Spider 1

What.

That's not a question. It's a statement. What.

I mean, I've had about a week to deal with this. By all rights I should be used to it by now, but… given my situation, a flat, 'what' is pretty damned appropriate, if you ask me.

I'm a spider. Yeah.

You want to know how it happened? Well, get in line. I mean, last I knew I was an ordinary human girl. If you want I could give you a sob story about how my life has been the furthest thing from ideal. I had really shitty friends, I had a really shitty parent—the fact that I only had one parent is bad enough, and I had the absolute worst day of my life at school… which I'm not going to talk about and if you had any sympathy in your cold, black hearts you wouldn't ask me about that.

I don't even want to think about it. Not again. No way.

Moving on. I've spent the last week trying to find a way not to starve to death. I've spent the last week trying not to get squished. I've been trying to figure the logic behind this cause and effect.

I mean, really. All that stuff about having a shitty week? Nothing I can think of tracks how that brings me from A to B. How does getting shoved into a—notthinkingaboutitnotthinkingaboutit—how does having a bad week lead to an even worse week?

Damnit, this is why the internet exists. And now I can't even use it. I've tried. I have no problems viewing the screens—thank God—but I simply don't have the weight to press down on the keyboard.

I'm tiny. I'm small enough to fit through those little vents in a locker door—don'taskmehowIknowthat. I'm small enough that a fruit fly could be considered a three-course meal all by itself.

Speaking of which, you know what else sucks? Insects are mostly bug juice and exoskeleton. There's very little 'meat'. How do I know that? Let's just say I do and move along. That's another thing I don't want to remind myself about.

What's good about this situation? Well, aside from not having to deal with treacherous best fri—notthinkingaboutitnotthinkingaboutitnotthinkingaboutit—people, being a spider isn't… too bad. I mean, like I said, anything several magnitudes larger than I am will probably squish me. But anything close to my own size? I can own that sucker.

I've got little spider threads that I can shoot out and—even better—somehow I can control where they go. With my mind. That's kind of awesome. So I can shoot out a sticky thread and whip it around like a lasso to catch flies in the air. I can do the normal spider thing and build myself a temporary Home using non-sticky threads in an obscure corner (so… cozy!). Or I could rip off an Earth-aleph cape and use my partially sticky threads as a grappling hook and swoosh across the sky..

Or I could…not use threads at all and just climb up the wall instead. With my own eight legs. Because, you know… spider.

Which reminds me of another neat thing I've discovered, no fall damage. I mean, it wasn't such a neat discovery to find that a good gust of wind can blow me off the side of a building, but aside from a dull impact, it didn't really hurt. Inverse square-cube law, become my bitch.

On the other hand, finding out I have vertigo as a spider was not so neat. So I tried doing stuff I've seen on some nature documentaries; specifically what very tiny spiders like me would use to travel relatively large distances.

Let's just say 'Operation: Parachute' is on version twenty-something and leave it at that.

So, yeah. That's basically been my week in a nutshell. Travelling as far as I can in a day (which isn't that far), finding what food I can (which is a both a lot more and a lot less than I was expecting to), and trying not to die. With the occasional detour into a person's home to try to get some news on the big-people world, I've got something almost like a routine going on. So far, so good.

Also I think I've been getting a bit better at this because I think I've been getting just a little bit further across town, going by the increasing count of the buildings I've passed. I've been getting better at this bug catching thing and catching bigger meals. Things could be worse.

"SQUEAK"

Oh, what the hell. Karma, I hate you so much. Or maybe I drew the ire of Murphy. It doesn't really matter. I had a good thing going on here. I had a routine. Cross street. Climb building. Think of new iteration for Operation: Parachute. Fall off of building. Ow. Build a Home. Catch dinner.

A Dire Rat does not fit into my daily schedule! There is no room for you, this is not copacetic!

"SQUEAAAAK!"

And you should have a cute squeak! Not a deep-brassy cry of impending doom! I don't care if you are ten-times my size, leave me alone! Is this my life now?!

"SQUEAK"

No way…