Working Title: The Taste of Spiders

    A man’s feet sit squarely onto the hard wooden floor, and his knuckles tighten and relax back and forth on the carved details of his chairs armrests. An old grandfather clock sits in the corner opposite him, whipping its shadow back and forth in dance with the flame of a candle. 10:25 the clock reads, and the man lets out an audible sigh, and tilts his head back.
    The shorter hand of the clock jumps forward abruptly, coming to a halt five minutes ahead of the actual time. It then starts to slowly crawl towards the larger hand, which in turn begins running away, heading clockwise. The two chase each other, spinning ever faster and faster, turning into a blur of motion, while the smaller hand slowly gains ground. They finally lock together pointing directly up, and the clock’s midnight bell rings out loud and clear. The coughing comes first, just like it always has these past three years.
    Some people say that humans can get used to anything, but it’s hard to imagine that those individuals have ever felt the tickle of a spider crawling out of their throat. The scratching of the first spider is always the most annoying, as it seems to take its precious time climbing out. The man spits the creature out onto the floor, and watches it wisp away in a puff of smoke. A crude skull-like design sits scorched on the flooring where it landed; the once mahogany expanse of boards now nearly pitch black from previous evenings.
    For the longest while, it was only the one spider, each and every night. As time has gone by though, they have been multiplying and escaping in larger numbers. The previous evening’s count numbered around twenty-three of the skittering beasts before the clock started to tick again, but this evening only had the one.
    A few seconds pass, and the man’s right foot stamps onto the ground impatiently. “Go on with it, then,” he croaks. “Get the hell out-“ he tries to say, but a sea of small spiders come pouring out of his mouth. Falling onto his hands and knees, the mass of legs rush out of his mouth, seemingly hundreds going by every second. He pulls his hands up to cover his mouth, and the spiders latch onto his skin, charring it with their small inky symbols. He tries to tear them away from his face, but his arms begin to shrink and harden like the cinders of a dying fire, as the little skull shaped marks cover them entirely.
    His body writhes in a living suit of arachnids, and although he tries to claw through them, he quickly understands that all is lost. Some humans may fight against circumstances much longer, and hold onto hope with every last drop of blood left in their body. He might in other times of his life been inclined to agree with that statement, if the man was still as human as he was way back around 10:25.
    Curling up into a ball, he can feel the foul beasts latching onto his side, and solidifying into extra appendages. All of the sudden, a whole new kind of pain sets in, as the last of his humanity hangs by a thread. It seems like hours have passed, and they very well may have, but still the clock hands point up, and that midnight bell rings into the heart of the night, slowly changing its sound to mimic that of his shrieking, until the two discords blend into perfect harmony.
    His bones are snapped over and over again, until the infinitesimal pieces within him are pulled out on the backs of spiders, and spit out onto the floor. Muscle snaps like the strings of an over-tuned violin and are quickly expelled from the writhing mass. His teeth are pulled out one by one, and spit out onto the floor. He no longer has the ability to speak, and as he blinks his eyes, he realizes he can see so much more, as eight have taken their place. Two large fangs tear through his face from where his mouth once was, and the sleek black body of a spider now fills the sitting room.
    Hunger sets in, and a chemical urge takes over his body, sending him speeding across the room, knocking down the grandfather clock, and smashing it to pieces and finally putting a stop to its maddening ring. Gears pour out like fresh blood onto the ground, and the spherical bell tumbles across the pile, thumping in the likeness of a heart before shrinking in on itself and vanishing. On a nearby table, a copy of The Metamorphosis rests, and in his current state, he can no longer remember the joy of reading, or of how much he hated that damned book. A cry of anguish escapes from the neighbor’s house, and the man – although no, it wouldn’t be proper to call him that anymore - stealthily moves onto the next house as slumbering bodies are jolted awake by the cries and shouts, and the beast falls trance to the noise as though it were the most beautiful song in the world.