back spider making its way off Mark’s arm.
The End.
