Caught in the Spider's Trap

Hannah wiped sweat from her brow. She glanced back, wondering if she had gone too far.

Normally it was advised to stay on the trail in National Parks, but Hannah knew that the best views and wildlife were outside of normal tourist sights. Sure, sometimes it could be dangerous, but this park had no bears or wolves or anything threatening, so she should be fine. The only thing that worried her was what was said to be a couple of mysterious disappearances recently, tourists who had gone off on their own and disappeared. Although that sounded a lot like what she was doing, Hannah wasn’t deterred. They probably just weren’t as careful as she was. Besides, what out here could hurt her?

It was a hot day. She only wore a small tank top and short shorts. She knew that she should have put her long, dirty blond hair into a pony tail, but she didn’t have any hair ties with her, so oh well. She pushed through the greenery, stepping over small plants and bushes. The trees were spread out, but the vegetation was tall and basically everywhere.

She pushed herself through a particularly dense patch of branches and vines and her heart leaped.

Hannah had nearly stepped right into a crevice. The abundant plant life abruptly stopped to give way to a large gap in the ground, as if the earth had suddenly split in two. The crevice was wide, at least twenty feet and impossibly deep, too dark to see the bottom.

“Hmm, there wasn’t anything like this on the maps,” Hannah mused to herself. The young woman marveled at the natural wonder. Good thing she hadn’t fallen in. She glanced to the left and something caught her eye. It was a small patch of grayish-white material on the inner wall of the crevice. As she looked closer, much of the same material lined the inside of the crevice, like stretchy bands and cords connecting the two walls. The bands were thin and stretched; they looked like they could be elastic.

Interested, the girl got down on her knees and reached forward, trying to touch a band a little bit down the crevice. Curiosity overtook her caution, causing her to stretch as far as she could.

Her middle and pointer finger brushed the material and to her surprise, she found it slightly slimy and sticky, as if it were wet, rubbery glue. Weird!

“Ewww,” she said with a small smile. She could hardly believe that nature could produce such a material. She tried pulling away, gently due to her precarious position, but found that her fingers were a little stuck, she couldn’t pull them away! The band stretched, the stranger material hugging her fingers.

She grit her teeth, leaning forward a bit more, when suddenly, the ground started to give way. Her eyes widened before the earth underneath her collapsed, and she gave out a shrill yell as she fell deep into the crevice.

She squeezed her eyes shut, the wind rushing into her ears before a jarring sensation stopped her. It felt like she had landed on a trampoline, the world was jostling, bouncing. Something ripped beneath her and she was falling again, before the world bounced and jostled again, this time whatever it was supported her.

She opened her eyes to find that she was on what seemed to be multiple bands of the stretchy white material, formed like a net under her. She sat up, carefully, the white bands slightly sticking to her, like the sticky part of Post-It notes. She looked up, marveling at whatever this natural material was. Although Hannah was quite skinny and light, the material sagged beneath her, but it was surprising it could hold her weight at all. She had broken the first layer of stretchy bands above her, but this layer seemed to hold her well.

Carefully, very carefully, she got into a crawling position. She was safe, for now. She needed to find a way up, quick, before this layer of material broke beneath her too.

But before Hannah could make a single move, a loud clicking sound was behind her. The material below her vibrated, as if someone, no, something was approaching.

She turned her head and froze in horror as the biggest spider she had ever seen approached her. It was half her size, a big, brown body with a small head, eight red eyes and a large abdomen. Unlike tarantulas and other spiders like that, this one was thin. Its thin pincer/fangs/mandibles/whatevers clicked in hunger as it approached, lithe in its navigation across the webs.

Hannah let out a fearful shriek in terror and flailed, not knowing what to do. She could never outrun this thing, especially on this, this web. That’s what it was. This was a spider’s lair! And she was the prey!

Her eyes darted below. There was a third layer! Another net-like web lay below. There was no going anywhere here, but maybe if she kept falling into more web-layers she’d get to the bottom of the crevice and get out somehow. It was better than waiting around here.

Left with no other options she twisted her body and dropped, the familiar lurch in her stomach coming back to her as she fell.

The familiar trampoline-like jar hit her as she bounced on the web, her belly on the webbing and her back to the sky. Somehow she kept her head up and away from the sticky bands. She looked up and relief filled her as she saw that the spider did not descend to chase her.

However, as she tried to get up, she realized that this web was slimier, wetter, and much, much more sticky. As she tried to pull away, the webbing seemed to stick to her more and more, entangling her in their sticky threads. Hannah cried out in frustration as she became trapped in this web, immobilized.

Her heart froze when she felt the web vibrate. She looked up in horror to see another spider, identical to the first approach her. She looked up to see that the first spider was still above her. There were two!

The young woman redoubled her efforts, thrashing in vain against the sticky bonds only to get more helplessly ensnared in the web. Exhausted, she could only watch as the spider approached. Still, if she could keep her head, she would be fine. The webbing might be sticky now, but the first few webs proved that over time, the adhesive of the web wore off. If the spider applied a thin enough layer when it…… cocooned her, she would be fine.

Too tired to fight the spider, her heart clenched in fear as it got right over her. Fresh wet silk poured out of its spinneret, and to her surprise, it grabbed her two arms and forced them behind her back! Her eyes widened in shock and fear as globs of wet silk began to fuse her wrists together. The spider was intelligent!

Pure adrenaline rushed through her body, driven by fear as she thrashed again against the web. The spider calmly applied globs of silk around her appendages, fusing her arms to her waist, her ankles together in a sticky cast, forming a wrap around her so her freedom was restricted. The fresh silk was warm and wet, almost like liquid but solidifying quickly into sticky, unbreakable glue that she could barely stretch as the warm, disgusting silk encased her body. Soon she could not move at all, her arms pinioned behind her back and her legs encased in efficient silk bindings.

There was no breaking free now. There was only one thing she could do: call for help. Hannah could only hope that there was someone, anyone nearby.

“HELP! HELP! HEEELP!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, hoping desperately that there was someone nearby to find her.

The spider reached over, producing another glob of silk and before Hannah knew what the spider was doing, it shoved the glob into her mouth, gagging her, her mouth filled with the disgusting silk, mashing her tongue in and gluing her teeth together. It applied another band of silk around her head, fashioning the makeshift gag.

“Mmmph! Mmmph!” Hannah cried, trying not to choke on the disgusting silk gag. It was warm and nasty; it was all she had just to breathe through her nose in her panic and to try to not get any of the webbing down her throat.

The spider seemed to back away, inspecting its handiwork. Hannah could only make small, weak, helpless wiggles in her confinement, her screams reduced to pathetic whimpers. The webbing glue had gone into harder, stickier state; every time she struggled the web-bindings would just stretch a centimeter and refuse to give way. She was exhausted, scared, and helpless.

Hannah was just a fly, caught in the spider’s trap, waiting for her inevitable fate.



Decided to add a story. Too tired to talk about any more.