The following are the fiction pieces I wrote for Fyretober and Writetober for the day two prompts!

Fyretober: It’s Alive

The girl screeched as the small, fuzzy spider swung from its web onto the gate handle of the white picket fence. Tiny hairs poked from the little legs, and its big eyes seemed to glare at the girl.

She screeched again and kicked at the handle. The spider swung, dropping from its safety and landing on a white panel closer to the ground. 

Cars roared as they sped down the road, the sun rising higher above the tops of the two-story homes around her. The school bus was on its way, and she needed to defeat this spider first…

The girl kicked again, squishing the spider against the paint. Its gore really only spread out about the diameter of a penny. Not really big enough to be dangerous but still in her way.

Its legs twitched, and the girl jumped back. She’d killed it…right? She kicked again, pushing extra hard against the fence then sliding the sole of her tennis shoe downward, spreading guts like mud. When she pulled her foot back, the spider was gone entirely.

She squeaked and rushed to the grass, rubbing her shoe and scrapping off the spider goo. When she checked her shoe again, the spider remained, mushed between the treads of her sole, and the few remaining legs still remained and twitched.

The girl scrambled out of her shoe faster than when she needed to escape the monster under her bed after a nasty dream. She left the dirty gray shoe on the pathway, and it looked lonely in the rising sun and oblivious cars. 

Carefully, the girl leaned forward and lifted her shoe, careful to not touch anywhere close to the bottom. There, smudged in deep ridges, was the still twitching spider.

This time she didn’t react or jump back. Been there, done that. Anger swirled in her chest, and her jaw hardened as the frustration fought to overwhelm her. She needed to hurry on, the gate was free now, but the menace was still on her shoe.

The twitching stopped, and a sigh escaped the girl only to turn into a nasty choke as the first leg twisted and reoriented itself on the small spider body. The next leg twitched, righting itself, then the next, and the next, all the way until eight perfect legs stuck out from the evil spider’s body. Its abdomen, still good, began to inflate like a balloon, and the girl watched, captured and enthralled.

Who cared about catching the bus? She needed to make sure the spiders weren’t going to kill her as she left her family property.

Once fully righted, the spider twitched again and flipped off its back. It landed on its legs, and with the touch of a cool morning breeze, the spider began to swell. A quarter size, a half dollar, growing until it was the size of a rotten kiwi. The girl screamed, cursed, and dropped the shoe. It bounced and tipped to its side, the spider still intact and still growing.

The girl couldn’t scramble fast enough up the stairs and to the front door, which she’d so responsibly locked. She whimpered and cried as she fumbled for the key, shoving it in the lock as a dark shadow blocked the sun and hovered behind her. The key turned easily, but with a snap the hand holding the key was all that was left of the girl, blood gushing from the torn wrist.

The rest of her was gone, and as the sun continued to stretch over the neighborhood, the shadow collapsed. The spider returned to its small size, its belly bulging, and a faint breeze swept it back to the gate, back to its fresh webbing.

Peace at last.

Writetober: Swallow