I sighed, swirling the wine in my glass idly. Go team Sarah, jobless at 25... Not exactly the best state to live in. I looked up, arching an eyebrow as Tiffany cleared her throat. Tiffany, who was my older sister—formerly the black sheep of the family. To think that Tiffany would now be employed as a middle school teacher—or that she was a good one, at that!
I took another gulp of wine. I knew I should be sipping it, but hell! I had a valid excuse! My last job application to the backup of my backup job had blown out on me. Who the hell knew that there was such a competition for working in a grocery store, even among the stockers?
“So, given any thought to my job offer?” Tiffany gave me a small smile, playing with the curls of her auburn hair. It was a nervous habit she had picked up when she was younger, and it looked like Tiffany had no intentions of stopping.
I snorted. Tiffany had approached me, telling me that she might have a job; something of a favor. What it had turned out to be was a madwoman’s request. Tiffany had wanted—still wanted, from the sounds of it—to somehow change me into a spider. No, not just any spider—a tarantula.
I scoffed. “Tiff, you must have gotten into some of your students’ pot.” Did middle schoolers have pot? Eh, screw it. If I had said anything stupid, then I could just blame it on the wine. Rich, delicious wine... I gulped down the last of it. “No thank you, I don’t want to become some gross spider.” I made a face as I spoke, staring into my empty glass. I missed it already.
“Say, Tiff? Where did you get this wine?” I looked up to find my sister frowning worriedly. “What’s wrong?” I arched an eyebrow as I asked the question. “Don’t tell me you actually wanted to make me into one.”
Tiffany’s frown deepened. “Well, Sarah... What do you know about TransFun?”
TransFun? Wasn’t that the company that made these serums that changed people into animals for a few days? I chuckled, leaning back. “Don’t tell me you spiked my wine with some TransFun.” I tutted at her teasingly.
“Well, no. I used something from ChangeLovers’ catalog.” Tiffany gulped nervously. “They’re new, and provide some more intense, longer lasting transformations.”
I blinked slowly at that. Then I blinked again, breaking into a small smile. “Funny. You almost had me.”
“No, I’m serious. It was in the wine. You should really take off your clothes before I say your triggering phrase.” Tiffany sighed, biting her lower lip nervously.
I frowned. “T-Tiff? Are you serious? This is one of your stupid jokes, right?” I laughed weakly, considering the idea of bolting for the door.
Tiffany sighed, scratching her cheek. “Oh, what the hell, those clothes you’re wearing are pretty old anyways. Arachnophobia!” She made sure to clearly enunciate the last word clearly, placing a special inflection on every other syllable.
My eyes widened as my stomach started to gurgle. I slapped one of my hands on the table, standing hurriedly. “Tiff, what the hell did you d—” I stopped talking as I realized I couldn’t feel the table under my hand.
Slowly, cautiously, I raised my hand to my face, letting out a small yelp as I saw what looked like black enamel covering my palm and the back of my right hand. My arm looked little better—my skin was pushing out into a brown, chitinous plate. I yelped, running my other hand along it, feeling the roughness of my new carapace. Then, I started to feel less and less of it, and I held up my left hand to find it too was turning black and hard.
“Tiffany?” I looked up to her, my eyes watering with fear. This couldn’t be happening—I knew people could be changed into animals, but for it to happen to me—and to be a spider, of all things! I flinched in horrified surprise as my left arm started to change too, skin being lost to hard carapace.
“It’s okay, you’re just becoming a spider!” Tiffany smiled. “No reason to freak out or anything, right? People do it all the time, you’ll be fine!”
“I’m becoming a spider? I’m becoming a spider??” I repeated myself, hung up on the changes. “How is that not a reason to freak out? How is this okay?” My claw-hands flew to my forehead as my skull started to ache—a dull, low ringing in my ears. It felt like that one time I had been too close to a firecracker—ringing and no other sound.
“What’s going on?” I shouted, tears forming at the corners of my eyes as I realized I couldn’t hear my own voice anymore. Were spiders deaf? They had to be—they didn’t have ears. And neither did I... I let out a wail of despair, unable to hear my own voice, but from the look on Tiffany’s face it wasn’t a pretty sound.
Even I could tell it wasn’t—my throat rattled a bit at the sound, feeling wet, phlegmy. I coughed numbly, and my jaw ached like I’d been punched in the mouth. I gagged—it felt like my jaw was being split in half, growing mandibles—or whatever spiders had instead of those. Pedipalps? The word ran through my head, some bit of trivia from a story I’d read.
I hiccupped with what could have been panicked laughter, or a horrified gasp at how my nose had started to ache. I crossed my eyes, watching as it sank back into my changing skull, leaving the surface smooth, bare. Then my skull just kept aching, my jaw drawing closer to my forehead, filling in the gap on my face.
My eyes tingled next, and I tried to whimper with my new spider’s mouth. Not them—I didn’t want that to happen. But of course, the changes had no care for what I wanted. I could feel my blue eyes darkening, becoming soulless, black orbs. My eyelids pulled back, and my eyes ached as the bulged out form my head, their lenses thickening and hardening so my soft eyes would be safe behind them.
My head tingled in six other places, and I could feel-feel something pushing just under my skin, like half a dozen horrible large zits forcing their way from my face. Tiffany watched the whole thing, her face turning a distinct shade of green, blurring slightly. Everything was getting fuzzier, though things seemed to be a little brighter despite that. Was this some aftereffect of my eyes changing? How spiders see the world?
A second later I had my answer as the rest of my eyes clicked on, the room expanding so that I could see above me; to my sides; right in front of my pedipalps. The world was so much smaller now that I could see all of it—and yet it was bigger at the same time. I let out another cry—this time a hiss—as my body started to shrink.
My clothes felt larger around my form, the table looked higher up—like it had when I was a child. Tiffany was larger, too—her body changing from human to Amazon-esque to titanic in size. I could feel my legs getting further from the ground, and I scooted back on my chair, careful not to fall off. As I moved back, my shoes and socks slipped off of my changing feet, falling loosely to the floor. My sides ached, and I was suddenly glad for the vast tent of my shirt, preventing Tiffany from seeing me grow four more legs.
Not that it kept her from looking any less horrified for it—her eyes were wide and round, tracking my descent. I glanced down while I still could, though I immediately wished I hadn’t. Seeing was worse than feeling, and watching the four new legs sprout, seeing their claws burst from my sides—it was almost too much to bear.
Luckily, my breasts started to sink back into my thickening chest, and the shock of that was enough to keep me focused. A second later, I stared as my nipples glossed over, leaving me with a flat, smooth plate; and realized just how much of a mixed blessing that really was. It had shocked me into consciousness, yes, but was consciousness really worth it at this point?
Consciousness let me feel my legs change, let me feel my legs shrink, grow that damnable carapace. Consciousness let me see my toes become nothing more than claws at the end of them. Consciousness let me see the hair growing from my chitinous legs—all eight of them. It let me feel my surroundings against the fur, let me feel the fabric cavern that my clothes had settled into.
Before my startled eyes, I could see ridges forming along my carapace, smooth curves that looked like the outline of—of bones, like my ribs, collarbone, all of them were sliding out to the outside of my text, giving it texture—giving it an exoskeleton. There was a small, almost round plate in the middle of the ridges that were my new exoskeleton, and for just a moment I was struck at how simplistically beautiful my new body was.
Then my neck wrenched violently upward, and I fell to my knees—then to my new legs. I gagged a little at the odd feeling of my neck realigning, and shook my head to do it. With a rush of disgust, I realized I had shaken my head by swaying my legs from side to side, a very spider-like mannerism for a girl like me—the girl that I’d been. It was hard to deny that the changes had done their part, leaving me a tarantula; little more than a spider.
I twitched my pedipalps, slowly twitching each of my legs in turn. It felt natural, like I’d been born in this form. I’d head that half of the fun in transforming was figuring out how to work your body, but there was something to be said about the smooth grace I felt thanks to a full array of animal instincts. At least, I hope these were the spider’s instincts, and that I wasn’t losing my mind.
Scaling my clothes was like climbing sand—the more I ascended, the more I pulled down, and for a moment I was trapped in a Sisyphean ordeal, trying to climb an endless mountain. And yet, just as the futility of my struggles hit me, I saw the light of day at the top of my voluminous shirt.
My head peeked out to find a much, much larger world around me. My shirt had started to cover my eyes when I was just under a foot tall, but now, on all fours, I ha dot be tiny! I was barely two inches at my tallest, and had to be something like six inches long.
I mean, not that that was a small size for a spider—it probably would have driven me to a state of shock to see a tarantula that was half a foot long. But as someone who had once been a modest 5’4”, this was more than short, more than tiny. I was miniscule!
Tiffany stood up, and I quailed at her approach. How could I not? She was so huge, so intimidating now! She drew closer and closer to me, and I immediately regretted exposing myself. Being a spider was bad enough, but someone looking at me made it all so much worse.
The air around my rumbled, and I looked up in fear to see her lips moving. I sank a little deeper into my clothes with apprehension. How could I convey that I had no way of understanding her, of hearing her? The blur that was Tiffany’s face loomed closer, and I could make out her arching an eyebrow. I slinked further back, and she drew away, leaving for another room.
I used the time to crawl onto the table to wait for her. It took a monumental to ignore my instincts. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me that remaining out in the open like this was completely insane and dangerous—but I knew that if anyone would take care of me like this, it would be Tiffany.
She returned a few minutes later with some post-it notes and a sharpie. She jotted something down, then held it out to me. ‘SARAH?’
I bobbed my head eagerly, and Tiffany frowned. She then jotted something else down, sticking it to the table in front of me. This note read: ‘Y/N’, with a generous gap between the letters. I looked up to find Tiffany holding up the first note, and I hurriedly tapped on the ‘Y’ with one of my legs.
She looked relieved, and then detailed what would happen to me using those little cards of hers. The transformation would last until she released me from it, and until then I’d be a class pet, kept in a small terrarium by the teacher’s desk. I couldn’t ask where she had grabbed the terrarium from, but knowing her she’d probably ‘borrowed’ it from another teacher. Oh well, a home was a home.
And it was in this home that I was introduced to the little kids in her class, looking at how freakishly huge they were to my new form. Kids always freaked me out—something about being tiny abhumans and all. And seeing them as gigantic tiny abhumans was disconcerting in the worst way possible. It was almost a relief when Tiffany pushed them away, carrying a mouse in her hands.
They looked to be squealing—the boys with mirth, the girls with disgust—as she drew ever closer to my plastic enclosure. I looked up at her, tilting my head to one side inquisitively. What was she going to do with that? Teach the kids how a tarantula ate? I chuckled inwardly at the idea before freezing in terror. That was almost definitely her intention!
I backed away from the squealing mouse as she laid it gingerly opposite me. At least, I assumed it was squealing—It certainly made enough of a commotion. The worst part was how its commotion was stirring something inside of me, something entirely not human.
I felt like I was drooling, a tasty hors d’oeuvre having been laid out in front of me. No, that wasn’t right—I was a human in a spider’s body, mice were not food! They were little vermin, fit only for testing chemicals on, for exterminating, for consumption... No! No! I couldn’t—wouldn’t think like that. No matter how much the emptiness in my stomach told me otherwise...
The mouse had stopped its struggles, instead turning to face me. It must have sensed that I wasn’t a threat, because it dared to get a little closer, its paws clicking gently on the plastic beneath us.
Tic... Tic.. Tic...
With each passing sound, the damnable hunger within me grew and grew, a ravenous pounding on my psyche. It was like I could taste the mouse already, taste its soft and supple flesh beneath my fangs, my pedipalps gripping it in some hideous mockery of a lover’s embrace.
Yes, it wouldn’t be too much to give in, to sink my fangs deep into its body, paralyze the mouse’s weak little heart. I could give in to my body, just this once, to fill my hunger, to dissolve its flesh and consume the nutrients through the straw I had for a mouth. I’d just take a nibble, just a teensy little bite, just...
My vision blurred as I pounced upon the rodent, grasping it tightly and giving into my horrible arachnid body. Wave upon wave of bliss raced through my body, and I would have moaned into the spider if I could. It wasn’t that it was delicious—I couldn’t taste it that much, just a generic meaty flavor filling my mouth. No, there was something about filling my drive to feed, something almost sexual about devouring.
I kept drinking greedily, draining the little creature of its life for... I don’t know how long. All I cared about was drinking more and more of my prey, consuming it, filling myself with its nutritious substance. The kids in the room watched, sat down, and left. They were replaced with another class, then another. I didn’t care, I was too busy embracing the pleasure that was my life now.
Then, a huge hand reached into the tank. I drew back, rearing up to make myself look larger, but I wasn’t the hand’s target—it was my food. My every muscle tensed, and I prepared to pounce on this invader, this thief—and then common sense reasserted itself. I froze, shifting up to look at this hand’s owner. Sure enough, it was Tiffany, her face disgusted as she picked up the shriveled husk that had been a mouse.
I returned my gaze to what had been food, feeling sick to my stomach. I’d done that—I’d eaten another living being. Worse, I’d enjoyed it. I wanted to puke, but my body wouldn’t even permit me that release. Instead, all I could do was watch as Tiffany plopped the carcass into a trash bag, making a face as she left the room.
I sat numbly in the tank, still tasting the mouse. To my abject horror, I found that it wasn’t entirely unappealing—there wasn’t an overwhelmingly bad aftertaste, and my body was still reveling in the natural high that came with being full.
I was so preoccupied with this tangled mess of thoughts that I didn’t even notice the stranger walking into the room. His shadow was the first sign that something was wrong, any by then it was too late. He was a man, some balding guy with glasses, a thin moustache above his lip—a teacher? Idly, I wondered how the school hired such a man—he set off every one of my internal ‘pedo’ alarms.
Then he grabbed my terrarium, and I realized I should be worrying less about the students and more about myself. The world blurred into motion around me as he lifted my terrarium high, and it shook with the familiar sensation of walking. I desperately tried to tap out some sort of message, some way to let him know I was a human.
I should have known it wouldn’t work, and my heart sank as he walked into another, ,darker room, bringing me over a larger terrarium. No, that couldn’t be right! I wasn’t really the school’s pet tarantula, I was human! He had to see he was making a mistake, I had to warn him! But nothing came to mind, and with a numbing sense of helplessness I realized I was at his mercy.
The man tilted the tank I was in, tapping it twice sharply. My whole world shook, and I found myself tumbling, falling into the terrarium below me. I landed on the soft pine heavily, a dull impact resonating through my body. The man who picked me up turned to leave, and my legs pumped as I scurried to a plastic wall, to paw at it, to try to climb it.
He couldn’t leave me alone in here like this! I tapped at the glass more—then froze. Why did I think I was alone? This place was too nice to have been thrown together for me. I whirled, expecting to find some predator, eyeing me as its next meal.
I wasn’t entirely wrong. With the human gone, the tank’s other occupants made themselves known—all of them tarantulas my height. I froze in terror, looking at how huge they were. To everyone else, they were probably a normal height—but to me they were gigantic, a size no spider should be able to reach.
One of them walked up to me—a male. I had no idea how I recognized him as such, maybe from the way he walked, or his size, or something about the way he made the air taste. He walked up in front of me, leaning back on his hindlegs and splaying out his body before me. Was this a mating display? Was that on the menu, a sweet dessert to follow a mouthful of mouse?
I tried to wave him away, unsure if he’d get the hint. Luckily, he did, and I watched him go with relief. Somehow, the thought of mating with a spider wasn’t particularly interesting to me. No, the only thing that occupied my thoughts was escape. There had to be some way out besides waiting for Tiffany to find me. If she found me. After all, I looked a lot like the other spiders here...
No, no! I couldn’t think like that. I’d keep living here, keep... eating—if necessary—and then Tiffany would rescue me. She just had to! She wouldn’t leave her sister here, to be some spider. But day gave its way to night, and still no sign of Tiffany. Another day passed, just me and the spiders.
On the third day, I gave in to the male spider. He walked up to me, just he had for the past two days. I was bored and, worst of all, curious. This time, I didn’t fight off his advances, and I felt him creep behind me. Thankfully, the terrarium’s wall was just reflective enough that I could catch what he was doing, and I watched as he got in close to my rear, placing his pedipalps against my rear.
I braced myself, holding very still as he backed off, no doubt bracing himself to thrust inside me, to ravish me with his arachnoid body, to... run?
I turned around, watching him scurry away nervously. Was that it? Not that I enjoyed the thought of mating as a spider, but I at least thought it would pass the time, would feel pleasurable. But sex as a spider simply... wasn’t!
Probably the worst part was that I didn’t even recognize my ‘suitor’. Not that I had a means of telling him that I was completely dissatisfied with his performance, but I still wanted to try! And the way he ran away from me—did he expect me to eat him?
I straightened all eight of my limbs in surprise. He did, didn’t he? Weren’t spiders like praying mantises like that? After a male impregnated his mate, it only made sense to run... Which meant I was pregnant. I shuddered inwardly in horror at the thought of bearing a spider’s children. I didn’t know how long it took to lay eggs, but hopefully I’d be changed back before then.
Did tarantulas lay eggs? The idea was appaling! Why couldn’t I give a live birth, grow the spiders inside me, little larva crawling inside of my body, just waiting to burrow out from my guts in a... I shook my head, not even bothered by how I had to use all of my legs to perform the slight motion. On second thought, laying eggs wasn’t that much of a problem.
Days passed; then weeks; then months. I found myself forgetting more and more about Sarah. I was a tarantula, my company was tarantulas, and with nobody to talk to, no way of communicating save body language, I started to lose myself to my new body, my new instincts.
It started slowly—I had no last name, I was just Sarah. A Sarah—the only smart tarantula of the bunch. Then, that became Sar, a good mate, a good mother. Then S—just for an hour. S didn’t sound right, didn’t feel right. It meant something, meant... Spider. Yes, I was Spider, a bug who ate, lived, and mated.
And within a week, not even that remained.
I don’t know how much time passed without human thought, but it was lovely. I wasn’t burdened by worries, by expectations, by stress. All I had to do was live—with the occasional watcher or playmate. I didn’t even know what the things that watched and played with me were called—only that they did, and that they were much, much larger than me. My companions didn’t put up a fight, so neither did I.
And the best part was, time kept passing like this. It was a blissful, wonderful time, where I simply—lived. Not for others, or even for myself! I had no desires that weren’t sated, no thoughts of discontent. Just month after month, maybe year after year, of existing. Then, one day, I... something new happened to me. A word.
“Arachnophilia.” I don’t know how I heard it, but I heard it. My whole body felt warm, and I felt warm hands hurriedly picking me up, depositing me on the ground. The world went dark, and my body ached, becoming something... something... human. The instant the word entered my mind, I felt eyes I didn’t even know were closed open once more.
I gasped loudly, my arms and legs kicking wildly in the air as I realized I was on my back, belly-up, weak. There was something—were two things—on my chest, and it felt like my whole body was cracked open, my soft flesh weak to the outside world! I shouted, my whole body feeling bloated large, and soft flesh met my own, holding me back down.
“Easy, Sarah! Don’t freak out!” Sarah! The name—was me! I was Sarah! I could hear, and smell, and I had a mouth again, and—and! I panted loudly, filling the air with the wonderful, musical sound that was my voice. Another human—Tiffany, my sister, was holding me down, and I swatted one of her hands away.
“Get off, you’re heavy.” The words felt odd, but natural, and my voice was still strong despite what felt like an eternity without use. I blinked my eyes, remembering the need, and looked Tiffany in hers. God, she was so unnatural yet so beautiful. And so was I, come to think of it.
“Does this mean you’re back now?” Tiffany smiled with relief. “I thought one of the kids took you, and I’ve been everywhere looking for you. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken Mr. Aimes’ tank... To think that he would put you in here with the other spiders, then had that accident—it’s a little silly! Lucky thing he was able to recover and tell—”
I cut her off then and there, before she could get sidetracked. “Silly? Silly? You left me for—for—I don’t know how long—as a bug! Not just a bug, a spider! Tiffany, what’s wrong with you? Why would you think that this was a good idea, and why are you smiling?” I frowned, her reaction the exact opposite of what I’d expected during my tirade.
“Because you’re smiling like an idiot?” Tiffany chuckled. “And if I know you, then that means: You. Liked. It.” She said each word with a lilting victorious tone, and I pressed my fingers against my mouth, finding that my face was betraying me. I’d completely forgotten how emotive being a human was, and for a moment I sat there, running my hands along my cheeks happily.
Tiffany politely cleared her throat, and I looked up, my reverie broken.
“Well... Yeah, it wasn’t all bad—I guess. But I’ll definitely need to get you back for this.” I followed my admission with a warning, trying to make sure Tiffany didn’t get any ‘cute’ ideas. Still, though... I might maybe be open to transforming again in the future. After some revenge, of course.