The Hungry Spider

Underground, where the subways roll, where the smells are unfamiliar and uncomfortable, where secrets aren’t buried but simply lost, there’s a spider casting its web.

She waits for you. Her webs are thin but strong. She’s got a hundred eyes. She’s no bigger than your fist, with legs. She’s mostly brown, with red, and a set of fangs that will split your fingernails and crack your bones.

She’s got eleven types of venom in its bite. Three of these, individually, would kill you inside a minute. One’s necrotic and will rot your skin. One’s an anesthetic, so you’ll barely even feel it. One will paralyze you.

The spider’s a mom. She birthed a hundred baby spiders a month ago. At birth, they were no bigger than your fingernail, translucent, and hungry. They’re still hungry.

The spider is old, even ancient, maybe as older than the concrete walls of the subway tunnels, older definitely than the fading jeans advertisements.

It walks across its webs without a sound. It wraps its prey in silk and saves bits and pieces for later.

And sometimes, when it’s feeling adventurous, or particularly hungry, the spider will crawl from its holes and venture nearer the light, where it can be seen but not heard, where it can set its incredibly strong webs to catch larger prey.

It will take more than a month to liquefy and digest a fully grown human. It knows this because it’s done it before.

So when you step so close to its web, all unaware, waiting for the 7:53 to the suburbs, its pincers get all excited, its venom glands activate. If you listen carefully, very carefully, and if there wasn’t any other sound in the train station, you might hear the clicking of its legs as it approaches. You’re close enough. It know it can take you down.

But it’s a train station. You hear nothing. You’re busy playing with your 3G phone. You’re drinking coffee in an attempt to wake, but you’re not quite there yet. You don’t see it, you don’t know the danger. One meter. Half a meter. Soundless clicking steps, it comes closer. If the spider had lips, she’d be licking them. Your ankle is exposed. No sock will protect you. She can deliver venom through your leather shoes, I don’t care how much you paid for them.

You’re anxious, yes, but only because of the time, only because the train is late, only because you might miss that meeting. And finally, finally, you hear the telltale screech of the subway gliding down the tracks. You see the faintest hint of its lights coming around the curve of the tunnel.

The spider rears back to attack.

You step on her. Quite unconsciously. You don’t even heard the crunch as her body snaps. Venom spurts from her glands, harmlessly, between the leather of your shoe and the concrete of the platform.

You board the train.

You make your meeting.

You never, never realize your luck.