Courtesy of Pixabay
He scratched at the back of his neck again. It felt like a hair was tickling him, but his hair was kept neat and short. Maybe it was a stray stuck to his shirt from Gwendolyn. He shook his head, annoyed that it was still itching. He made his way further into the cave, hoping to find some more of the pale green mushrooms that grew here. They were used to cure fevers in teas and could stop bleeding by applying the dried and powdered caps to a wound. This was the furthest into the cave that he had ever been. The air stunk of stale decay and earth. He scratched his neck again.
"Well, what in the heck," he muttered to himself. "Has someone else already taken all the mushrooms? I should have found some by now."
He was getting frustrated and pressed on. After a few narrow corners he came to an intersection. The path to the left was low and required him to crawl. The path to the right was tall enough to walk. And he spied the faint hint of a green glow down that path.
5 min
He walked towards the green glow and rounded the last corner. He saw a cave room about 15 feet in diameter, the walls lined with the glowing green mushroom. He raised his hands in triumph and walked towards the mushrooms, kneeling at the nearest bunch to pluck them. His neck tickled again and he tried to ignore it, putting a handful of green mushrooms into his pouch. But the tickle persisted and he slapped at the back of his neck. His hand came back wet with a yellowish goo and had some black leg looking things on it.
He immediately snapped his eyes to the roof and saw a horrific image. eight thousand tiny green glowing orbs, all along the roof. Spider eyes lit up by the soft glow of the mushrooms. Almost as if a liquid wave, the spiders surged forward and fell onto the man, smothering him and his screams as they bit into his flesh, injecting him with a paralyzing toxin. Within minutes it was over and an extremely large spider the size of the man descended from the roof. She picked him up with her front legs and started to rotate him, attaching silk from her spinnerettes, covering him in a thick layer of spider silk.
Spiders always give me an itchy neck, I don't know about you. The only thing worse is ticks! I used to work at a petland and would often have to feed the tarantulas and change out the hide and betting for them. It was torture!
