CreepCast - The Forest of A Thousand Legs | CreepCast

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

Isaiah records his waking nightmare as the guys read a spider grab bag. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to Creepcast. Today we are going to be doing a spider special. We've been saying that arachnophobia is very present amongst the online space, and we have two spider stories today. The first one being my wife underwent exposure therapy to cure her arachnophobia, but it worked too well. And now she's freaking me out. And then we have an even older story from, that was one year ago.

It said it was posted to No Sleep. And then we have one from almost 10 years ago that's called The Four of a thousand legs, which is like one of the most brutal names of all time for a story. That's sick. Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty excited for these. Spiders freak me. Well, some spiders freak me out.

I'm not arachnophobic to the point that if I see one, I'll lose my mind. But if I see certain ones, I lose my mind. And I have nightmares about spiders a lot and things like that. So the stories, the stories today definitely have the potential to bother me. You're not really afraid of spiders, just snakes, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, like, listen, if when I see tiny spiders, I'm always, you know, I don't want them like biting me.

If they're, if they can bite, I don't want that. But I will say the, like, if I saw a fucking giant, one of the giant, like, hairy spiders. I mean, I would not be stoked on that. Yeah. Also, I feel like every depiction of the scariest version of a spider it can be is in movies is when they have a real spider come in, like into frame, walk in, you know? And then they have, uh, it on a string, like a, a, like a practical version of it and they just literally pulled at the camera and it's just like flat. It's flying at you.

That actually freaks me on a lot. That's like in that movie a Rachnophobia when it jumps at him when he's looking forward at the end. There's so many fun spider movies. At least when I was younger, I really loved a rackophobia because John Goodman's great, but also eight-legged freaks. Eight-legged freaks is awesome. I used to watch that all the time as a kid. Them like shooting the spiders in the mall and all that. The spiders in the giant spider in Lord the Rings and in Harry Potter.

Potter both freaked me out. I'll put out this bounty. You don't get anything for it, but you'll help me feel better. So that's its own reward. I'll pull out this bounty. There was a movie when I was a kid that I watched on the sci-fi channel with my dad a couple times about a giant spider or like several giant spiders in the subways under New York. And every time I look that up, it brings up a movie called spiders, which is about like alien

spiders taking over a train station underground. It's not that one. It was a movie where... That sounds a lot like what you just literally said, though. No, no, no. This movie, I remember a few very distinct scenes. There was one scene. It's like a SWAT team goes down and they have to get on a train car to go to an abandoned part of the track where like there's a spider's nest.

And there's a shot where one of the girls SWAT team members is loading a gun and she looks down like an empty rail car tunnel as. they're going and she sees a giant shadow of a spider on the wall. And then there's another scene where there is a wedding party on a subway train that is going to, I guess, a reception or whatever. And a giant spider gets on there. They're screaming and everything. And then there's a shot of the train car pulling up to station and the door's opening and blood pouring out of the door.

And I have looked for this thing. I've looked on like old horror movie forms. I've looked on sci-fi channel forms. I have not found this film. So if you can find it, I would really appreciate that. I'm not crazy. I have this recurring dream where I, there's this one kind of spider that really bothers me.

They're called golden orb weavers. Even seeing them like makes me uncomfortable. And I have this dream where like there will be a bunch on me and I can't get them off or people are throwing them at me or something like that. So I'd say I'm fairly. areachnaphobic. So we'll see if the story's freaked me out. Were you going to recommend something before I cut you all? And I'll recommend

just as a movie that it may be a lot. I feel like it's gotten a lot of hype over the last couple of years. There's this movie called Possum. It's really good. That's an unsettling kind of very unsettling movie, but it's just about a man who's carrying out a briefcase. There's like this puppet on the inside of it, but it's like a spider. And it's like this fucking human head. It's very, very sick.

So if you haven't seen Possum, check that out. It's really good. Yeah. But guys thank you so much if you're listening on apple's fucking podcast or Spotify for to listen to audio platforms for the podcast it does help a lot and please be sure to give us a nice writing there it would mean the fucking world and also just want to shout out the patrons thank you so much for the support on what we're trying to do here and then also if you want some extra content we watch the lead cronins the mummy so if you want to hop along for

some of those fun experiences feel free I think whenever the back rooms is out We'll probably talk about that out there on there too. But without further ado, uh, well, let's get into it. A little bit of further ado because our first story about the wife undergoing exposures by Christian Wallace, uh, which obviously, you know, friend of the channel, OG, uh, writer, we loved covering his stories. He did the story about my wife's taking our role play too far, the only other astronaut on this mission, uh, the deer that walks on two legs, bunker of a prepper family and another story I think I'm missing. And then when we were in person,

I don't think it's been posted yet, at least not the time of recording. But we record the story about an abandoned white supremacist camp also by Christian Wallace. So big fan of his stuff, everything that he writes. But before the episode, Hunter, I looked up Christian Wallace Creepcast because I was trying to remember how many stories that we had covered of his because I knew it was a lot. And one of the first results took me here. I just sent you a link. did you know that this existed let me see

what is this thing you're about to show me no what the hell is this this is the creepcast wiki and dude this I don't know who's running this or how many people are it is okay

for example you go to the episode list it's every episode we've ever done let me just click on turn it off for example one of the first stories of 2026 It gives a summary of the episode, the number of the episode, and then all of our gags and bits. For example, it's for Turn It Off, it says, the episode begins with both hosts fighting like divorced parents. At 1753, both hosts laugh at how much juice the protagonist drinks. At 2649, the video ends when it's revealed the characters are British.

At 4732, Windigoon mentions how often Meat Canyon brings up belly kisses. At 5008, Wendigoon talks about goosebumps episode, Cry of the Calf. At one hour, three minutes, 53 seconds, the editor adds a bear trap clip when Winnogoon is right. And at 11916, both hosts laugh as the protagonist yet again drinks juice. And then in the trivia segment, it says the 3D animated background for this episode depicts a lit up tent in a forest clearing. This is more than I keep track of when we record these things. Wow. For every, single episode. And then get this. There's a Grandpa Ernest

Wiki. Yes. Every single character that we've made up in bits has their own Wiki entry with a list of how many episodes they've shown up in and what gags are around them and stuff like that. My God. Who is running this? I have no idea.

Okay. So I found the bunker of a Prepper family, right? If I click on that, it's, where was that at? Oh, there's a character list. And the character for that one is Officer Mole. And his description when you did the mole voice

says, Officer Mole is a subterranean mole person masquerading as a police officer. Bob, as he's called by his colleagues, is known for his love of digging holes. And then it has like physical description, mole. This is uncanny.

It's kind of freaking me out a little bit. The David King page who says he once hired obese Italian mobsters for 42s, thousand dollars in but coin in 2012 which is now worth 1.2635 billion dollars making the mobsters rich that's just that's just written down in here okay. What the fuck? Dude there's more stuff in here than I think I've ever written about anything I've done. Oh my god. Oh, like okay I just click on I talk to God. It's in the trivia segment it says at

2834 3309 and 3550 the editor plays with Windegoon's green screen what that is an insane amount of information I don't know if I should feel flattered or terrified uh this is this is actually incredible this is so in depth whoever's doing this I applaud you this is an extremely impressive all right well with that out of the way let's begin Christian Wallace my wife underwent exposure therapy to cure her arachnophobia but it work too well, and now she's freaking me out. I don't like spiders. I don't like it when they bunched themselves up so their legs look like tangled wires.

And I don't like it when they spread themselves out like the radial spokes on a wheel. It was bad luck that when I met my wife, we discovered we were both scared of them. As the man, I kind of just wound up taking over spider-killing duty. At first, this meant squealing while trying to lave a shoe at one of them from a distance, but as the years went on, I kind of just got tired of the stress and anxiety. Fear is exhausting, so is the pageantry of it, jumping up and shouting and lots of running around. Over time I found myself having less and less of a fear reaction to them. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want one crawling on my face, but it wasn't like they had me

running away in fear every time. Lily was never great with him either, but it wasn't what I'd call worthy of therapy. For the first ten years I knew her, she was a fairly run-of-the-mill arachnaphobe. Things only got bad after this one night when we just just come back in from an evening with friends. There'd been a storm outside, windy as hell. I remember putting the keys down on the table by the door, and when I looked back, she was pulling down the hood of her coat. She let out a sigh and her hands through her hair,

and she looked a little puzzled by what she'd felt. When she lifted her hand away, there were thin black legs poking out from between her fingers. Took a second for her to react to what was all bunched up inside her cup tan. Then she screamed and threw it onto the ground. I saw it for only a second. It was so fast. Then it was off and under the nearest door,

and my number one concern became comforting my wife who was having a full-blown panic attack. Get it off, get it off, get it off! She screamed while slapping at her neck and hair. I hugged her tight, checked her hair and then checked it again when she asked me to. Then she stripped her top off to make sure nothing else was clinging to her clothes before I took her into the kitchen.

We had a cup of tea while she kept scratching at the same. the back of her head. Little fucker. I can't believe it. Did you see it? It was huge. One of the biggest yet. Truthfully, I had only half-glimped memories of its scuttling away, but it had been big.

Large enough that a pint glass wouldn't have fit over its starting legs. Just seeing it, it left me feeling anxious, but at the time I ignored my own discomfort. After all, I'd hardly been the real victim. It got away. God, it's still in the house somewhere. Isn't it? I wanted to lie, but thought better of it. Somewhere, yeah, but we'll spider proof of the bedroom tonight and I'll go looking for it in the morning.

Thank you. Jesus, I know I'm going to have a hard time sleeping tonight. So I said like, oh, the story might bother me. It might, you know, mess with me or whatever. Yeah. The description of the legs coming through her hands immediately bothered me. Yeah. I already checked out.

I just thought of all the like bristles, you know, like all the tiny little hairs going through. there was something that kind of was similar last night that happened to me not necessarily in my hand but my dog threw up in our bed and it was just a full fludge like a mouse like a field mouse and that like it just made me think of

I don't know why it made me think of that where you're like oh my God and then like the dog just looked like the dog just looked to be like I don't know sorry that kind of thing but I immediately I didn't bother my my wife is gone right now with her buddy on vacation and yeah, I texted her that

and I was like, you really dodged a fucking bullet by not being here tonight. I feel, now I'm thinking about spiders and stuff like that. Well, see, that's fucked up.

When you read a story like this, you're going to start feeling shit on like your legs and hands, your arms. I'm already, I'm looking at my desk. There was one, I don't even think it was a spider.

I think it was a beetle or something, but one day I was at my desk and I just saw the legs peer over the side. and it was something crawling underneath my desk, but now I'm like looking at the prim of the desk and making sure and it's like already messing with me a little bit. Gosh, I keep thinking about the stream I had

where like someone was throwing a spider at me and in the air I could see its little legs like flying trying to grab onto me. And so I'm immediately in the stress. Trying to grab on to me. Like inside. Uh, take my head.

The spider was saying, I'll save you. I'll save you, Spider. She made me strip the bed before she got in it. And all night she kept flicking at her, and all night she kept flicking at the fringe of the hair on the back of her neck. It felt so bad for her. If that had been me, I can't say I would have reacted much better. Neither of us slept that well, but I was mostly just worried about her.

When you love someone, it's tough to see them suffer. Also, that's a fucking, that has to be some kind of set up there. when you love someone it's tough to see them suffer now if i was a betton man i feel like she's going to do something that is like i don't know if she's going to go full spider like but i just feel like there's going to be something where i feel he's going to have to be like well we're going to have to put you down i think that's a bridge that we're going to have to cross it didn't it was christian wallis the one who did the my daughter's becoming a dog or no that was the lies with a row wasn't it the one about the guy we're with the guy's mothering his

child. I think that was the lies, but same idea, same idea. But it wasn't just that one night. The second one was much the same. The third, fourth, and so on. It petered out a little in the second week, but then she saw a spider on some TV show and the anxiety came back full force. Every night was the same.

I had to strip the bed of everything, lift the mattress, and check for spiders. She even got rid of her bedside table, so there'd be less hiding places for one. In the meantime, I was on hunting duty. In her own words, I had to find the bastard or she never feel safe in the house again. It's funny, but in hindsight, I can't really say what I saw go scuttling under the doorway that first night. But I do know I didn't try all that hard to find it. I remember finding some webs under the living room sofa that were real odd. The fibers were thick like the fake stuff they bring out on Halloween,

and I had to peel them off the carpet like Velcro. I found a couple of these nests throughout the house, but I never mentioned them. One of them hit a hole in the floor that really should have alarmed me, but I just ignored it. Okay, so you have this giant spider mole thing that's like digging through the floor. It's got party city webs everywhere. You're just like, yeah, I won't. I won't bring that up. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I don't know. I haven't seen enough extremely large spiders in life. to know at what point would I feel like if I saw something not even abnormally large I'd be like oh my god this is an infestation I feel like I would psych myself out too much I saw the other night there's one on the wall of the house

that was like I don't even know what kind of spider it was because normally like the big spiders around here are brown or like the little wolf spider wood spider things this thing was black and it was like huge it was super fat and I don't know what that was and I don't know how many in my house and I don't like it.

So I don't know. But if it's tunneling through the floor, yeah, I think that's a problem. Is it tunneling though? Or is it just like there's a hole in the floor and he's, they're just like hiding in there and there's nest and stuff? Well, I guess that's possible. Yeah. I was it say, at least not yet. I haven't, I haven't, uh, I haven't caught onto this mole hybrid that you're speaking of, but I don't know. Have you ever, I don't know if it's the same in, uh, the Midwest, but have you ever

done the thing where you walk out into your yard at night and China, flashlight. So a lot of the time in Tennessee, if you walk outside at night and you shine a flashlight across the yard, you'll see what you think is due everywhere, like little reflections. No, their eyes. They're spider eyes. Oh, okay. No, well, you're probably live in a much more forested area. I feel like I wouldn't see it as much. You know what I mean? We don't have as many trees. Because someone told me that one time and I'm like, there's no way. Like I see due all the time at night. There's no way those are spiders. And then I would walk up to each of the do quote unquote.

And it would be spider eyes. So that's nice. I don't like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. It's everywhere to cross everything. Yeah.

This story is psyching me out. Really. I'm leaning forward in my chair right now. So there's nothing touching me. Well, I'm setting up. I'm not to console you the same way this man is consoling your wife. Yeah. I'm the wife now.

I need you to take care of me. I need you to get the spider. the wife. Oh, all right, don't say that. I ignored a lot, actually. I found dead mice spun up in cocoons, and something bore a hole through one of the kitchen cupboards and filled it with silk. See, it's boring. It's sticking. Nothing normal about that, but I just covered it up with some cans and moved on. The behavior I find hard to explain in hindsight. Maybe my attention was elsewhere. Lillie wasn't in a great place, and she was slowly getting worse. She cried a lot, and any little thing that touched her skin would result in lots of panic yelling.

She couldn't need a meal without slapping out her arms and neck every few seconds. Things got real bad when I came back one night to find her shaving her head. She told me she got tired of mistaking the feeling of her own hair for a spider. So this was the simplest way to feel clean and safe. If you ever lived with anyone who's had a breakdown, there's usually this moment where your heart sinks as you realize that what you're dealing with has transcended the norm. It's quite frightening, actually.

reminded me of when my mom found a lump. It's a very isolating sort of fear. I remember lying awake in bed that night and just thinking about how I'd found Lily bent over the bath, shave her in hand with a patchy head like the doll from Toy Story. When she looked over her shoulder at me, she smiled and her eyes were so wide. I felt like I wasn't looking at my wife anymore. Love that immediate turn to psychological horror, by the way. Yeah.

Hey, Chris Wallace. I mean, like, it reminds me of a, It reminds me, I feel like I've brought this up on the story before. There used to be this great short film on YouTube that was a Cronenberg film. I think this is when I think his wife had gotten breast cancer or has dealt with cancer. I know that she had just recently passed, which is why he made his latest movie, The Shrouds. There was this, I believe it was a Cronenberg short film, but it was called The Nest. It was about this woman.

It was like the POV of a doctor walking in. almost like I found footage style, but it was just his POV. I don't think there's a camera. But her top was off. And she was like basically like these, there's insects crawling around my breast. I want them. I want both my breasts removed.

And the guy was like kind of playing in this way where he was treating it like a psychological horror. It was only like 14 minutes long, but it's this idea that was kind of fun where it's, he's like, okay, well, we can like look into it and do whatever. And it looked like,

it was just a fun thing of like, oh, is this like, is she just insane? or is there actually something there? Because it kind of like sways both ways through the, through the film. But I just love these psychological turns of like having to deal with somebody who's like there's something wrong with my body or like I have to remove my hair because it's the same sensation. Like I think that that only develops and evolves.

You know, there's I think that's like such a slippery slope. So I just, I love that turn here. Yeah. I'm, I'm freaked out. I'm not going to lie. I'm just thinking about these long legs. Have you ever missed someone while you're still... Have you ever missed someone while you still live with them?

Made them coffee and breakfast and chatted about your day, but it's like nobody's there. Every day was the same. I tell her about work, and she'd tell me about how she scrubbed with the bedroom, top to bottom, looking for spiders, or started pulling up the bathroom tiles to check for nest. At one point, I realized she'd taken a lot of time off work,

but she wouldn't give me a straight answer, so I had to call her office. They wouldn't even answer my calls, which I had to take as a pretty bad sign. It came as a relief when she got sectioned. Everything came out all at once. She tried, put in a hammer to one of the walls to find what was behind it, not realizing that it was just the neighbor's living room on the other side. I was at work during all this, but things clearly escalated pretty quickly,

and the police arrived to find a partially bald woman screaming about spiders in the wall. By the time I got home, they'd already taken her to be assessed at the local hospital. I rushed to visit her, but in the meantime I had to call her parents and it was, well, it was a relief because I wasn't alone anymore. Other people knew what was going on and that made it a little easier for me to navigate. Until then, I'd been afraid to mention it to anyone. I guess I was a little embarrassed or maybe just not sure what etiquette was for discussing someone else's mental health.

She was only gone about a night. even 12 hours, really. The neighbors agreed not to press charges if I paid for all the repairs and Lily got therapy. Lully's parents are quite well off, so they helped us out with that. They found this clinic that she stayed at for a couple of weeks. It specialized in exposure therapy, which really just means getting a person used to their phobia. Don't like water? Spend hours every day in a pool. Don't like moths? Step into a room with thousands of them. This is over-simplification, of course. It's a special program that involves gradual increases in the nature of the exposure. The first night she called me and told me they'd had her looking at pictures of a spider and talking

about her experience. They were literally just cartoony drawings, but she told me she found it hard anyway. She cried and I cried too. She was only a few hours drive away, but I didn't want to be away from her and everything had happened so suddenly. It was only six weeks between the night with the storm and her ending up in that clinic. But in that short period, of time. I felt like the ground had fallen from beneath my feet. Exposure therapy to spiders sounds like the worst thing ever. Yeah, this idea of like slowly gradually raising it up to. I like think that it's going to be this thing where she starts like becoming too

comfortable with them and she like becomes like almost needy or dependent on them. Maybe even starts talking to them. I feel like that seems like I'm sure that's a real thing. But thinking about it as a person who is completely ignorant of how it actually works, it does make you think that it's like yeah if you it just feels like you're exchanging one extreme for another right like almost like if you're in this like kind of shattered or cracked broken place healing it with like overexposure of the thing that is like breaking you i feel like it would like crack you in a different way does that make sense yeah i think uh i think if you're already at such an unstable point maybe

it like goes the other direction i agree but i'm also looking at I googled it and this is a real thing that's apparently like super con do they just make you touch spiders or something? I think it's just getting you introduced to the thing that like what spiders are like like the pictures, cartoonity pictures to where you see that like overtime one it isn't like they can't hurt you immediately or whatever. But I think just making it more introduced to like trick your brain because your brain is apparently going on like, I mean, I would assume like a fighter flight kind of response. Yeah. So I think it's like gradually doing it to where your like receptors in your brain don't like immediately trigger that thing and you like have a full blown panic attack.

I think it's just kind of like slowly. It's like almost weaning somebody off drugs. You don't do it immediately. You kind of have to like slowly, you know, it becomes a little less, a little less every time until your body like isn't fully dependent on it anymore. Okay. So this is this is not from like a PubMed or anything. This is from

some wellness website. But according to them it seems spider exposure therapy in order goes from pictures to cartoons to like spider toys to watching videos of them to seeing a live one in a jar. Now they do virtual reality spider simulation. Listen to recordings

of spider sounds. Oh my God. I guess the scuttling. Then you see one in a terrarium and then finally controlled live encounter. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. It's got to be, it has to have

some kind of success to it. I mean, I'm sure it does. I mean, it's a very like, exposure therapy is a well-documented thing that has a tonne. Like here's a, I think this is PubMed. No, this is the NIH

National Institute of Health like showing graphs about how well it works. So I'm sure it's a thing, but uh-huh. Okay. All right. You know, it's funny because in like the last recording or the last one that got posted, I talked about how it's been a while since we've gotten scared in a story.

And you know what? I'm eating my words right now. I just want to say I'm very happy that we didn't read this before we were in that fucking basement. Oh my gosh. Because that would be there was so. Yeah, that would be. There were bugs everywhere.

This actually would have been excellent to read there. Just freak out. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Two weeks she was in there. I don't remember them. There were phone calls every night.

She was getting better, she told me, and the doctors confirmed as much. Hardgoing, for sure. They had to sedate her the day she graduated from cartoons to actual photos of spiders. Apparently, she scratched an orderly up real bad. My time in the house was lonely. Little weird, too, if I'm honest. I woke up at one point with cobwebs in my hair, and at some point I realized that I hadn't seen a spider in my home for a long time.

not even a little money spider what is a money spider is a money spider oh that's what people call them those are just I always call those house spiders interesting I briefly wondered about what the hell had been leaving cobwebs around the place but never followed up on it it's hard to get my thoughts straight

I do remember finding more dead mice all wept up in the back of the kitchen cupboard one morning I came down to find a starling cocooned on the outside of the kitchen window no sign of what did it though I just stared at it sip my coffee and then I left for work

and when I came back it was gone probably not a good time to tell you I was diagnosed with a kind of dementia some time ago I guess what a little out of left brother you lead with these things

you can talk about your fucking crazy you can talk about your fucking crazy spider girl but you're not going to bring up you have dementia? What? Come on, man. Pacing people, pacing. We got to figure this out. I guess that's supposed to help make sense of things, right? I don't know. It doesn't feel like it makes sense to me. It's not like Alzheimer's runs in my family. They say the neurons of a human brain

with Alzheimer's looks like a cop web that's had holes poked in it. It's a good way to describe how my mind feels to live inside. Thoughts travel along a given route and then just drop off. Lillly therapy. I feel like that was just out of nowhere. I feel like that's a fucking setup and a half. I mean, the whole thing too is he keeps leaving all these like cutesy little endings to paragraphs being like, yeah, thoughts travel along, given round and then just drop off the same

way that, I don't know, cocoons and spiders keep dropping off at my house. Also, the Alzheimer's, that's kind of a fun parallel. that they say neurons of the human brain with Alzheimer's look like cobwebs that have holes poked in it. It does make it seem like maybe, which would be an interesting concept of like a person with dementia, like attracts, I mean like a spider insects or something, you know, like your brain waves and give off some kind of vibe. I don't know. Just kind of a cool thought. I think what it might be implying is that this spider is like a supernatural thing because he mentioned when. she threw it off of her.

He was like, I didn't exactly see it. I just know it was big. So it's almost hinting to the idea that something about the spider's appearance doesn't look like a normal spider. And also now it's eating like mice and birds and stuff like that. So it's growing. But it's like caused her to lose her mind as it's causing him to lose his mind just in different ways.

He might not actually have dementia. It could just be like the spider's effects causing it. I want to know how much he's forgetting. Yeah. He hasn't, you know what I mean? Because it can be like maybe the whole house is just covered in webs right now and he's walking around like thousands of spiders. He's like, yeah, I saw a bird outside.

That was kind of weird. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think like there's the way that piecing that in kind of throwing that actually, you know, it was random, but throwing that in not at the top actually makes sense for a dementia patient. So I actually have a lot of respect for that injury. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I bet you fucking did forget to mention it. Yeah. Right on time. Yeah. Lily's therapy progressed nicely, though.

I remember that quite clearly. The phone calls and the sound of her voice, real vivid. God, I missed her so bad during this time. I hate being overly sentimental, but it had been a tough and lonely six weeks, and hearing her sound increasingly happy and confident with each new phone call was like a shot of pure happiness right into my veins. I missed her, and I wanted her back. and when she told me, giggling with joy, that she'd held a little spider on day 10, I burst out crying right with her.

I felt pride at her accomplishment, and I felt relief that things might be getting back on track for us, like the nightmare was finally going to be over. It wasn't so simple when I saw her in person. She came back looking like the war wounded. I should say she looked beautiful, but I want to be honest. I smiled when I saw her, but it didn't reach my eyes because the woman who got her, into the car, looked a lifetime apart from the woman who'd been living with me just a few months ago. She was thin as a rake with ashy, pallid skin and a shaved head that made her look like a matchstick.

And her eyes, the look in them wasn't right. But she was smiling, so I swallowed the funny feeling I had in my stomach and pretended everything was okay. There was no work for her to go back to, and I managed to get some time off after speaking to my boss. It was just us, and that can be a weird feeling for a couple used to working 9 to 5. I was on edge. Didn't know what to expect. She smiled a lot. Tried her best to reassure me, and I asked a lot about what therapy was like, and she told me it was fantastic.

Showed me photos of her sitting next to big house spiders, some as white as her palm. I had to fight back my own fear while looking at them. She told me that was day 13. But when I asked what happened on day 14, she said it was mostly just packing up and saying goodbye. There's a dark and uncomfortable truth to relationships, and it's that time only flows in one direction. My wife hadn't done anything wrong, and I didn't really feel any ill will towards her, but a distance had been placed between us. All the best will in the world couldn't undo it. She changed, been changed, I guess.

At the time I didn't know how to understand any of it, but I wasn't sure how to treat her. When I kissed her, it was on the cheek. When I held her, it was like hugging a female coworker. I didn't know what my own feelings were, and I wouldn't until I found her one morning in the kitchen, tapping away at a pint glass and giggling like a toddler. It wasn't the light and airy laughter of the woman I was used to. It was more like the laughter of a bunch of kids, agging on a fight or cheering on a nasty bully. She didn't speak when she looked at me

She just turned back to the glass and kept laughing Flicking it gently with her She just turned back to the glass and kept laughing Flicking it gently with her fingers When I walked around the table I saw it under there A very large house spider I don't know what is normal for people around the world

But a UK house spider is big If its legs are wider than the palm of your hand brother i think that would be big anywhere yeah i would qualify like and what fucking human is like that's pretty small i mean i mean like my god if it's big if its legs are wider than the palm of your hand i mean i guess if you're like south america or southeast asia a big spider is like larger than your head i get that but you know what dude between us i'll we'll call it big together How's that sound? Yeah, I mean, I will graciously call that big, okay?

Just for you, buddy. This thing was even bigger with legs bundled up against the side of the glass like spools of segmented wool and seeing it maybe jump way back. I realized I hadn't seen another spider since the night of the storm, and that thing all curled up with legs as thick as hair pins was a real shock to my system, cried out and my wife. He started howled him with laughter. I mean, it was like a toddler,

discovering cartoons for the first time. Manic and weird and just so happy, but in a way that was a little alien because I didn't understand the thoughts and feelings that went into that ear-splitting cackle and it was all wrong coming from her. I waited for her to say something, but she didn't. She just laughed until something in her got tired and she slowly stopped, giggling, but she still didn't say anything even after she'd gone quiet. In the end, it was me who broke the silence. I didn't have a clue what to say. The whole time she was staring at me with her patchy hair and gleeful, teary eyes and I got so desperate to break the standoff that I stammered out the words. He's a big one, ain't he? Her face relaxed. Her shoulders slumped. She slipped out of

the crazy like it was only ever an outfit. They'll get bigger. HIT THE ROE HIT THE ROE, Jack. And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more, no more. hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more. My wife's a spider. Hit the road, Jack. Don't you come back, no more? Yeah. No, I, uh, nope.

At what point, actually, because listen, I, at what point do you kill your wife? I know, I mean, at one point, do you kill your wife? I mean a lot by immediately leaving my partner. Leaving your wife. In any kind of distressful moment. Yeah, I know. but at what point do you actually say this is like a this is a broken person she's been back not too long but how long would this have to go on for you to just be like i because this is

what i always wonder when you are in a relationship with somebody like this like people people who stick by um people like there's this i forgot what it was there's a person who was in a car Rick and the wife stayed with the husband, even though he was basically a vegetable. I mean, like he, like, I think he didn't have a lot of brain activity. And it's this thing where there's this deep-seated love, whatever. At what point is it different if the person has gone mentally? Oh, I would say, I thought you're about to say at what point is it okay to leave an injured spouse? No, no, no, no.

I'm saying there's an honorable thing. The problem leads to another problem. Like, I think you see that a lot with like, you know, spouses that have head injuries and become violent, right? Like, you can't be expected to stay with that person. Well, there's that. And I think, exactly. At what point do you say, like, I don't want to get to that point?

Yeah. You know, like, when I see this and then, like, it's, also, manic laughing, catching this, the spider. I mean, like, you would only assume that it gets worse. And at what point do you, are you actually able to walk away and not be like, I hate myself forever for being a coward and leaving, you know? At, at this specific level we're at. where she's just like, oh, they'll get bigger and laughing about spiders.

Not now. Not now. But I think this might be, hey, honey, I'm going to go stay with my mom for the night. Well, I guess the way that it's being read right now, it feels like there's little cohesion of like she's almost like has the mental understanding of like a, not the mental understanding of a toddler, but she's cognitive function. Yeah. Yes.

Yes, exactly. And if this went on every day, like I personally would be like, it would be extremely challenging. Like that would be like that's also it's fundamentally a completely different person than who you were in a relationship with before. I think I think it's obviously a hard question. But a situation like this where someone, you know, has an, you can see it as an injury or a snap that leads to, I think this is time to maybe take a step back and get her another kind of help, you know. I would have. your therapy obviously worked a little too well.

Maybe another kind of therapy. I would have a stamp card and I would give it, I would give it 10 goofs before I'd have to punch that free pizza ticket and then be like, all right. I think I'm, I think I'm lickety splitting right now. Yeah. You know,

I mean, right now she just got out of the goddamn hurt locker. You know what I mean? I mean, come on, give her some grace. But if it just, I mean,

I don't know. Once again, I'm just saying got the puncher in hand, got the card. Yeah, this is a punch. This is one step closer to your free coupon. I agree.

Your free shape. This is me. This is me doing. Yeah. I do. I turn around, slip it on my wrangler jeans. I do. I put right back in my,

my gene pocket. Yeah. But you know how many. I wonder what would justify a stamp though. You turn back around. Baby feeling pizza. She's like, Ola,

but, Mm-hmm. Turn back around. Click and again. Back to back to back clicks. It's getting worse. Greg. I've done four clicks in the last two minutes.

Just six more, buddy. Just hang in there. Hey, is your mom? Is your mom coming over this weekend? No, just the spiders. Got it. Yeah. I don't know.

Look into the trees. Oh, that is so cool. So how many until you abandon your family? Oh, it's got to be a 10. Yeah. It's a 10 punch card. That's the universal punch card system on the 10.

purchase, you get a free one. You get the free shakes. The free fries. Coffee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then she lifted the glass, snatch the spider up, and stuffed it into her mouth.

That is a punch. That's the rest of the punch card. That is a, that is a you do not pass a go. You do not collect 200. You just hit the rest of them. I like to imagine he had his hand, his phone in his hand.

He was like calling for like Chinese takeout. does. All right. So you're full. He puts it back up on the phone rack. Oh, okay. None of that. You know what? I'll just go get it myself, honey. No reason to order it. And he never comes back. At the same time, though, I hate to see this, but that would kind of, that would kind of turn me on a little bit, if I'm in honest, just a little bit. Just, just a hair.

What? Just, just a spider's hair length. If my lady, if my, if my lady was like, I am deathly afraid and she fucking picked it up and ate it, I would be like, that is fucking. and kind of badass. It's disgusting, but... That sounds like something I would say. Second of all, there is nothing attractive

about her putting a spider in her mouth. I just, I have got to disagree. She's got that Viva Vedetta thing going on right now. You know what I mean? G.I. Jane, bald ass head, eating that stuff. I didn't see it. Not fully. But I stood, frozen and tear,

and watched the muscles in her badly shaved head tense and relax as her jaw worked away, crunching at those hardened legs. God, sounds were bad enough, but when she was done, she looked over her shoulder at me and smiled and her teeth were smeared green and black with little bits of leg

and Kydin still stuck between the gums. Oh. I don't know if I like that. I don't like that. That's kind of a no-go for any person. If you have a big bowl of pasta, spaghetti, and you're chewing down on it, ain't no fucking reason you should be smiling with all that sauce. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, she's gone, mentally gone. I'm going to take a couple liberties and step away and, like I said, punch the rest of them. Like, okay, well, I don't know. I need to feel better. I'm going to hold this till I feel better. I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but now I knew why it felt so different around her since she'd come back. I was afraid of her.

like a toy really what made you think of that like a kid around an abusive parent i just didn't know what i was going to get there was always this energy in the room that had me on edge i'd sit there watching tv but i wasn't really watching couldn't have told you what was on half the time instead every ounce of my being was focused on her every breath every motion when she got up to use the toilet, I watched her intensely to see what she was going to do. The fact that she rarely did anything except carry on as normal was all the more unsettling because I knew something was wrong and I couldn't stop remembering the way she laughed with that thing under the glass.

Let me, I need to find Kayla's keys. I'll be back. Give me a second. While he's gone, that would be kind of unsettling. Having a, uh, having a girl knowing that she just ate a spider and you're all freaked out, elevated heart rate. And the only thing you're not really looking at the TV. You're watching her, she's like getting up to go take a shit,

and you're like watching her walk away. And all you hear, and all you hear in your left ear is just men, men, men, men, menly men, men, men, men, men, men. Men, men, men. Amen, man, man. That'd be, I wanted to be watch it all the whole time. here blown up the bathroom i did this girl one time she's like where's your bathroom and was right behind us i had a couch in the living room and it was i mean right there and i had me her

my buddy and early he's like my roommate we're sitting there we were watching i think uh i don't know some daniel de los film who fucking last mohicans or some shit i was like what the i don't know oh no she she was dropping like mad bombs this bad toilet those bad porcelain farce where it's like like all just like ricocheting off every fiber of that porcelain bowl my roommate was like god damn she comes back out and she was like uh did you hear that i said well hell yeah we heard it she's like yeah i was trying to put on a show for you and that was the last time i associated with that girl that was not a good time i was trying to put on a show for you all

what a time she had a pretty smile though so it wasn't that good never mind oh damn this coke diet coke i tell you i when i was a when i was a younger man did not care for diet coke now oh you'd have to pry it for my hands a nice cold can of diet coke oh shit oh yeah oh yeah give me those chemicals the hell's in this there's an aspartame baby okay what would you do I was just chatting with them while you're gone. So they were me dead air. I found the key. So apologies for that.

Anyway. No problem. Nights were bad. A lot of the time I'd wake and get the feeling she'd just been watching me. But she was usually fast asleep, or at least that's how it looked. Sometimes there were furtive movements like she just rolled over. I got used to it. Thought it was probably just in my head.

But the one night I woke up and she was right there, face inches away from her face inches away from mine. I cried out, couldn't help it. Shuffled backwards while trying to avoid touching her, wound up falling off the bed. When I looked up from the floor, she had a completely blank expression. She was just looking at me like a cat, watching a fly. What are you doing? cried out, unable to stop the irritation from bleeding into my voice. She shrugged. Just watching. Then she rolled over like nothing had happened. That night I slept on the sofa. She didn't ask why.

I didn't say a word as I grabbed my things and left the bedroom. I wasn't sure I would manage to fall asleep after that, but I did. When I woke up, I had cobwebs in my hair. I was lucky if I slept more than a few hours a night after that. It came fitfully, if at all. I woke up too many times to the feeling of something tickling my face and chest, a sensation like someone running a feather over me. Every time I'd come to in a panic, but I never found anything except near,

Nearly invisible silk clinging to my skin. Life without sleep was difficult, and I struggled to hide my dislike for Lily. Over time, our habits and routines diverged even further apart. I stopped going upstairs almost entirely, just didn't need to. I had work and the sofa and the kitchen, and the days when I came back and barely saw Lily at all were fine by me. I preferred being away from her, something that kind of broke my heart, if I'm honest. There were times I didn't want to reach out, but looking at her gave me the funniest feeling

in my stomach. I didn't want to change things. Didn't want to get closer. If anything, I wanted to run away. And I don't mean that I wanted to flee my life and adult responsibilities in some abstract way. I mean, I felt a powerful urge to quite literally run away from her. It was horrible feeling that way about my wife.

And just trying to understand those emotions was enough to give me a headache most days. I became real forgetful during this time, and it was a long time before I'd realized I'd forgotten to pay for the repairs to the wall. I think it slipped my mind, emphasis on think, because I don't remember what I have and haven't forgotten. I just nailed some plywood over and left it three months later, one day, out of the blue, it occurred to me, I should probably have done something more about it. I did find a toolkit in the kitchen that wasn't mine. I might have called someone out for a quote. I don't know. But once I remembered that I'd never actually fix the hole,

I was filled with this shame and embarrassment, and I decided the best thing to do was to face it head on and go apologize to my neighbor. Okay, finding the toolkit and thinking he called someone out, is this spider just killing people? I can't tell if it's the spider or if it's just the woman who I think might be becoming a spider. I'm unsure.

It's hard to say. Or is she controlling spiders like Willard who controlled rats? Remember that? yeah, I do remember that. How, how spider-like does your wife have to become before you leave her? I don't know. I mean, if I, because you're, are you saying, are you saying, that she's also growing new limbs and stuff? Or are you saying that she's just like literally?

Well, maybe. Is that your cut off an extra limb? I think I'd be kind of stoked on like if my wife had four arms. Like she was Goro. That'd be kind of cool, right? That would be kind of sick. And she had like four. It'd be kind of, I don't know.

I mean, like, honestly, if she was shitting webs. like that would be, that would be for me. I'd be like, we gotta, we gotta cut that out. That'd be, I just don't know if I just wanna see a bear asshole all day, shitting webs, like that, I don't know. You know what I mean? I would agree. Can you give me the cookies?

The extra set of arms could be cool though, but I feel like four eyes. No, no, I feel like the extra eyes would be a no go as well. I don't know. I could, I could see a world where I would, I would be into it. You'd be down for that. If they were humanized, though, not the, not like black, not the black spider eyes yeah yeah what if like what if she gets like these little mandible like pinch her mouth i mean come hey what that what's that pinch you're doing yeah i mean

yeah i like a little there he is i like a little tug and poke why not i'm come on i just bite a little bit there we's pinch just a little bit oh just a bit that's what i thought all right i never knew a lot about the guy he was an older man who liked his football that had a nose like a tomato and spent most nights in the pub I knew he lived alone though, and when I knocked his door and there was no answer, it wasn't too strange. At least it didn't seem out of the ordinary until I went back inside my house and heard footsteps on the other side of the wall.

So I went back and I knocked a couple more times figuring he maybe hadn't heard me, but there was still no answer. I found this weird. It didn't seem like the kind of guy who'd avoid a neighbor he didn't like. You just opened the door and tell you to screw off. I went back and looked but couldn't see anything through the other. his windows, and all I could see looking through his letterbox was a gray sheet across the opening. When my fingers came away covered in a sticky thread, I had this terrible feeling in my stomach.

I couldn't have possibly explained how, but I was convinced that Lillie had done something. After all, it was him calling the police who'd gotten her into trouble, but it wasn't like I could kick his door down to check, and I wasn't going to go scrambling through any half-open windows. Fortunately, we shared a fence in the back garden. It was easy enough to jump, and from there I checked the windows on that side of the house. He left the kitchen blinds open, and at first what I saw baffled me. For a moment, I wondered if he was decorating because everything inside was covered by a thin, translucent sheet. Buddy, don't think those are sheets.

I don't think those are sheets, buddy. But I only had to pay close attention to realize that didn't make sense. When painting a ceiling, you don't throw tarps over half-drunk cups of coffee and plates of moldy food. And the material that covered everything was cloudy and made of thread and obviously some kind of silk. Took a lot of effort to control the urge to just hop the fence back and pretend like I never saw a damn thing. But if he needed some kind of help, I knew I had to at least try. Braver man than me I would have just

They're like well he's dead I looked briefly at the stoop By the back door There was a lighter on the ground Where someone had dropped it It was strangely conspicuous And made me think that Whoever had left it there

Had done so in a hurry Didn't make sense that someone would drop it there And not notice Not unless they'd been otherwise occupied I picked it up And winced when it came from the floor With a sticky tearing sound

It was covered in barely visible silk threads. Cod, I wanted that back door to be locked. Couldn't think of anything worse than having to push ahead, but I tried the handle and it went down. The door popped open with barely any effort, and I got a good look at how every last inch of that place was covered in pale cop webs that got thicker and thicker as my eyes drifted deeper into the house. I couldn't help but wonder if there were strong enough to trap a person. Was my neighbor in there somewhere? Somebody was.

I knew that much from the sounds I'd heard, but I couldn't see him in the kitchen. I wanted to cry out for him, maybe even go marching into the house and look for myself, but the hallway out of the kitchen had been turned into a webline tunnel. No straight lines, just a dark, silky womb

whose rounded funnel walls fluttered gently in the breeze. I stared into... I'm getting chills. I'm not. It's a great setup. All the visuals and stuff. I feel like I'm there in that room. It's fucking awesome.

It's so well written. The details is fantastic. I feel like I feel everything he's wanting me to feel right now. I feel the uneasiness, the tension. I also don't want him to go into that room because then I'm going to have to read about it. Man, I stared intently into that dark.

This reminds me actually, did you ever watch that movie Kingdom of the Spiders? It was an old, it was one of those old bee monster. movies and it had the original Captain Kirk. What's his name? William Shatner.

William Shatner. It had William Shatner in it. And it was about this town in like the desert who a bunch of spiders start showing up and they're like tarantulas. But they're just super venomous and they live in colonies and they bite people and people die. And that's all they do.

They don't get giant or anything. But they build these big webs and they'll web up bodies. And I remember being a kid and being so terrified by these shots of like people bloodied and like wrapped up in webs. It's a great visual. I mean, it's forever scary. Oh, it's forever scary.

And the movie ends with one of the guys gets knocked out and he comes to and there's a few survivors who drug him into a room in town. And they've like covered up all of the air pockets and vents and stuff like that with clothes. And the camera pans out and the entire town is underneath a giant web like this. That's fun. And that's just how it ends. And I was terrified of that for a long time.

And I'm getting flashbacks to that now, that same feel. No straight lines, just a dark silky womb whose rounded funnel walls fluttered gently in the breeze. I stared intently into that darkness, trying my best to see if there was the shape of a man's corpse cocoon somewhere in the pale white silk. I leaned forward, my head and shoulders just moving past the door frame when the blackness in the tunnel grew legs. dark carapace and segmented limbs explode dark carapace and segmented limbs exploded towards me so fast it was almost in the kitchen before my heart had time to skip a beat and then it stopped halfway into the room

standing perfectly still and brazen in the fading daylight a bundle of legs the size of a horse A real-life monster. I didn't move. God, it took me another minute just for my brain to process what I was looking at on a conscious level. My nervous system was quicker, sure. It was like a blanket of disgust and terrors thrown over me. My stomach plunged to the floor.

My skin crawled. My heart felt like it was going to explode. But my actual mind was blank, white noise and static. The creature was huge. So big its legs could just about. fit in the hallway behind it, but in the kitchen with a little more room whose front limbs and mouthy feelers spread out like tendrils and gripped the doorway. It was ready to pounce on whatever had sent disturbances through its web. I've read that spiders can be a little like Venus fly

traps. They won't always pounce on a single trigger. They need multiple hits. When I looked down at my feet, I saw that I'd taken just one step inside, but that was all it needed to be alerted. Now, it had approached the initial alarm and half blind, it waited for another hint of something trapped inside its web. I had to wonder, with lifting my shoe count, did I have a choice? Man, this is so, just the tension and the moment.

And also, in all these giant spider movies, the spiders always move so slow, but having it be like the speed of a normal spider just that big, I couldn't stay there. Looking at the damn thing was bringing me closer and closer to, full-blown panic with every passing second. I had to do something and I had to do it with some semblance of control. I slid my foot backwards.

Spider didn't move. As soon as both feet were outside, I like go with the door handle and felt something sticky to attach from my palm. It feels like an exaggeration to say that lightning moves slower. Oh my gosh. What an awful way to start the paragraph, dude. What an evil way. to start the paragraph. Oh. I'm sure most of you have seen a nature documentary with one of those

fish or maybe even a trapdoor spider and you thought, oh shit, that was quick, but this thing, maybe it was just because it was coming right at me. I've never seen anything like it except for when videos get edited. All of a sudden it was just there. And before I knew it, thick woolly paps were pinning me to the ground, and I was looking into a pink slit of a mouth framed by fangs as long as my forearms. They moved independent of each other, and something about the side of all those wheel-spoke legs and segmented joints clumped together in its thorax sent my mind reeling. I said at the beginning of this that a lifetime of exposure had helped curb my arachnophobia, but there are limits. I blacked out.

When I woke up, it was dark all around me. I didn't know it at the time, but the belly of the beast was my neighbor's former living room. It wasn't actually pitch black, but it did take a few terrifying minutes for my eyes to adjust well enough just to be able to see my own body stuck and wriggling beneath me. I was wrapped up tight, and if you've ever heard the refrain that Spider-Silk was stronger than steel and doubted it, well, trust me, it's true. A few thin threads doesn't give you a proper. sense of it, but I was wrapped in what must have been a half inch of the stuff and felt like

I was wearing 10 layers of Lycra that was too small. There's a tiny bit of give, enough to let me move my fingers or toes or even bend a knee just a fraction, but that was it. It was horrifying. I'm not exactly claustrophobic either, for what it's worth, but given the circumstances, I found myself panicking as I tried to get some purchase. I kept thinking if I could get a finger hooked into it, then maybe I could start tearing away. I was desperate, but the more I found, the more I realized it was hopeless.

The silk was elastic and strong and covered in a thick, stodgy glue that only further limited my movement as everything I did spread it around until it was gumming my legs and hands together. It wasn't until exhaustion caught up to me, and I was forced to take a short break that I realized I wasn't alone. was another cocoon beside me. My neighbor had been a big man in life, Poggi with a large pop belly and a head like a thumb. But in the dim light of that room, he looked like a skeleton wrapped in skin that had been found half decayed in an ancient and forgotten tomb. So thin and desiccated, you could hook a finger under the tendons in his neck and jaws. I nearly cried when I realized

I'd risk everything to save a dead man. But that wasn't actually true. The air is a in my thinking became apparent when he opened his eyes and glared at me with pure unbridled terror. He opened his mouth and I was convinced he was about to scream when instead he coughed and gagged and something wet and brown tripled out of his mouth. Oh, it plopped down his chin and came to rest on the floor between us. It resembled a hair band encased in bile and vomit and I was momentarily stumped until I saw a thin, brown leg unfurl from the tangled mess. It's okay.

My neighbor's entire body relaxed. His eyes vacant and confused as Lily knelt down beside me and stroked my head. Lily, you've got to get me. Shh. She said, pressing a single finger to my lips. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. I managed to wiggle my fingers into my pocket to hit another punch on the punch card.

from the cocoon that's like here. I'm like, it's been a while since the story's bothered me this much. Honestly, I can't. This is how I remember feeling when we were reading stolen tongues with the part about the thing that was wearing the native guy's skin. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the same feeling only it's much longer. I'll tell you what, man, Christian Wallace, he knows how to phrase his stories. And while I'm afraid of spiders in real life, I didn't think a story about them would.

bother me, but here we are, and it's because of the way he says things. Behind her, a shadow appeared. It had legs as thick as my wrist, and they reached from the floor to the ceiling. You won't be much longer now. She added as the darkness behind her grew. Probably best just to keep you here. Lily, what the fuck? I told you that'd get bigger.

She said, nodding towards the spider, my neighbor just spat on with the floor. He won't be any real help. She touched my neighbor's head, but he barely responded. She just gazed vacantly as she rolled him over so that he was facing away from me. We're such a clever animal. She added as she parted his hair. I was curious about just how much you miss. Something was clamped around the back of his head, a throbbing bulb of molten brown skin and hair.

It looked like a spider without legs. A tick maybe? That's what I thought it was until my wife ran a finger playfully along its back. My neighbor let out a gut-wrenching squeal of pain. Slowly, the shape seemed to wriggle and writhe, and long, thin legs emerged from beneath its body, and I realized I was looking at a spider wrapped tight around his skull. Its legs buried beneath the skin and muscle of his scalp. For a moment, it playfully curled the leg in the air before returning to the end.

incision and sliding it back into place, every inch disappearing with a gruesome wet sound. It displaced muscle and hair when it came to rest. I realized just how misshapen his skull had become from all those legs wrapped tight around his head. What the fuck? Do you ever find it weird that you can't remember what it looked like? The thing came running out of her hand. She asked before reaching over to stroke my head. Not that I want to claim any dignity right now, but that is my bear trap when I said with him throwing it on the ground. Was it gonna, you know. I'm out to something looks like I was right, but I'm also miserable, so who cares?

Her hand came away covered in cobwebs. Something about her touch revolted me. It sent strange shivers coursing through my body. A deep primordial need to get away came over me. That strange revulsion all over again, the same one that it taunted me over and over again over the last few weeks. Without even meaning to, I found myself. self-convulsing and panicking, my body trying to thrash violently but with every limb constricted

by that silk I could do nothing except ride around on the floor. I tried with everything I had to move my hands, to get some purchase on the silk and tear away at it to free myself, but it was no use. I could do nothing except glare at my wife in the enormous shadow behind her, the one that towered above us both, its great legs clustering around the floor and ceiling. At some point I grabbed onto my trousers and clenched my fist and felt something small and hard, the lighter. I knew there was great risk in using it, but I had no choice.

I managed to worm my hand into my pocket and find it with my fumbling fingers. My wife seemed oddly aware of what I was doing, and she seemed to tilt her head like a curious dog as I clenched my fist around the small object and used every ounce of willpower I had left to fight the violent seizures that racked my body and thumbed the tree. trigger. The web went up in flames immediately. It must have been the glue, but the flames exploded across the silk like they'd been soaked in kerosene. Before I even realized that it had weakened enough for me to free one arm, the tongues of fire were already spreading across the floor where they found my poor neighbor. The burning sensation that crawled across my legs and

chest hurt like nothing I could imagine, but I was finally free. I rolled over and began to push myself up, already desperately patting at my body to try and put out the flames. When I looked around me, my wife and the shape that followed her were gone. For a moment, I considered helping my neighbor, but his body thrashed too violently, and although his eyes were wide open, spiders were pouring from his mouth, and I could not summon the courage to take another step towards him. All I could think of was escape. The house was going up like a tender box. It wasn't far to the kitchen, but the fire had already beat me there. Smoke billowed upwards and trapped by the ceiling, started to fill the air with choking sud. The only escape was the back door, and I stumbled

towards it, but was stopped at the last moment by the side of my wife standing there. You really are such a fascinating spell. I barreled past her, but to my surprise, she offered no resistance. I merely merged into the open air, my lungs gasping desperately for clean air as I collapsed onto long, unkempt grass. I looked over my shoulder and saw orange tongues of fire were already leaping out of the windows on the upper floor. Left uncontrolled, the fire would rage and consume the entire row of terrace houses. I felt a moment of remorse, but there were already sirens in the distance, so I knew someone had noticed and done the right thing, but it wasn't over.

Lily was sitting on the fence. I don't know how she got there, but she looked completely undisturbed. I'd never once imagine that wind blew me into your home. I'd meet such an interesting pair of people. What a fun mind to sink my life. into where he had no idea what I was going to find let her go I have I did months ago as a matter of fact there were some incapabilities and it just made sense to move homes she pointed at me and smiled I've enjoyed living inside your head quite a bit

mm-hmm that explains the his forgetfulness not remembering things and all that huh struggling to make sense of her words but still somehow aware of their terrifying implications I placed one hand on the back of my head and felt it. Felt her. The mere touch was enough to fill my mouth with a coppery taste while my vision blurred at the edges. Something beneath my skin shifted and I felt a terrible pressure behind my eyes. I had to get rid of her and I only knew of one weakness. Oh well. She said as she watched me fumbled desperately for the lighter. Not every relationship has to last forever to be meaningful. I lit my hair on fire.

My last memories were of heat and a sudden release of pressure. I couldn't possibly describe it to you. Not really. Something slid out of my skull and Lily waved me from the fence before she seemed to blink out of existence and then nothing, not even darkness, just total absence. I wouldn't regain a sense of self until the hospital several weeks later. There's, so I'm assuming that Lily never made it out of therapy. She was always gone and the spider just gave him the apparition of her. Yeah, I don't know. I'm like, well, let's finish it and see. There was nothing left of either house, but they did manage to control the fire before it spread to the others. I'm sure there was still some damage, and to this day I feel guilty about it.

I think I was charged with arson, maybe more. I vague memories of being wheeled into a courtroom. The doctors have agonized over me for a long time and one mentioned amateur trepination. He said I must have practiced it on my wife, at least based on the body they found in my neighbor's house, but I can't really be sure of anything. I am forever tipping in and out of reality. Writing this down has been difficult. I'm not entirely aware where I am right now.

One doctor told me I might make some kind of recovery if it was just a normal brain damage, but you never seen anything like it, so it couldn't be sure. Feels like it's a different doctor every time I see them. Then again, I don't always recognize myself when I look in the mirror. Of course, that could just be the burns, but I reckon even then I'd still look a fair bit older than I should.

There's one orderly who's stuck around long enough to get to know me. He knows me by name. Smiles a lot when he sees me, talks to me about all sorts of things. He seems genuinely interested in me in what I remember. I called him in once to get rid of a spider that had spun a web on the window outside, and he did so with a warm smile. I told him I was deathly afraid of them, and he said he already knew that, but I should have.

I didn't worry because he was going to keep an eye on me, make sure nothing bad happened. I'm glad he's around. Ever since he started working here, I haven't seen many of the nasty little things hanging around my room. I guess he's not that bothered by them. At least not if the cobwebs in his hair or anything to go by. What a fun ending. Ugh. Do you think that the spiders are real or do you think they're just a manifestation in his mind?

I think the, no, I think they're real because what started all was the windy day, when one blew in and then got in her hair and he thought it pulled it out, but she was actually infected by the spider that had burrowed into her brain and then his brain. And now they've gotten to either, I guess the orderly has it

because of the cobwebs in his hair or they're back in him. The trepination thing means that it like burrows into the skull. That's what the doctor suspect happened. That's what led to him like burning down the neighbor's house and stuff. So I think at the very least

the spider that's in his brain is real. Maybe not the giant one in the house. And I'll think the visage of his wife was real, but. Yeah. Her, her shaving her head and stuff makes me think that that's what she was trying to get the thing off. Yeah. The back of her head. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, uh, well, I think she was and that's what she's talking about spiders in the walls because there was one in her head. But he was also under the influence somehow because if she had a shaved head and he didn't see it. That could be the dementia, could be the thing he's forgetting.

I think by that time he was already. Or he was also infected. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think by that time he was already hooked. Yeah. For sure.

Gosh. That was a great story though. That was fantastic. Dude, I can't remember being that scared of a story in a while. That was a, that was one two where I feel like the ending had a really fun payoff as well. Yeah. Which doesn't happen a lot. No, sometimes the ending and like the explanations kind of sours it, but I feel like the

spider in the brain thing is a good fit there and I like the neighbor and then like it's the obviously the webs everything webbed up and stuff like that I think that's all awesome I think it's all very well done um uh okay well

excellent spider story Christian Wallace link in the description the goat be sure to check out his publications like with teeth and also the C.H. Wallace website has a ton of cool stories on there uh with that Hunter are you ready to make it even worse as you say let's dip in

it's fun that we're doing another one too because the I'm very curious I love the title of this one the force of a thousand legs having a double feature it's gonna be fun to see does this one irk you as much too I'm curious

if it's just if now that we've read one does this one also is it like you know pins and needles with how your approach since you're already affected you know now it's now it's gonna hit even deeper maybe make everything worse perhaps yeah so

this is by this is a nine-year-old story by a user named Levinsky who it seems they were pretty active in these online communities like no sleep and stuff like that but this is the only story at least that I see from this account they posted to no sleep and then they also posted to R slash creepy which I'm not sure if that's a story or not it's an off-site link and then a lot of like creepy art and things like that. So they're into the creepy, but this seems to be their one no sleep story. So,

but it has 2.7,000 upvotes. So to have one, one story that does that well, it's pretty impressive. So we're going to see how it goes. I feel like my heart rates elevated right now. I'm just really scared. You're primed.

Oh, all right. So, Levinski will be, and the original story will be linked in the description. Be sure to show them some love. And if it's good,

Levinsky. hopefully you decide to write again. I'm already so scared. All right, Hunter, are you ready? Let's do it. Okay. Little Lucy Lockett ran from her daddy's frying pan. The force of a thousand legs killed her and then laid their eggs.

God damn, I don't know if that's a fun poem with the beginning, huh? To the point, I appreciate that. That's a jump rope rhyme. My classmates used to sing on the playground in elementary school. It's really screwed up that they sing that because Lucy, Lockhart was a real person we attended school with. She vanished when we were in second grade, so we must have been around seven years old. The rhyme was loosely based in truth, and that the official story was that Lucy Lockhart did in fact vanish into the Lockhart wood 50 yards from her father, Robert's house.

But he wasn't chasing after her brandishing a frying pan to beat her with. I was too young at the time to understand what was happening, and it wasn't until much later that my mom actually explained it to me. It wasn't a particularly shocking story, just sad. I remember the day Lucy went missing. At least the first day she didn't come to school. It was Monday. She went missing the Friday before. My mother told me it was a few days before Lucy's seventh birthday

and that Lucy had asked her father if she could have a birthday party at the house. I remembered that. Lucy and I had been in the same group of friends and I remembered her telling us that she was going to ask her dad about having a birthday sleepover. I especially remember being annoyed that she wanted it to be a sleepover because I was the only boy in the group and was never allowed to sleep over with them. I was still excited at the prospect of a party, though, as we all were, because we knew her father, Robert Lockhart Jr. was a retired entomologist, or we just call them the bug man, and had lots of pretty preserved specimens like butterflies and beetles and cases that Lucy would sometimes bring in for show and tell. Anyway, according to my mother, Lucy asked her father if she could have a sleepover for her birthday,

and he said no because she was going to spend her birthday at her mother's house while their house was being fumigated. It was a normal enough reason for a six-year-old to cry and storm out of the house, but running into the Lockhart Wood was a bad idea for any person of any age without the proper equipment. Here's the thing about the Lockhart Wood. Some people call it the forest of a thousand legs, presumably to make it sound creepier than it already is. It doesn't need help. There are roughly 4,000 species of spider in America,

and the Lockhart Wood is a phenomenon on its own in that it's home to all of them. Not only that, but there are documented populations of some spiders previously thought endemic only to certain countries, such as the Goliath Bird Eater, a couple of funnel web spiders, and some species of peacock spiders. There's that myth that says you're never

more than three feet from a spider at any given moment. In this forest, it's not a myth. It's filled to the brim with spiders. I think at this point, it goes without saying that if you're arachnophobic, the story is not for you. What is a peacock spider? I'm going to type this in and I'm going to immediately regret it. Because I know what the other two are.

Oh, I've seen these guys. They're cute. That's not scary. The Goliath bird eater, though, is fucking insane. Yeah. Have you seen pictures of people hold? holding those things. Yeah.

They're like your entire chest. They're massive. And then the funnel webs are like super venomous. They're the most venomous spider in Australia, at least. I think the world, unless the Brazilian wonder is considered more venomous now. Yeah, peacocks are fine. Peacock spiders are cute. Jumping spiders are cute and velvet spiders are cute.

They don't bother me. I would have a pet one of those, I think. But yeah, the, like I said, as long as the story doesn't mention any orb weavers, we're good, we'll be fine. I'll get through it. I'll be okay. Because I'm stronger than my fear. My fear does not control me. I control it. Forest is naturally of great interest to biologist and arachnologist, but Lockhart Wood is private property and restricted guided access to the forest was hard to come by even before Lucy Lockhart's

disappearance. Afterwards, nobody could go in. Obviously anyone could get into the forest if they wanted to, it's not fenced off or anything, but there's a steep fine if you're caught trespassing, and nobody's exactly clamoring to delve into a forest full of venomous spiders anyway. You need the right kind of boots, clothes, gloves, first aid kits, and knowledge of the forest to step past the tree line. The most common spiders at the edge of the forest are jumping spiders, various wandering spiders, and orb weavers.

Most people who emerge from the forest have a number of banana... I'm so freaked out from the previous story that just descriptions of these are bothering me now. And I hate it so much. I'm so freaked out right now. We have banana spiders all the time around here. They're also like a kind of, or we have to check the ceiling stuff. Most people emerge from the forest have a number of banana spiders cling into their hair and jackets, startled by the destruction of their webs. If visitors are allowed deeper into the forest, the spiders get bigger, and they lurk on the ground. According to my mother, Robert Lockhart Jr. lived with his father in that house for a long time.

They were a father-son duo of entomologists from Alabama, but Robert Lockhart Sr. had a focus on arachnology. He had bought the house and the forest specifically for its spider population, which also made it super affordable, and he usually worked from home. Robert Lockhart Jr. did a lot of work at a university three towns over. He married a professor there who taught evolutionary biology, and the three of them lived in the elder Robert Lockhart's house until Robert's senior's sudden passing during a study on tarantula hawks. Lucy Lockhart was born a year later, and Robert Jr. was able to retire from teaching and live as a stay-at-home dad

while Lucy's mother continued teaching at the university. He still worked collecting and preserving specimens, mostly butterflies and moths, and had reports published in the entomology scene, and very, very rarely, led guided tours around parts of Lockhart Wood for a price. My mother only got to know Robert Jr. once Lucy and I became friends. She said he didn't talk about the forest very much. She got the feeling that he was afraid of it. When he and his wife divorced, my mom suspected part of their irreconcilable differences was Lockhart Wood.

She never really pried into it after all. She and Robert Jr. only spent time together because Lucy and I spent time together, although I remember hoping they would get married so that Lucy and I could be brother and sister. Robert Jr. hated the forest he owned and made sure that anybody who stepped foot in it was dressed and prepared for the occasion, which is part of the reason why my mother never believed he killed Lucy when he was the prime suspect in the investigation. When Lucy ran off into Lockhart Wood that evening, my mom said, Robert Jr. gave Chase without hesitation, socks, sweatpants, and a t-shirt.

He must have received a dozen bites of varying severity the second he went in. He was in there for four hours. My mom was working a night shift at the hospital when he was brought in, delirious and swollen over. There's no telling how many bites he'd received, and to this day, my mother doesn't know how he survived. He needed antivenom that no hospitals in the United States could offer. And when he had dragged himself back home after desperately searching, for Lucy in that forest, he could only self-administer so much. Maybe luck in a developed resistance was what saved him.

Lost both legs below the knee, but he lived. From what my mom could gather in the weeks following Lucy's disappearance, the investigation was chaotic. Search teams entered the forest, but they never spanned at all. Two officers in the initial search team were bitten by what was most likely a Sydney Funnelweb spider, and unfortunately both died. after all, the Sydney Funnel Web Spider is otherwise found only in Australia. Don't have that antivenom at the ready here in the States.

Anyway, the search of the forest lasted maybe a week before branching off elsewhere. My mom says they couldn't, maybe wouldn't, search the whole forest. More than one officer who searched Lockhart Wood left the forest and subsequently skipped town. Those who didn't leave might as well have. They don't get out much anymore. My mom doesn't want to know what they saw in there. Lucy never turned up. It didn't take long for suspicion to fall on her father before he was even discharged from the hospital.

My mom says there was a point where he was handcuffed to his hospital bed, even though both of his legs had been amputated. For a while, she couldn't tell if he was totally lucid because he would spend hours sobbing. That forest got her. Those spiders got my baby girl. There's no evidence to convict him of kidnapping or murder. My mom and the parents of Lucy's other friends and mine were involved in the trial as witnesses, and they all insisted that they never had any reason to believe Robert Jr. was abusive towards Lucy

or that he would be driven hurt her. I didn't know any of this at the time, as my mom responsibly sheltered me from the details of Lucy's disappearance, but obviously some other kids we went to school with got wind of some information, hence the morbid jumpro prime. It upsets me a lot when I hear kids chaining it during recess. I was young and I missed Lucy very much. It's been 11 years since Lucy went missing. It doesn't really upset me anymore. It's just a sad mystery that I still think about sometimes.

A group of friends that Lucy and I shared stayed close until middle school and then we all branched out a bit. I don't think any of us ever forgot about Lucy. I recently graduated high school and the original group of us got together at a diner to discuss an amazement how we were all finally done with high school forever. At one point I nudged my omelette around my plate and said absently, It's been years, but I still wish, man, I wish Lucy could have graduated with us, you know? My friend Stella leaned her shoulder into mine and knocked our mortar boards together with an understanding smile. Same here, bud, but she'd be proud of us for doing it. Conversation drifted elsewhere, but the poignant thought of Lucy stuck with me for a long while after that evening.

It wasn't until the day before I went off from my freshman year at college that I told my mom I wanted to stop by the Lockhart House and sort of say goodbye to Lucy if Robert Jr. would let me. Well, she shrugged over breakfast. I guess he couldn't hurt. You don't ever get over losing a child, but all things considered it, he seems to be okay. He might oblige you. So later that afternoon, I drove across town towards that dark, looming force that stretched into the sky on the horizon. I hadn't been to the Lockhart house in over a decade, but the sight of it instantly made me happy. I no longer mourned Lucy. I only cherished the brief time we knew each other as children, and I had lots of fond memories in that house.

As I pulled into the gravel driveway, I saw the curtains in one of the front windows shift, so I knew someone was home. You might not want to let me in, but there was no harm in trying. I went up to the front porch steps and found a wooden hanging of a Luna moth adorning the front door. It had no sign of grime or weathering, and the pale green. green paint still had its glossy finish, so I guessed it was fairly new. I didn't know what I expected from Robert Jr. Maybe that he was too far gone after the loss of Lucy, that he wouldn't bother decorating anything, but it had been more than 10 years, and recovery is possible.

I knocked and he answered a few moments later, browning curiously is at me from the gap in the door. Hey, Mr. Lockhart, uh, I floundered a little stupidly because I hadn't planned on how I was going to talk to him. I'm Aaron. You know my mom Jane at the hospital? You know what's funny? Do you see how they have Lippinski like that in brackets? Yeah.

That's because on no sleep, you cannot give the full name of a fictional character. So originally, this was posted with like a fake full name, but you can't do that. So they just inserted their username for the last name. That's hilarious. That's docks.

Oh, you can't, that's docks. you can't dox this person in the giant spider story. You can't tell me what a fake character's name is. Deleted. Deleted. I don't care about the quality of writing or art or anything like that. Why is this? Their name is Butch Cassidy?

God, deleted. Yeah. The door eased open a bit more. His face relaxing with recognition. Jane's boy, yes. You're one of Lucy's little friends, weren't you? come in wipe your feet i'm surprised you remember we were friends i admit it stepping inside and wiping my feet on the floor mat looked like a monarch butterfly i remember all you kids robert junior said with a wave

of his hand leading me inside his prosthetics clicked on the linoleum it was lucy you stella there was two little girls named manna wasn't there you're the one that cried a lot because you never got to stay for sleepovers yes sir that was me you gay son You gay, boy? From the top rope. Hey, you gay? Immediately. I then realized that junior was actually Mr. Widevouth.

Yeah, can jump out the word of going to kill yourself. Don't be gay. Well, Mr. Wide Mouth, you're way creepier than the spiders. Thank you. You're gay. I like the idea that, like, Mr. Widevouse is like, He's no longer homophobic. He simply just informs people that they are homosexual.

Yeah. I don't know if he realizes, but you are gay. I just wanted to let you know. Really? Not even bisexual? Nope. 100% gay. That's excellent Spanish, Mr. Whitebouth.

See. He's like six foot tall where he's like a bath robe. Like holy coffee. It was a startingly straightforward question. tossed over his shoulder as I followed him into the house. There wasn't anything accusatory in his tone, though. So I said yes. He grunted.

I knew you'd be fine to sleep over with the girls. Could have spared you a lot of whining and crying. Oh, so he was right. He was immediately right for the gay thing. It's funny. He took me past numerous framed bug specimens as we made our way to his living room. It was a big room, cluttered with bookshelves and work benches with papers strewn about.

Dozens of terrariums of various sizes dotted the room and lined the wall like trophy cabinets. The only gap where the din opened into a kitchen. A bright desk lamp illuminated the whole room and the light bounced off a magnifying visor headset and a laptop screen. It looked like he had been dissecting a large beetle before I knocked on the door. It was good to see that his passion for bugs had been destroyed after losing his daughter to the Lockhart Wood. So what brings you here, Schooner? Yes, going into the kitchen to retrieve something from the fridge. Well, we graduated in May and I'm leaving for school tomorrow.

And I just kind of... I mean, I still think about Lucy a lot, so... So I was wondering if you had kept any of her things over the years that I could see and sort of, you know, remember her by? If you're okay with that, sir. Robert Jr. came back over to me with the shrug and two beers. He said, Ain't much a little girl has to her name but a hello kitty bed sheet and beady babies. Oh man, beanie babies

I couldn't help but grant at the memory That was always my go-to gift I gave her a bunch of mine Well, you want them back or something Off my startled look of chagrin He chuckled and handed me the second beer I'm messing with you boy Her rooms this way

He led me down a long familiar hallway Down which Lucy and our friends and I had sprinted recklessly over a decade ago I recognized a few framed insect specimens That we had knocked from the walls At our roughhouse and fits We went into Lucy's bedroom at the end of the hall, and it was virtually unchanged from how I remembered it. The walls were still pale pink and decorated with pastel-colored cross-stitch artwork made by Lucy's late grandmother.

The canopy bed was neatly made. The hello kitty bedding crisp and unfated from years of disuse. The shelves upon shelves of stuffed animals with an army of beanie babies gifted by me, populating their own full shelf, and surprisingly, a long terrarium against the wall with an enormous black, spiders sitting motionless underneath a black light. Before we get into the spider detail, there's something so heartbreaking in all these stories about like, and it's true in real life too, when a parent loses a kid and the room is left

exactly the same way, you know? And it's understandable as to why, but there's such a misery to like the waiting for someone who never comes, you know? Yeah, no, it's Yeah, it's a completely frozen time capsule That's just there so you can't I think it's a big part too Basically so you don't lose the memory of them

Or like who they were, you know There's something so heartbreaking about a parent tending to an empty room You know? 100% I recognize that spider No way, that's not Robert Jr. flipped on the lights Which turned off the terrarium's black light

The massive spider retreated into a hide With the twitch of its long slender legs He grunted That's her What's he mean about that's her? What are you? He said it because I think that's the That's the

The I thought that was the spider or whatever What? I mean it is a spider What do you mean you think it's the spider? Lady Legs was a type of huntsman that Robert Lockhart Sr. had discovered in the Lockhart

Wood and kept for 10 years before Lucy was born There were plenty of live specimens in the Lockhart house over the years but Lady Legs was the only one that Lucy seemed to cherish as a pet. Robert Jr. had said in the past that some tarantulas can live to be 25 years old, but Lady Legs wasn't a tarantula. And if this was the same lady legs from that time, this would make her over 30 years old.

Do Huntsman spiders live that long? I asked incredulously, moving to the terrarium with a fascination I had felt in years. Robert Jr. stood in the doorway with his arms crossed and an expression of distaste, creasing his features as he looked at Lady. Nothing that we know of besides that one. She's even bigger than I remember. I murmured. My breath fogging up to glasses.

I tried to peer into the spiders hide at an angle, but I couldn't see her. As far as I can tell, her size depends on her enclosure. She won't get no bigger as long as she's in that tank. So do you think that there's like a single giant one of these spiders in the woods? And that's what people are freaked out by. Yeah. A hundred percent. Also, it had to be a huntsman spiders before.

I, uh, when I was Googling. some of the things earlier. I saw one. It's crazy. Yeah, they're terrifying. They are super fast too. And they,

uh, they run at people a lot. They'll, like chase you outside. Don't like that. They're awful. I was talking to a, a buddy of mine in Australia and he was telling me about he was in his car one

time and he flipped down the visor and one of those that was like bigger than his hand just landed on him. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Dube. And those people are just okay with it.

They're like, yeah, you know what happens? It's like, what? freak. What kind of animal are you? The Golden Orb Weber, the thing that freaks me out, I was talking to him too. He's like, oh yeah, they're all over my parents' place. My parents have a garden and there's like hundreds of them.

It's like, dude, I would drown. I would drown myself before I dealt with what you go through every day. That is absurd. Okay, you know, earlier at the beginning of this video, I said I'm a little arachnophobic. Maybe I'm just rectophobic. I think you might just have a rackophobia, yeah. Yeah, I think I'm just. just freaked out. I think I'm a scared boy. I saw Lady Legs move in the hide, then turn my head

to look out Lucy's bedroom window. It faced the deep gray, green mass of Lockhart Wood. I stood, absently tracing my fingers through the condensation on the bottle in my hand. Lady came from the forest, didn't she? How big do they get in there? Robert Jr. didn't respond. I looked over at him. He was down in nearly his entire beer. He finished it with an angry sounding hiss and said, finally. Ungodly big. Anyway, take your time in here.

Do what you want. Look at what you want. I'll be down the hole. Okay, thanks. As he started to leave, I remembered the drink in my hand and held it out to him awkwardly. Oh, hey, I'm not 21.

Ain't nobody gonna snitch on you. He left the room and I hissed open the beer. I don't know how long I spent in there, wandering around fondly, maybe an hour. took a spider beanie baby off the shelf and held it as I looked around I stood over the dresser looking at the frame pictures on top of it most were of Lucy and her parents a few of Lucy from toddlerhood to age seven

holding the gargantuan lady legs and her comparatively tiny hands I was in a couple of pictures too group pictures of us and our other friends of birthday parties our messy little faces smeared with cake I found an old elementary school binder from the first grade class Lucy and I had together, where the first activity of every day was to make an entry in our journals following a single prompt given by the teacher and then draw a picture to go with it. Naturally, lots of Lucy's entries were about Hello Kitty, playdates with me and our friends, and bugs. Some of them made me laugh, like her outrageously mangled spelling of the word centaur, and several entries about

herself and Lady Legs as Spider Lady Centaurs. After a while, I just stood at Lucy's window, looking out at Lockhart Wood as I finished my beer. I'm a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, so I was pretty buzzed. The forest of a thousand legs never looked so eerie. The angle of the late afternoon sun didn't penetrate the darkened woods, but it glistened on countless spiderwebs suspended along the tree line, emphasizing how dark the forest was beyond that. It was strangely inviting in a predatory way,

like the lure of an angler fish. Now it had swallowed Lucy up. movement outside the window caught my eye. I looked over and saw Robert Jr. standing under the carport facing the forest, downing another beer, a backpack hanging from his shoulder. He was dressed in different clothes than the flannel shirt and cutoffs he had been wearing when he left me inside. He was wearing a heavy jacket and a hat with a different set of prosthetics that had shoes. He looked like he was dressed for going into the forest.

I left Lucy's room, crossed to the other end of the house, and threw the screen door off the kitchen. Robert Jr. didn't respond to the wooden rattle of the door banging shut. You're going in? It wasn't a question. I was incredulous. I ain't been any there since I lost Lucy. I think it's about time before I go back one last time before I torch it. The son was hidden behind Lockhart Wood, but not quite set.

Casting the house in us in shadows. Before I could stop myself, I asked. Can I go with you? I like this setup because it establishes so much like his expertise, the father's longing with it, but also that he very, very rarely ever took anyone. So it's like this, and he hasn't been in it since Lucy died. So it's this very forlorn moment. It's a very special moment, but it's also terrifying.

So it's like kind of covertly everything we've learned about him throughout the story has been building up to this moment of him letting someone go into the woods with him. Right. To this day, I'm not sure why I wanted to go with him. Maybe for a sense of adventure, of danger that 18, year olds are attracted to and think they can survive anything. Maybe I had some stupid notion that we'd find Lucy in their dead or alive. Maybe I just didn't want a guy who had lost his daughter the last time he was in those woods to go in for the first time since then alone.

It's dangerous in there. Said Robert. It wasn't a no. I'd be with you. I said, dumb and optimistic, but in my defense, you let me go with him. Neither of us mentioned it, but I know he didn't want to go in those woods alone either. You don't need to be dressed right. It was all he said. And the next thing I knew, he was jamming a hat on my head, layering me in protective clothing a size too big, and cramming my hands and feet into gloves and boots a size too small.

Not a perfect fit, but close enough. He said, tucking my baggy pants legs into my boots, I had zipped the jacket most of the way, but he yanked the zipper all the way up to my chin. It was my gear back when I was a little older than you. My daddy bought this place. He strapped a headlamp to my hat, did the same for himself, and shrugged on a backpack that he had filled with a first aid kit and a cold pack for antivenom. I watched him put it all together, fascinated as I nursed another beer.

It was hard to believe he had ventured into the forest in more than ten years. The speed and certainty with which he prepared everything was like that of someone who explored Lockhartwood daily. He gave me a set of strict, reasonable rules basically telling me not to leave his side and not to thrapheard. around if I walked into a web, and to always watch my step even when I was wearing boots. And to watch my step even though I was wearing boots. I could change my mind at any time in the forest, so if I wanted to leave, he would guide me out of the forest. I sent a quick lie of a text to my mom telling her that Robert Jr. had invited me to stay for dinner, and then zip my phone into a breast pocket.

By now, twilight was fading. The purple sky soon to turn an inky blue, and we set off. The trail leading into the forest was rough and overgrown from years of seeing no foot traffic, but not completely hidden. The first thing I did when I entered the forest was walk right into a web that Robert Jr. had subtly avoided. I started to flail instinctively, but Robert Jr. caught me with an arm across my chest, saying, Don't thrash I soon.

After he assured me the web didn't belong to anything venomous, I carefully picked the web from my face and hair, following him deeper into the wood. It was darker than I anticipated beneath the tree. There were a few spots of visible death in the trees, suffocated and deprived of sunlight under thick layers of web wrapped around them. But most of the forest looked healthy, supporting the spider population symbiotically. Robert Jr. and I switched on our headlamps pretty quickly when the scant moonlight didn't light our way sufficiently. I looked down to the ground, casting a wide circle of light at my feet, and immediately froze in place. My skin crawling horribly.

spiders, the size of half dollars, were scurrying away from my boots and troves, not quite a swarm, but enough to be uncountable. You're right, son. Those ones ain't going to hurt you. Robert Jr. hadn't looked back at me, but he must have heard me freeze behind him. You want me to take you back? Pride swelled higher than the fear in my chest, so I said, No, I'm fine. One of the spiders crawled slowly over my boot, so long legs probing curiously at my laces. I wrenched my eyes away from the ground. shook the spider off violently and pushed forward.

I've never been particularly arachnophobic, but it was impossible not to feel itchy all over, imagining hundreds upon hundreds of unseen eyes creeping into my protective clothing, slipping down the collar of my shirt, and edging along my scalp and my hair. I just, I got so cold with the description of the shirt collar. The tiny spiders became less of a presence, however.

When we came to a fork in the trail, and Robert Jr. dropped to a sudden crouch, grabbing my sleeve and yanking me down with him. Look at this. The whispered his headlamp fixed on a spider not two feet away from us. This here's a nasty one. A spider the size of my hand stood strangely before us with two sets of thick, hairy legs thrown in the air. Oh, it's a Brazilian wandering spider. They do that. It might have looked silly, if not for the vivid, violently red jaws on display, pulsing angrily in our direction.

Worse still, the spider continued to move. swaying gently with its rosy, colicero throbbing almost obscenely, inching infinitesimally closer with its side-to-side motions. Wide-eyed, I whispered back. What is it? Infuriated at the sound of my voice, the spider lunge closer. This time I can see its fangs protruding from the red, quivering with rage and clinting with wetness. Brazilian wandering spider. Be fair it looks like, but it can be hard to say without a closer look.

We'll live in South America except for this place, you know? He unzipped two pockets and withdrew a large pair of gloves to slip over the ones he was already wearing. That might be the deadliest in the world. Instinctively, I shrank back, but then took hold of Robert Jr.'s jacket sleeve with popping eyes when I saw him reach towards a spider. Don't! Spider struck at his two fingers with lightning speed and a force that made a sharp snapping sound pierced the dark woods around us. In the blink of an eye, it struck twice, a red-brown blur. horrified. I tucked frantically at Robert Jr.'s

"'Relax!' he said, pulling his hand back and showing me his intact glove. "'Hoss can't quite bite through these.' The spider darted out of our joined headlamp beams and off the trail into the woods. Robert Jr. removed his bulky second pair of gloves and stowed them away. I can't do much delicate handling with gloves like that, but anything else in those things will go right through. Um, have it, so Brazilian wondering spiders, they do this thing where they throw their front legs up and they like whip them. towards you. It's like a defensive posture. I remember

seeing a video of a dude camping and one of them did that and like chased him into his tent. I hate him. I hate him so much. I just looked up a picture of it. It's fucking crazy. Yeah, there's huge too. And super venomous.

They actually, there's if you ever heard old like legends of spiders getting shipped to the United States and bananas and like biting people, that's the ones who the stories are about because they hide in banana clusters. He stood suddenly, leaving me crouched and trembling, clenching and unclinchinging my fist.

I'm pleasantly aware of how thin my gloves were now. I stood slowly. My headlamp slid up the trees in front of me, where the bark seemed to shiver and shift with the traffic of smaller spiders oozing up and down the trunks. I turned my head to see where Robert Jr. was looking, and my light fell on his back several meters away as he moved down the left path in the fork.

Wait! I squeaked, rushing after him. I stumbled over tree roots and ran haltingly, skidding awkwardly to step around more than one fat, lumbering tarantula as I made my way back to Robert Jr.'s elbow. Our headlamps bobbed in the darkness, and my gaze was drawn farther up where the lamps beams lit up fast labyrinthian webs high overhead, where nothing on the ground could destroy them. Blinting white cold in our light, they shuddered in an imperceptible breeze.

This is going to be the golden orb weavers and I hate it. I hate it so much. Okay, go ahead. Those webs are way better high up there. I said with a breathless chuckled, trying to shake off the anxiety from the Brazilian wandering spider. We won't walk into Indy down here. Robert Jr. walked briskly, barely acknowledging me with a grunt.

While I looked all around me, casting my headlamps, lights to and fro, Robert Jr. hardly moved his head, focusing steadily on the twisting path down which he led us. Occasionally he would stop so abruptly that I would collide with his back and he would gaze up into the ever-thinking tree tops at the spiderwebs overhead, which were now so large and thick that massive sections of leaves had suffocated and died. I can see clusters of spiders creeping every which way in the stuff, while more obscure movements shifted on the other side of the web, so thick that I couldn't see what it was.

My depth perception was off in this environment. What? I'm getting lightheaded thinking about maybe I have to take a breath God. I'm willing to admit I have a problem my depth perception was off in this environment what with the distance between myself

and the webs and the number of different sizes of spiders I could see everything looked bigger up there from where I was standing communal webs said Robert Jr. pointing at the massive net of silk no spiders live alone but some are social a bunch of different spiders taking care of the same babies sharing the same food they must catch a lot of prey

I said move my head limp over the vast web it's huge would be surprised that they make a regular meal of birds squirrels too maybe if any wander in this far I looked at him bathing his stubble shadowed face and yellow light and said slowly that's that's kind of big for a spider isn't it pee blondie in south america has been known to eat birds it's the biggest spider in the world at least outside of its god-forsaken forest this place ain't like the rest of the world he paused muscle jumping in his jaw and said

but they don't make webs they live in burrows so watch your step I remember seeing a video one time because in some parts of the world they'll harvest spiders like this to use the silk for stuff and there was a

I remember a video I saw one time of these guys in Southeast Asia who harvest these spiders for a living. And they have these long poles. And they would reach the poles up into the trees and get a bunch of them on the stick. And then they would pull the stick down and dump them all into a bag. And for the camera, he opened the bag.

Dude, it's, it is, it is like a Walmart bag full to the brim of these giant spiders crawling over each other. I don't care for that I think about that video saw the way their legs were tangled on each other and they were all writhing and moving and yeah their bodies are so fat and their legs are so skinny it's so oh

okay I resisted the urge to clamp onto his arm like a child as I sweat my head lamp over the edges of our path spiders littered the forest floor scurrying busily but the irregularly spaced holes along the path nestled between tree roots what made me nervous now. The biggest holes look like it could swallow my leg. We continued to walk, uninterrupted by webs for the most part, but there were

a few low-built ones that I would walk into when I was staring off into the woods and Robert Jr. wouldn't tell me to duck. I nerved as I was, I was starting to get used to the sensation, hardly jerking back when the sticky feather-light string snuck up on me. My pulse would still spike when it happened, though, pounding loudly in my ears as I carefully brushed the webs from my face, but then Robert Jr. took us down a second fork in the path, and I distractedly collided with two webs of surprising density in a row. I finally focused on Robert Jr. ahead of me to complain about not warning me, and a tangle of silk lit up in my headlamp centimeters away just in time for my face to crash through it. Even though it was my fault for not watching

where I was going, I said testily, Come on, Mr. Lockhart, at least give me a heads up. So I dragged my left hands down my face, raking the web from my skin. Robert Jr. said nothing. I looked up over his shoulder in front of me and saw why. The trail ahead was entirely choked in web. A glistening haze like morning fog stretching farther ahead. Shapes twitched within it,

different from the shifting masses of hundreds of smaller spiders in the first communal webs we saw. These were heavy and singular, with sharp angles plugging at individual lines of silk. I couldn't quite make sense of what I was seeing. Something crunched under my boot. I looked down at the wispy, stringy gray floor, brittle old bones of some animal I couldn't identify lay there. Among the bones lay the aged, empty remains of a huge tarantulas. Skeleton and exoskeleton locked together in death that they fought, died.

tangled with one another. Jesus. I said loudly, just as Robert Jr. breathed softly. Jesus. He wasn't looking... He was... He was... I feel sick.

I feel like I'm gonna gag. He wasn't looking down. He was looking directly up. I looked up too and froze. Our headlach... I'm down. Our headlamps joined and lit up the webs that swallowed the understores.

washing over the enormous spiders that moved within them. Things the size of fish bowls with fat, round abdomens. And I feel sick right now. I'm like, uh, next week we're reading about snakes. We got to balance this out somewhere. It's only fair at this point.

Clusters of eyes reflected light back at us in the movement of their heavy bodies made meaty, organic clicking noises. These things weren't what Robert Jr. had commented on. The creature slowly descending from its web by a thread was. At first, I thought it was a spider with a squirrel or a rat or something in its jaws, but a small logical corner of my mind reminded me that that's not how spiders eat, not even tarantulas who don't wrap their prey in silk.

The rodent appeared bisected. as I couldn't see its back legs, with ugly gray skin visible around its midsection like it had mange. Its back half was impossibly, the swollen bulb of a spider. It looked like some gruesome mockery of a centaur, the limp torso of some parasitic rodent bursting forth from an unwitting host. There was no way that thing could be real, or if it was, it couldn't be alive. But the things spinnerets kept pumping a hearty silk line, two spindly back legs touching at delicate tips as it worked its way down, and the rodent's head twitched, its furry front

legs extending, paws grasping. I saw its face, a squirrel with too many beady black eyes extending up the front of its head, blinking gumly down at us. I could see its long yellow teeth, its mouth lulled open. I was distantly aware of my body moving weakly, grasping Robert Jr.'s jacket sleeve and yanking on it. Movement in the corner of my eyes somehow managed to pull my attention from the abomination above us. My eyes were drawn down to the edge of the trail on which we stood, and for a moment I thought the ground had dipped down an embankment and we were simply elevated on the path.

But I soon saw that it was a massive hole in the ground, a burrow. I continued to tug mechanically on Robert Jr.'s arm. What the fuck? A face peered out from the burrow, ghostly pale against the darkness within, and seemed to drift up and out closer to us. It was a human face, too many eyes clustered across the bridge of its nose, glittering black and blinking slowly. It ducked its head, long dark hair hanging from its length tangles,

as a woman's bare, moon-white torso emerged slowly from the hole in the ground. A hulking, hairy mass of a spider's abdomen the size of a Volkswagen beetle followed, connected at her waist. Her eight branch-thick legs crunched in the leaf litter, audibly thumping with the weight. Robert Jr. and I staggered backwards, upsetting more spiderwebs in the underbush. The creature's legs were striped with white at their joints, and I thought of Lady Legs back at Robert Jr.'s house and what he said about her species, size in the wild, ungodly big. Proper Junior's thoughts were also back in his daughter's room because as his hand gripped my arm in return, I heard him say, Lucy.

I knew as soon as it mentioned the, like the squirrel, that like things that die in here become spider hybrids, that it was going to be his daughter. But that is so messed up. Imagine losing your kid and you find them as like a spider thing out here. My eyes flew back to the creature's face. It's a natural addition of eyes surrounding the originals, and as it tilted its head, I recognized her too. Her mouth dropped open, lower lip dripping with something too viscous to be saliva, and her rail thin arms spasmed once before lifting up, sending a painful jolt of electric fear at my spine.

Her white, long-fingered hands took hold of the squirrel spider dangling between the two of us and herself. The thing squeaked and convulsed. its legs thrashing horribly and Lucy brought it to her mouth. I ran. I thrashed my way blindly through web after web, back the way we came. I heard Robert Jr. call my name, unexpectedly close behind me and suddenly felt him crash into my back. I hit the ground hard, face first. I barely had time to register the bright starburst of pain as my nose broke and began to bleed, or the scattering of spiders, millimeters in front of my eyes before Robert Jr. yanked my bodily back upright and and whirled me around.

I thought he was slapping me, but realized he was swiping away spiders that I picked up his passengers from the ground. Don't you run off in here, boy. Robert Jr. hissed to my face, shaking me hard. Something else will kill you before. The enormous creature loomed behind him, creeping down the trail after us.

I started to yell, but Robert Jr. clapped his hand over my mouth, spinning to face her. He forced us into a sort of half-crow. His body weighing me down to keep me from running again, and I stared with bulging eyes. struggling to breathe throughout my bleeding nose as Lucy bore down upon us. It's okay.

Robert Jr. said, but he wasn't talking to me. I could feel him shaking against my back. It's okay, Lucy, you're okay. She came closer, the precise movements of her vast spider body and stark contrast against the limp, feeble movements of her human torso. Her face seemed alert, even with the six bleary eyes that looked infected in their unnatural. but her arms hung listlessly at her sides, her posture hunched.

Venom, bloods, saliva flowed slow down her chin. All that remained with the squirrel spider, I could hear her breathing, see her pale throat throb as she swallowed. That's a girl, girl, baby, said Robert Jr. His voice low and soothing, despite his violent trembling. I didn't know you lived here, Lucy. We didn't know we'd see you here. didn't know we'd see you here.

You did such a good job here all by yourself, didn't you, baby? Daddy's proud of you. He was slowly inching us back as he spoke nonsense to the thing in front of us. The spider shifted minutely, almost moving after us, but not quite. Lucy's stark, wet mouth, trooped open. In a voice that sounded like wind in the leaves, she hissed. Oh, man. Oh, that's so terrible.

Oh, the idea of your poor daughter being stuck in this state for years. Oh, Robert Jr. laughed, wild and terrified in my ear, pulling me another step back, the palm of his hand still crushing my lips against my chattering teeth. That's right, baby. Daddy's here. Daddy didn't think he'd see you all grown up in the woods, huh, baby? Good girl, Lucy. She didn't move after us as we backed away, although her eyes followed us with laser focus. again, her voice hoarse and vacant. Lucy.

That's right. Daddy's going to take your friend back home, okay? You remember Aaron. I groaned behind his hand, sick with fear, as all eight of Lucy's eyes shifted on to me. She didn't say my name. Wildly in the back of my head, I wondered if she recognized any of the things Robert Jr. was saying to her,

certain that she was all spider like this, that the two words she'd said were empty repetition. preceding her final attack. But still, she stood motionless, watching our retreat. That is going to take Aaron home. Is that okay, baby? Will you let me do that, Lucy? She was silent for a long moment then.

Good girl, Lucy. We're going away. Good girl. Another long stretch of silence as we move steadily away from her. She still didn't follow, merely watching us. Voice unprompted this time shook me to my core when it next cracked through the night. The noise Robert Jr. made was something of a strangled sob and a laugh. Yeah, baby. I'll come see you. I'll come see you again. Just let me take Aaron home. And Daddy will come see you again.

We were several meters away from her by now. I was sure we were nearing the bend and the fork in the trail we had taken. And slowly Robert Jr. lowered his hand from my mouth and I gulted deep, shaking breath. I can't get us out of here backwards. But I need you watching behind us. You hang on to me and I'll walk you out. You tell me if she follows, can you do that, son? Wadded and unable to look away from Lucy's figure down the trail I nodded. Yes, sir.

Okay. Careful now. His hand encircled my wrist tightly and with a firm tug, he took a firm tug. took us around the bend. I struggled to walk in reverse. My legs like rubber and my pulse roaring in my ears. Lucy didn't follow us once I lost side of her. Robert Jr. navigated us back through the forest, avoiding all webs this time around. I don't know how long it took to get out of the woods, for all I knew it took days, but eventually we broke through the tree line and the unobstructed moonlight was blinding. I felt separate from my own, I felt separate from my own body as I brushed

harmless jumping spiders and orb weavers from my hat and jacket. Distantly, I heard Robert, distantly, I heard Robert Jr. chuckling weakly. He turned around to look at Lockhart Wood, almost casually. I leaned over and threw up on the grass. A few yards away, Robert Jr. did just the same, coughing and laughing harder when he was done. Fuck!

He gaffed hands on his face. I watched him stagger and fall heaving onto his ass. giggling maniacly. Dazed. I went over to him and sat beside him on the grass, staring at the forest. I spat remnants of bile on the ground between my knees. I fumbled with my headlamp, turned it off, threw my hat aside. I peered at Robert Jr.'s tear-streaked, laughing face, vaguely concerned. I can't tell if that's good laughter or bad laughter. He gasped, possibly hyperventilating. You and me both. Fuck.

He pressed two fingers to his neck, checking his own pulse. What are you gonna do now? Shit, scuder, I don't know. Probably visit my daughter every now and then. Damn. Scrabbed his hands over his face, groaning deeply. My head swam. I flopped backwards staring at the night sky.

The stars looked like little white spiderlings. I thought suddenly of my mother back at the house, and for whatever reason, all I could think to say was... Hey, so, I was thinking you should give my mom a call some time. She's not seeing anyone. I don't remember getting home that night. I don't remember getting settled on campus the next day, but I think I'm going to change my major to biology.

I'd like to see Lucy again. And I think maybe a study in arachnology might be a good place to start. Man, what a wonderful way to end that. It's weird. It's horrifying, but at the same time, it's very sweet. You know, like it's like a very kind of like... No, I don't know. Hunter, I don't know how any of this is sweet to you.

It's a tragic... Yeah. That the daughter, like, I don't know, it didn't attack them. It remembered who it was. And then she said, come see me. She obviously has like sub ribdits or a memory there,

but it's, it's, I don't know, it's, it's like cathartic in a really weird way. It's horrifying because obviously the child has been, I mean, like transformed.

Now that being said, do you think that it had anything to do with the spiders in the woods? Or do you think she was just this creature that was born to like change with her like, with that. You think so? I think she was talking about the centaur before. She was talking about the centaur before.

because she had that spider that her father had discovered in the woods. I see. The spider said that, or the father said that the spider grows as big as the, you know, aquarium is. So in the woods, they get ungodly big.

So that's why Lucy had dreams of like the centaur spider and stuff because she was with lady legs. And then she's like, oh, we'll become spider centaurs, blah, blah, so maybe that's like an idea or something that was implanted by the spider or the forest.

How does that translate? How does that translate to it being a, morphed creature, half spider or half whatever. When she runs into the woods, the same thing that happened to the squirrel, it creates like biology hybrids. I see. Like it turns whatever DNA it finds into like spider creatures,

basically. A sad and heartwarming ending at the same time of like a girl being transformed into a creature. You see your kid out there as a giant spider thing with the venom mouth and stuff like that that is not heartwarming. Your daughter is. is now like gargometh the destroyer world it is a crazy crazy monster but there was a sense there was a sense of like a cathartic feeling i'm killing my dad and then killing my kid yeah i don't

know there's something there was something to it i don't think it's not it's not a happy ending i'm not saying that but i'm saying that it must be cathartic being like you get to talk to your kid again in whatever form uh it's kind of interesting also she's not just a brain dead like just monster she remembers you and has like a cognitive ability to speak even if it is like a fucking demon but i don't know that's if that was fun two great stories i'll be honest i was going into this being like spider stories can come off as kind of cheesy but i think both of these really really did both of these were great and they were they were scary in different ways like the first yeah totally different descriptions of like spiders in the home kind of thing and the second one was

like a monstrous spiders i mean obviously there was monstrous spiders in the first one but the second one like the focus of the horror was like how big these things can get the unknown woods and stuff like that. They were both very well written. I mean, obviously we know Christian Wallace is a great writer, but I'm sad that Levinsky or Levinsky, this is the only thing they posted to no sleep. If they're out there, please write more. That was fantastic. But both those stories were great.

Both of them were terrifying. I can't. This is like in the running for the most scared I've been. I didn't think I'd be scared by reading about spiders, but here we are. So listen to you, just like dry heave and be like, uh, was, uh, quite the trip for me. So I, I, it was definitely a story that has deeply hit you to your core. Yeah, it's, it's hit me somewhere. All right.

These are the kind of stories. So I'm glad I'm read them. They were terrifying. Never going to look at him again. Yeah, I'll never, never peek at them again. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, guys, that's our episode this week. Thank you for being a little spider with us and hanging off your web and, you know, hopefully another spider euphemism that I can think of. I do appreciate you guys listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the audio platforms. If you haven't done it, try checking it out next time. I swear it's a lot of fun. Be sure to give us a good rating there.

Also, thank you to our patrons who supported us today. We appreciate you. If you want some extra content, we are reading the chatting in the woods right after we're done with this recording. so if you want to get in on that little extra sauce, feel free. Otherwise, until next time, guys, we will see you in the next one. Stay creeped. We'll see you in the next one. I just want everyone to know one of the top comments on that last story is,

damn, is Lucy single? Which is not only insane, but she's also seven. So someone should probably call someone about that guy. Bye. Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more, no more. hit the road jack and don't you come back no more my wife's a spider hit the road jack hit the road jack and don't you come back no more no more no more no more no more no more hit the road jack and don't you come back no more no more no more hit the road jack and don't you come back no more no more no more hit the road jack and don't you come back no more no more no more no more hit the road jack and don't you come back no more no more no more no more hit the road jack and don't you come back no more no more no more hit the road jack and don't you come back no more no more no more hit the road jack and don't you come back no more Jack and don't you come back no more.

My wife's a spider. Hit the road jack. Hit the road jack. And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more, no more. Hit the road jack and don't you come back no more. My wife's a spider. Hit the road, Jack. Don't you come back no more?