Denise stifled a small yawn as she walked down the halls of her high school.  It was Friday night, about 8 pm, and she was just returning to her classroom from the teachers’ lounge, where she had been grading test papers for the last three hours.  

It had been an interesting day, to say the least.  Besides the mountain of test papers, she had also handed back reports to the students in one of her History classes.  The assignment had been a simple one, she thought:  pick a subject you are very interested in, and write a paper on its history, doing all the necessary research.  

She had gotten some very interesting reports, to say the least, but one in particular stood out:  one of her students had chosen his report on spiders.  Never mind the fact that Denise was absolutely terrified of spiders, which made reading the report difficult to begin with, but then, near the end of the report, he had added some fantastic information about a giant breed of spider, as big as a person’s hand or foot, that had been known to eat household pets, and even on occasion, humans!

She had marked through this entire last page with a big red ‘X’ and written below it, ‘The assignment was to write a paper based totally on facts, not something out of your imagination, or a comic book’ and she had given him an F.  And when she returned it to him, at the end of her last class that day, his reaction was one of shock, outrage, and indignation; he actually claimed that everything he wrote was true, and he could prove it!  Denise had done her own research though, as much as she wanted to avoid the subject altogether, and she could find nothing to substantiate any of his wild claims that a ‘nephila’ could ever grow to be that big, or eat anything bigger than a small rodent.  So she felt confident that she had done the right thing by giving him the F.

Denise unlocked the door to her classroom and walked in – she had left her purse on her desk, and wanted to lock the graded tests in her desk drawer until Tuesday, which was the next day they had class.  There was still a little daylight coming through the windows, so she didn’t bother to turn on the lights.  She sat the papers down on one of the student desks near hers, as she flipped through her keys for the one to open the desk drawer.  

As she stood there, in front of her desk, finding the key, she saw something in her peripheral vision, something that seemed to be moving along the floor, like a shadow.  She turned around quickly, back to her desk, and looked down.  What she saw, caused her to let out a blood-curdling scream.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”

On the floor, a couple of feet in front of her, was a huge brown spider, as big as her foot, and it was moving slowly towards her.

“Oh my God,” Denise screamed, “what are you…?” She was in a total state of panic as she clambered backwards, up onto her desk, shaking in abject terror as she stood there, looking down at the giant arachnid below her.  She was trembling as her eyes never left the spider, part of her hoping it would move away quickly, and part of her hoping beyond hope that it was just her imagination, that it wasn’t possible…

But it was real, very real, and to her horror, the spider did begin to move…up, into the air.  It was then that she saw the thread hanging from the ceiling, and realized the spider was hanging from it, and it was climbing up it, fairly quickly.

“No, no…”, she gasped, “stay away from me…stay away from me!”  She backed up a bit, her high heels shuffling on the wooden desk, her eyes never leaving the spider for a moment.  She tried to turn a bit as she backed away, and felt something tugging on each of the arms of her navy-blue jacket.  She tried to move forward, but something had caught the back of her jacket, too.  She looked back, and to her shock she saw that her jacket was caught in some kind of sticky spider web!

“No…no…”, she panicked as she pulled her arms, but her jacket was stuck firmly to the web in too many places for her to pull free.  She spun her head back to look for the spider again…and screamed as it swung there, a foot away from her face.

“Get away from me…oh my God, get away from me…!”  Denise managed to slide her arms out of her jacket as the spider swung closer, only a couple of inches away from her face.  Gripped by fear and panic, Denise ducked down away from the mysterious predator quickly, and as she did, her heel slipped, and she fell backwards, onto the desk top, catching herself with her hands.  Her rear hit the desk with a thud, as she glanced back to see her jacket hanging there above her, trapped in the spider web.

She glanced back up again, in time to see the spider swing down, towards its fearful prey.  The small part of her mind that wasn’t completely terror-stricken was still trying to grasp the idea that a spider this big could be real.  She kicked her legs in an effort to try and slide back away from it, but her heels had somehow gotten caught in the web when she fell!  The more she kicked, the more entangled her feet became.  

Denise was half-lying on her desk, her head and torso supported by her elbows, as she continued to kick in vain at the webs holding her feet.  The spider began to lower itself slowly down as she did, until it was almost resting on her stomach.  Her sheer light-blue blouse was all that was between her and the spider as she stared at it, frozen, her chest rising and falling as she breathed hard in fear.  And then, the spider dropped down, landing on her stomach, right on the edge of her blouse, touching her exposed midriff.  She screamed again, and kicked furiously, but it was no use.

The spider pushed itself under the fabric of her blouse, moving upwards, towards her chest – the only part of her that was moving.  One of its barbed legs caught itself on the thin fabric, and as it slinked up her body, it tore the front of her shirt, and by the time it had reached her heaving breasts, her blouse was torn completely in half.  Its prey was helpless to do anything but whimper weakly in its fear.

The spider centered itself squarely between its prey’s mammary glands and then bit down hard, causing Denise to shriek, as its venom entered her bloodstream.  Thirty seconds later, the heaving had stopped;  the spider’s venom had immobilized its prey, and now it was time for it to begin cocooning it.

Denise felt a cool numbness spread quickly until it had covered her entire body.  She was conscious of everything still around her, but was no longer able to respond in any way; her eyes were frozen open, wide as saucers, and her mouth was also frozen open in mid-shriek.  As the spider began to spin its silk around her, she realized she had made a terrible, terrible mistake.  It was obvious to her now, that her student had been right, and that she had been wrong, terribly wrong.  ‘And this is how he decided to prove it to me!’ she thought.  

She lost all track of time as the spider smoothly, effortlessly spun and spun and spun.  Its silk first covered her torso, then wrapped around her strong, muscular legs, the silk wrapping her designer heels tight against her feet, and her navy skirt tight against her thighs.  Then it cocooned her arms against her body, and began to work its way over her shoulders and towards her face – the last thing left.

The door to her classroom opened, and her student stood there, in the shadows.  She knew he was there, but she couldn’t move to see him clearly.

“Foolish girl.  I bet you believe me now, don’t you?  Oh, right, you can’t answer.  I had my facts right, you see.  The nephila can, on occasion, grow as big as a human hand, or foot, and up to now, the largest thing it had eaten was a small kitten…it doesn’t really move fast enough to catch most intelligent prey.”

The spider had almost completed its work; only her eyes remained uncovered by the strong silk.  She was aware of someone moving towards her…and then, a hand descending down towards each of her eyes.

“Lights out.”

And he pushed her eyelids closed.  She felt the sensation of being lifted, and tossed over a shoulder, and carried away, as the toxin in her system finally caused her to lose consciousness.