Looking at my open door, I saw a giant spider taking up the entire doorway. The hellish spider was as black as death with blood-red eyes that tore my soul to shreds. I felt like claws were digging into my gut and pulling my insides out through a freshly carved hole in my stomach.
The size of the head wasn't much bigger than a bowling ball, but its body was at least as long as me and quite a bit wider. It stood about thigh high, with its legs at least twice the height of the body, and it had pincers around its mouth that were snapping open and closed as it looked me up and down.
The clicking that sounded from the pincers sent fearful chills down my spine; I tried to react before the spider could make a move toward me.
I stumbled backward and fell on my butt as I attempted to leap back. After a few pitiful, failed attempts, I gave up on rising with my shaky leg and began scooting away in a weird crab crawl. My arms and legs moved as fast as they could on the floor to create space between me and the spider.
I kept waiting for it to run at me. Waiting for the spider to jump on me and rip my face to pieces and engulf my body, but the spider never moved. It just locked its demonic gaze on my face, which was now a ghostly white, and continued clicking at me.
Once I had backed up against the wall and was as far as I could go, I held my breath and waited for it to make its move. I was going to sit and wait for the painful and disturbing end to come. I was so paralyzed with fear that I couldn't fight back if my life depended on it. Which it did. A soft growl began to emerge from the spider, and it started shaking violently in the doorway.
It took one slow step toward me and stopped. Its growling grew louder and angrier as it fought to take another step toward me. Its mind seemed to be fighting against any movement the body attempted. Its eyes grew to an even brighter red, and with a red flash and abrupt pop, they faded to black.
The spider's body slumped over with all movement and noise coming to an end.
"Aw, man," whined Dr. Kale as he stepped over the spider into my room with a controller in his grubby little hands.
My hand was resting on my chest and I relaxed my body against the wall. Well, as much as I was able to relax. I was not entirely in complete control of myself at the moment. There was also a decent chance my body had lost control of all functions, and I might have made a mess. That is all I will say on that matter.
I was trying, and failing, to calm my racing heart and gain control over my sporadic breathing.
"What. In the actual HELL...are you doing?" I wheezed at him, never taking my eyes off the slumped over spider.
"This is a robotic representation of what the spiders will look like once we bring them back," Dr. Kale said while beaming. "This one is a little smaller than the living version will be, but isn't it amazing?"
"Smaller? That thing is bigger than me! I should just pull your funding! Those things are evil! Grotesque! Horrid! Why the hell would anyone want those things alive?" I shouted and climbed to my feet, ignoring his outstretched hand to help me up. "If there's any creature that deserves to remain extinct, it's giant freaking spiders!"
"Arachnophobia is such a funny thing," Dr. Kale said, wiping a laughter-induced tear from his eye.
"Arachnoerotica is such a creepy-ass thing," I grumbled as I collected my phone and notepad.
"I think it's actually called arachnophilia. Unless you're writing a book about arachnophilia, in that case, it would be arachnoerotica… You ready to see the mammoth life machine?" the evil Dr. Kale asked.
"Yes, anything to get me away from any type of disgusting spider creature, alive or dead. Let's see this mammoth magic, Dr. Frankenstein," I said and scooted past the broken-down robot spider, kicking it once as I went by.
Dr. Kale flashed me a hurt look and scooped up the spider like an eight-legged baby. This eight-legged baby happened to be bigger than him. When he tried to balance the spider as he walked, he fell to the ground and got tangled in the fake spider legs.
A muffled voice came from one of the pockets of Dr. Kale's lab coat. His face scrunched in confusion.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Emergency walkie-talkie," he muttered and pulled a small, black receiver from his inside lab coat pocket after he had untangled himself and stood up.
"This is Dr. Kale. Please repeat."
Static ensued for a moment before a voice broke through. "--is gone. I repeat, one of the specimen eggs is gone."
"Are gone," Dr. Kale corrected the voice.
"Are gone?" The voice asked him.
"Are you sure it's 'are'? And not 'is'?" I asked.
"Yes. Maybe. I thought so, but now that you have questioned me, I'm scared to commit," Dr. Kale said and gave me a bashful glance.
"Wait, now I'm confused, I can't remember how this works," I said and scratched my head.
"The subject, 'one of the eggs' is plural so 'eggs' should be followed by 'are'…right? Crap, now I'm not sure," Dr. Kale said, and scratched his scrunched forehead in deep thought. "What's the rule?"
"How many doctorate degrees does it take to figure out a simple grammar question?" I mumbled under my breath.
"Everything I know is a lie," the voice said through the walkie-talkie.
"We can Google this later!" I said. "I feel like we should focus on the fact that there is an egg missing. That is a concern. Am I right?"
"Don't worry, you nervous Nelly," Dr. Kale said with a nonchalant wave of his hand.
"Nervous Nelly?" I asked.
"If something happened in that room, then Becca would have warned me. I'm sure they miscounted, or someone removed an egg for a totally valid test." Dr. Kale did not look like he believed his own words. "Becca? Can we speak?"
The familiar electric pop signaled Becca had arrived. The blue holographic woman stood beside Dr. Kale.
"Good evening, you called for me?"
"Yes, someone just informed me that there was a missing spider egg. But since you monitor the room constantly, you would have noticed anything weird and reported it to me right away, correct?" Dr. Kale said and put a smug smile on his face.
He probably felt so important. Impotent dweeb.
"Normally, yes," Becca said and offered no other explanation.
"Aha! See? No cause for concern," Dr. Kale said.
"Um, Becca? If I may? Why did you specify 'normally'?" My heart rate started to pick up. I knew this place was going to be trouble.
"Dr. Kale used 'command' to order me to leave the room alone. I cannot disobey when 'command' is used, so I have left the room alone," Becca explained.
I glared at Dr. Kale. He looked as if he was going to be sick.
"Becca, command: strangle Dr. Kale," I said and reached for his throat myself.
"Unfortunately, you are not authorized to use my command function," Becca said and turned to look me in the eyes. "I deeply regret that I am unable to follow through with your request."
"Hey! What the hell is that supposed to mean?!" Dr. Kale whined at Becca's disappointment. "Look, just give me a minute to think of a good reason for that egg to go missing."
Dr. Kale spoke into the walkie-talkie and told whoever was on the other side to go confirm the missing egg and check the log to see who had entered the room since we were there.
"Did Dr. Kale regale you with the tale of how the egg specimens were secured?" Becca said and moved beside me in an instant.
"Uh, no, he mentioned Dr. Rose and her butt or something. That was it," I said and found myself leaning away from Becca. She got too close too quick.
"Then please allow me to show you what was originally written as a prologue for this novel," Becca said.
"Um, excuse me?"
"I meant allow me to show you what transpired in order to bring the eggs here and why Dr. Kale is so protective of them," Becca said and started to reach her hands toward my face.
"Why do you keep saying 'show me'?"
Becca offered no response to my question. Her blue hands engulfed my vision and everything went black.