Ever since I was young, my father called himself a hero. A scientist looking for cures, saving lives; I thought of him as such.
He wasn’t always at the house, leaving me, my older sister, and my drunken mother all alone. He was usually up in another state, at his laboratory.
I grew up in a rural area, with only a few kids my age to play with. Even then, I wasn’t the most popular of the group, I rarely had anyone who even offered to play a game with me.
I began becoming more inclined to the woods, where I would always come home with a bruise or scrape, and a black eye or patchy hair to match.
It was a good escape from my mother, and the world.
When my dad was home, he always told me all about the new cures him and his colleagues had invented. About all of the lives he was saving. I believed every bit of it, be it out of naïvety, or the fact my father was the only person who appreciated my presence.
Until I was 14, everything was normal. It was the same cycle, wake up, play in the woods, somedays see my dad, deal with my mother, and sleep. Then it would repeat.
The day Dad began working from home more often was when things began to change. My mother seemed much angrier, and I wasn’t allowed outside as much. I shrugged it off as the fact that she wasn’t allowed to drink as much when Dad was around.
My father worked in the spare room, his new self-declared office. Nobody was allowed in, his reasoning were in these words, “There are too many fragile things in there.”
I stayed away from the office as he ordered me, curiousity killed the cat anyways, right?
Dad was still going back and forth between states to go to the lab, but not as often anymore.
As days passed, he wasn’t coming down for dinner when my mom called him. He just said he’d reheat it in the microwave later.
“Hey, Dad?” I knocked on the door to his office, “Can you come eat with us tonight?”
“I–” A long pause. “I can’t, not tonight, Jay. Maybe tomorrow night if I’m not busy.” Came the answer from behind the wooden door. I let out a sigh and stepped away from the room, walking downstairs.
My mom was making pasta tonight, it was one of Dad’s favorites, yet he still didn’t come down to eat with us.
When I turned 15, it was finally my turn to start learning how to butcher the animals on our farm. I didn’t exactly have the stomach for it, but nearly a man, my mother said it was my new responsibility.
Things began becoming odd in the barn, like at times the livestock would randomly die, a large bite taken out of their sides. Most of the times, this bite looked like if a human-sized, if not bigger, spider got hungry and munched on the sheep, or pigs.
Oneday, I was sent on a trip into the woods. My mom wanted me to camp out and catch a deer. Deer meat was my dad’s favorite food, and she hoped with it, we would be able to get him to eat with us again.
I was given a tent and some other camping supplies, and was sent out. I was pitching my tent when I heard a rustle, immediately putting my hand on my rifle. Maybe this trip wasn’t going to be so long after all.
I began to inch closer to the bush I heard the sound from, my gun at ready. To my luck, a deer sprung out, running down the woods. I shot, but as an unseasoned hunter and only the knowledge of how to reload and pull the trigger, almost each shot missed until I hit it’s leg.
It immediately fell to the ground, thrashing in hope to be able to upright itself. As I began to run towards it, it seeemed something else was already beginning to take it.
I couldn’t quite tell what it was, but it was fast. It already had the deer in it’s grasp, and was scuttling back to where it came from.
With a sigh, I headed back to the camp. At the time, I just assumed it had to be a wolf; I didn’t get a good look at it, so I had no way of telling.
I had been at the camp for about two days until I successfully caught a deer; disappointing, I know.
I immediately began to drag it back to the house, excited to show it to my mom.
Nobody was in the house.
I searched each room, until the only room left unsearched was my father’s office. I hesitated for a moment, but then creaked the door open.
Nothing.
Just vials of liquid and stacks of paper.
I began sifting through the papers, leafing through each one until a certain one caught my eye.
“SPECIMENS ON THE LOOSE! PLEASE STAY STATIONED AT YOUR HOMES UNTIL THESE SPECIMEN ARE CAUGHT.”
Below were two subject files, one seemed to be made entirely by the lab, while the other was a human, atleast thats what the document said. If you looked at the photo, you’d think this was also another one of the lab’s creations. It was a pale-skinned person, with only tufts of hair and prosthetics on both arms. It’s face seemed sewn together.
The lab creation didn’t have a photo, nor a description of what it was. Only the words “HIGHLY DANGEROUS” planted above it.
I read through document after document, watching the truth unfold just from a few pieces of paper. My dad was never working for a cure, he was working on real human beings for the sake of creating new diseases, creating new species.
I quickly ran outside, looking for my dad to confront him, but I couldn’t find anybody, not a single person was still around.
Running into the barn, even the animals were gone. I pinched myself, feeling like I was dreaming.
I felt something drop on my shoulder.
My eyes widened, my blood went cold. I reluctantly looked up.
I saw every single person I loved, every person I knew in this town, every animal that was eventually going to become slaughtered by my hands, entangled in a large web.
In this web, was a spider, or maybe a human.
It had the body of a human, but it had six eyes, fangs, and the abdomen and legs of a spider. It watched my every move, staring at me with beady eyes. I fell to the ground, and from this angle I saw what it was harboring beneath it’s human-like arm.
The specimen I had seen on the file, but in much worse shape. It seemed scared almost, but not of the spider. It was scared of me.
It stared on, and I could hear it utter a few words to the creature.
“Do we kill him, too?”
I couldn’t move, my whole body was paralyzed, staring up at the two escapees that had killed an entire village in seemingly two days.
The spider smiled, looking down at me once more, before replying to the messed-up human in a whisper that could barely be heard.
“We can leave this one, just for now..”