So I got a new roommate recently. My old roomie decided to get more serious with his girlfriend of three years, and after months, probably years even, she finally backed him into the proverbial corner. Ultimatums were given, and under threat of breakup, he finally decided completely freely of his own will to put a ring on it. I was happy for them, they had their ups and downs like any couple but I truly think they were good for each other.
Despite how good they were for each other, however, this wasn’t good for me, as now I had to find a new roommate to split the bills with. I was happy for them, sure, but I dreaded the process ahead. Jake, my old roommate, and I had known each other since grade school, and despite having our hiccups from time to time living together, we got on exceptionally well. Finding another person to co-habitate with that would be as awesome as Jake would be a daunting task, nigh impossible. We grew up in the same small town together, and after high school we both decided to head off to the big city and leave our one horse town in the dust.
It was tough at first, the culture shock alone was enough to lose sleep over, but after a while we settled into our new city boy lifestyle and never looked back. The toughest part for me, at least at first, was not knowing anybody. Three years later, and I’m still kinda working on that aspect. I’m not the sociable person in our duo, that would be Jake- for every acquaintance or amicable co-worker that I had, Jake had five actual friends, it seemed. Back when we were kids I was the shy introvert, and Jake was the outgoing extrovert who adopted me. It’s been him and me against the world ever since. Until a couple of months ago, that is.
Rent was coming up, and despite all of my attempts to find a new roomie, it was all for naught. I got desperate. Really desperate. In my desperation, I may have done something bold, if not outright stupid. I posted an ad on a certain website. I won’t name it here, but let’s just say the page has a reputation for things of ill repute happening there, despite the website’s good intentions.
Do you follow…?
No?
Craigslist.
I posted an ad on Craigslist.
I know, right? Like I said though, I was desperate. I couldn’t very well borrow any more money from my dad, not again. I guess I was hoping to be swarmed with replies and offers, and to have a decent pool of potential people to vet and choose from. Nope! No such luck. I only got one reply. One. Measly. Reply. The oddest, most quirky little guy I ever met too. I wouldn’t exactly categorize myself as normal, but next to this guy? I might as well be John Everyman!
I figured, what the hell, though. I was growing more and more desperate every day, as the rent was coming up due soon. It seemed like I was stuck with the little guy now. He’s about 4 foot 10 inches- that’s about 147 cm for everybody rocking the metric system, and 110 lbs soaking wet- or somewhere close to 50 kg. His name is Ian, and he’s a small, bitter little man.
Despite his stature, he wasn’t afraid to get in my face and confront me about any and every little thing. Within his first week living here, he’d already accused me of theft, spying on him, using too much hot water, having the volume on my TV up too loud, and about a dozen other petty little things. I am no thief, and I could give a crap less about trying to sneak around to see what he’s up to. The guy’s personality is like sandpaper, and not the fine grit stuff either, I’m talking coarse and abrasive. He was a cop by profession, so I guess I just chalked it up to a trait of the job.
Within the first couple of weeks, I thought I had a pretty good read on him, but just about all of my assumptions seem to be wrong. With him being such a small, rude little man, one would assume that he wasn’t too popular with the fairer sex. Wrong. He brought very good looking ladies home all the time. I’m talking 8’s and 9’s, I daresay even perfect 10’s. It’s always different women, too. I’ve never seen the same girl twice. I thought maybe they could have been escorts, maybe ladies of ill repute, but I’m not so sure. I knew one of them from a restaurant up the street where she worked as a waitress, and she just didn’t seem the type to sell herself like that.
He was living there for going on two months, and now we almost arrive to where we are currently. A few nights ago, he brought another lady home, and early the next day, I heard this odd scratching noise coming from his bedroom. I knew it wasn’t Ian, I had been home all that day and I distinctly remember him being rude and telling me to stop touching the damn thermostat on his way out of the door for work that morning. I thought maybe it was the woman he had brought home, I never remembered seeing her leave, I never see ANY of them leave. I guess I assumed they always jetted out in the middle of the night, or early the next morning.
When the scratching persisted for several hours, I decided to investigate. If we had some kind of rodent problem, then I needed to find out and tell the landlord ASAP. I put my ear to his door and heard something. I didn’t know what it was, it was like this weird stretchy noise, like cords of rope twisting and stretching under tension, and it was accompanied by ever so faint groans.
There’s a big rule in the house, and that rule is to never go snooping. Ian vehemently reinforced this rule by telling me, multiple times, that if he ever caught me going through his stuff, it’d be the last stupid thing I ever did. While that may sound like some sort of veiled threat, I hadn’t taken it as one, not directly. Ian, being Ian, was saying rude mean shit like that all the time. Thinking that we may have a pest problem, I decided to break this rule. I jimmied the door open with a screwdriver, and what I was face to face with made my blood turn cold.
I popped the door open, and was faced with an unfurnished bedroom. No bed, no shelves, no drawers, not a stick of furniture. I reached over for the light switch, but it seemed to be covered with duct tape, leaving it stuck in the ‘off’ position. Upon opening the door to the room, the scratching and groaning had ceased, and I was immediately hit in the face by a wave of heat and humidity. I stood there several moments, my ears perked up to try and narrow down the noise. There was nothing, absolute silence. When I stepped into the room, I noticed a faint, sickly sweet smell, as well as a clear sticky substance pooled on the floor. I walked a little further in, avoiding the goop and hoping to hear whatever the hell it was that had brought me in here in the first place, and that’s when I finally heard it again. It came from above me, and when I looked up, I was faced with something truly horrible. On the ceiling of the bedroom, were dozens of silky looking pods, the oldest of which had the dried husks of women barely visible from within them, they looked like dry rotten mummies. The freshest of which contained several bodies, still writhing from within. The one that seemed to be the most active, contained the lady I had seen him bring home last night, her face gaunt and her eyes blackened and sunken in. She still looked to be alive, though I don’t know how. Her eyes found me and pleaded in a look of stark terror, though I still don’t know whether she wanted me to free her, or give her death. When she opened her mouth, I nearly pissed myself. Inside were a score of eyes, little pebbles glinting in the light, and from within slowly emerged several long spindly spider legs, slowly emerging and spreading out and onto her sunken cheeks.
I booked it. I ran out of that apartment so damn fast, I left ALL of my things behind. Ian can have them, I’m NOT going back. I’m currently squatting on Jake’s couch, much to his fiance’s chagrin. He thinks I’m crazy, having told him my story, and he strongly urged me not to breathe a word of that ‘crap’ to his fiance if I wanted to keep staying here. I’m already getting the feeling like she doesn’t much care for me, and that I’m quickly overstaying my welcome. To mention to her my crazy story would probably only hasten the process. I don’t know what to do. Ian was a cop, so I can’t call the police. What if they are all spiderfolk too? I’m posting this here in hopes that one of you can give me some advice, maybe put me in contact with a monster hunter or even a pest control company that deals in large spiders. Like REALLY large. I’ve looked just about everywhere, everywhere but Craigslist.