Venom's Kiss

I remember the first night I felt it. The chilling feeling of the monsters creeping silently and unseen up your arms, your legs, your stomach. The venom is enough to kill a full grown man so easily, so often; to all but slaughter small animals. They come in the night while you sleep, ready to take your life the second you move a bit too quickly for their taste. I laid on my bed, staring at the ceiling — wide eyed and terrified — while a single black widow made its way up my right arm, looking for a vein to puncture with it's deadly fangs, dripping with venom. Slowly, I reached for something — anything — to kill the tiny killer.

    My hand hit my phone, which clattered to the wooden floor. The sound woke my cat up, and the widow stopped dead in it's tracks. Gremlin looked at the spider like the hunter she was. Her ears went flat as she prepared to pounce.

    "No!" I yelled, reaching for Gremlin.

    The cat pounced at just that moment, but missed the spider because I had moved. That didn't stop the spider. She pierced my fragile skin just before I smashed her with the book I had been reading before I had tried to sleep. I ground her body into the sheet, not caring about the stain it would leave. I sighed, thinking that I had avoided her deadly bite.

    If only I were so lucky.

    Just minutes after — with my heart still racing and my eyes unable to close — my stomach began to hurt terribly, and I was having difficulty breathing. The right side of my body began to shake violently and my vision blurred. Nausea overwhelmed me and I struggled to keep back vomit as I rolled onto the floor. I hit the ground hard. I curled into a ball, tears pouring from my eyes as I tried to ease the pain in my stomach. I couldn't breathe, and I was still shaking violently.

    I felt a tickle on my bare legs. Then another. Then hundreds. Unable to move more than an inch, I screamed, trying to shake them out of my hair and off my clothes. When I rolled over, I came eye levels with hundreds of little white spiders racing toward me, anger and revenge glowing in their dead eyes.

I didn't see what they did to me before I passed out from the shock.



I could hear them. They were screaming orders at each other, handling me like a rag doll as I was paralyzed in my own body. I had no control over them while they rushed me into the ambulance.

I screamed at them, but no one answered.

    No one could hear me in my near dead body as they slung me around. I could feel cold sweat running down my body, and the tremors begin again. My stomach convulsed as the nausea overwhelmed me once more, but I couldn't hold back the vomit this time. My throat clogged — my lungs felt like they had collapsed; like I was slowly drowning slowly. I was scared to tears when I felt my chest stop moving up and down, but tears didn't come. The paramedics shoved a tube down my throat and used a pump to breathe for me. When I started to shake violently, they held me down by my shoulders, my legs, my arms, and my head. Was I having a seizure?!

    Then the beeping on the monitor stopped.

    My heart had stopped beating.









Word Count: 600