Sunset, Part 6

When Garret awoke, four pairs of glowing red eyes stared at him from the dark. They were ravenous, and sitting not fifteen feet away from him. His fire had burned out again, leaving him with only moonlight to make out the silhouette of the eyes' bearer.

A spider.

A huge spider.

Its body was monstrous, bulbous in shape, swelled far too large to be harmless. It was as large as a cow. Its sheer black body blended well with the darkness. And it was just watching him.

It sat there, clinging on a branch, looking at Garret as if he were an overly large bug to be sucked dry. He suppressed a shiver at that thought.

Why isn't it doing anything? Does it think I'm dead? I need to get away from here. It doesn't seem hostile, but there's no way I'm sleeping with that around, and no way I can kill it, either.


No doubt in it's amplification in size, the exoskeleton had been hardened by a similar amount. It'd take a fucking chainsaw to rip through its body, if not something stronger. Maybe a large slab of cement.

Maybe I could throw one of these branches to distract it? Garret still had an array of branches in his lap, weighing him down, though the berries in his hands had found their way into his stomach hours ago. They were threatening to make their way back up, however. I can't just sit here, and I'm sure that if I move, it'll-


The sticks clattered to the ground, followed soon after by Garret, tumbling to soften his impact. He was off at a run, when the spider lunged for him. Every footfall, every new sprint forward, was an instinctive reaction, centered around self-preservation. He leapt over a fallen tree without thinking, slid under a low-hanging branch, and continued to run. The monster of a spider was keeping its pace with him - no, it was gaining on him.

Adrenaline drove him to run faster than he had before, faster than even the previous night. He didn't care where he ran to, just as long as it was further away from this spider.


By the time he reached the beach he washed ashore upon, his breath was ragged, his every footfall was heavy from exhaustion, and his adrenaline was gone. He was almost in tears from fright.

Sand flew into the still night as he collapsed, resigned to his fate.

The fangs never came. Somehow, he had lost the spiders. But what now? What could he do?