The Psychiatrist removed his glasses, cleaned them very slowly and thoroughly, and placed them back on his nose. He glanced somewhat desperately at the clock before picking up the pile of white cardboard squares one last time.

"Shall we try that last exercise again? And this time, if you could please try really hard to picture anything that's not a spider."

The young woman reclining on the couch across from him had physically jumped at the word 'spider' but she nodded grimly. He nodded back and flipped over the first card on the pile, revealing the Rorschach inkblot.

"Tell me what you see."

"A spider," Anne said instantly, her bottom lip already quivering in fear. She would be in tears by the fourth card. He had seen this half a dozen times already.

He flipped over the next card.

"A spider," she repeated.

He spoke through clenched teeth. "Okay. And this one?"

*flip*

She stared at it for a second . . . squinted. . . "A spider."

He span the card around and goggled at the inkblot on it's surface. "How?! How is that a spider? It's a butterfly! Okay? It's clearly a pretty little butterfly!"

She started to cry. The Psychiatrist took a deep breath, drawing on all his reserves of compassion and decades of experience. He softened his voice.

"Miss Weathers, I'm sorry. But never in all my years have I seen a case of arachnophobia so pronounced as yours, so absolutely unshakable. It is baffling."

"I'm sorry," she sniffed. "It's just their funny little legs. . . skittering about all over." Still crying, she rose from the couch and made to leave.

"There is one treatment we have yet to try," he spoke up quickly. "It's radical, dangerous, certainly not easy. . . but effective."

Anne Weathers turned to look at him. Even his bushy grey moustache reminded her of a spider. "What is it?"

He beamed. "Come with me."
------------------------------------
"In psychotherapeutic parlance, we call it 'flooding'," the Psychiatrist said, pressing a series of buttons on the panel in front of him. Lights flickered on in the circular white room, illuminating a raised dais in the centre, which lit up with a green glow.

"Flooding?"

"Ehh, well," he hesitated. "Perhaps it is best if I don't tell you the specifics just yet. I would hate to shake your admirable resolve."

She puffed her chest out and put on a brave smile. "As long I don't have to actually touch any spiders."

"If you'd just like to stand on the platform there."

"It-It doesn't, it doesn't involve any of them, does it?" she asked, stepping up onto the dais.

"You don't have any metallic objects on you at all?"

She shook her head.

"No pesticides?"

She shook her head again, and opened her mouth to clarify something very important, but the Psychiatrist had said "then we can begin" and pressed something among the array of buttons and knobs and levers.

There was a dazzling green flash and a long, loud hum. She felt no pain, but she felt a lot of things that felt as though they should be painful - her arms and legs felt as though they were being cleaved in two, her skin seemed to be hardening and cracking all over, with thick strands of hair forcing their way up through it. Worst of all was the sensation deep in her abdomen - a strong contraction that seemed to be pulling her down.

She was rendered blind momentarily. When her vision returned, it was horribly distorted, as though she could see 180 degrees around her. The room looked huge, like an aircraft hanger. Bigger even.

A cylinder of glass twice her width suddenly clunked down around her stunned form, trapping her. A thick piece of card slipped under it, knocking her off her feet (Her feets, rather, she realized in horror). There was moment of jarring movement, like an elevator getting going, and then the massive face of the Psychiatrist looked in at her through the walls of her glass prison.

"Excellent," he boomed. "Worked a treat."

There was the horrible sensation of movement again, that knocked her off her feets. The face of the Psychiatrist was removed from view; she watched as the container she was in move towards the door of the chamber.

"Best million pounds I ever spent, let me tell you" the voice of the Psychiatrist boomed overhead. "Going to revolution the mental health practice. Alright in there?"

She tried to yell 'NO!' but all it came out as *click*.

The container left the white room and continued on it's jostley journey down the corridor.

"Don't worry, it's a simple Arachnomorphosis. Perfect safe, perfectly reversible. Don't ask me how it works though - lasers and molecules. . . Anyway, I didn't want to tell you the specifics too soon as I was afraid you'd back-out."

Of course I'd back out! Anne, who was slowly beginning to comprehend what had happened, though.

The Psychiatrist entered another room of the Mental Health Clinic. A dim lightbulb flickered on. It was another sparse room, less futuristic than the last, with a large glass tank sitting against one wall. They approached it. A huge hand reached down, removed a section of the plastic lid, and then her container was lurched forward, swung upside down, and shaken violent. The cardboard floor, now the roof, was pulled away as she fell.

She landed heavily on the multicoloured gravel, all eight legs splayed, her mandibles clicking in fear and anger.

"You see flooding is where the psychiatrist, i.e. me, introduces the patient, i.e. you, to a vast amount of their feared stimulus, i.e. -"

Spiders, Anne screamed. There was dozens of them, clambering out from the leaves and dead twigs that filled the base of the glass tank, mouthparts chattering with interest, excitement, and hostility.

She ran. She didn't get far. She scrabbled against the glass wall of the tank with her four front legs, half climbing it in fear and almost tipping herself onto her back.

The Psychiatrist bent down to examine his patient's initial reactions interactions with her new arachnid peers. It wasn't a promising start, but one that was to be expected.

"Eventually, the patient accepts their fear. The mind cannot stay anxious forever." He tapped the glass in front of her. "You're the one with the yellow line down your thorax. I will make a note of it." He straightened up. "And I will see you in a week. For your re-evaluation."

He turned the light off as he left.