Transformation Stories

I woke up to a tickling on the end of my nose. It was a gossamer touch, but sharp, and enough to stir me into consciousness. When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing, only a black speck dangling above my face, drifting around by the force of my breath. Tiny legs flexed as it prepared to make another landing on my nose, then I realized that this small thing was a spider. And I hate spiders. I immediately screamed and brought my hand up, then smacked clear to the other side of my room.
I watched it scramble around on the floor, then it began crawling back towards me. Quickly, I jumped out of bed to my desk and removed a tissue from the box, then ran over and picked up the spider and put it on my windowsill and opened the window enough for it to escape. It seemed to look around, then walk out and hopefully down the side of my house, away to some other country.
I may have arachnophobia, and it would have been dreadfully easy to kill that little bug, but I could never bring myself to kill an animal, even one so innocent. I sighed and left the window open, enjoying the cool draft of air so early in the morning. I glanced over at the clock on my wall reading 4:27am, then stifled a large yawn and crawled back into bed, wondering how the spider got in here in the first place.
Later, I woke up to find that the gap beneath my window that allowed air passage, was now home to a spider web, as well as the car corner of my bed. I shuddered, and got out of bed to get ready for school, partially admiring the cunning of the spider to block bugs from coming into my room, and to catch bugs already in there, and partially hoping that it would leave as soon as possible.
--
The spider still hadn't left yet, and was ready to bring on the shoe if necessary. It was sitting on the web in my window, and closer examination at a safe distance revealed that this was a black widow. Maybe my eyes were losing vision, or I was going insane, because I'm pretty sure black widows do not make their homes in a cold place such as Alaska. Where could it have come from? I wondered greatly, then my fear for the creature grew. It definitely wasn't going to leave my room; such a warm, comfortable place would be hard to pass by.
--
When I woke the next morning, I found I couldn't move my right foot. Sweeping the blankets away, I could see that this spider was a very busy one. My foot had been secured to the wall my a very tough spider webbing. I had no clue where the black widow was (probably in my bed), but I had to get myself free. I scrambled over to my desk and grabbed a pair of scissors from the drawer. Then I began cutting away the webbing. It was difficult at first, but eventually I removed the tethering web, and got the web around my ankle to a very thin layer that I could not risk cutting into unless I wanted to injure my leg.
Then, the spider appeared next to my foot, as if examining the damage I had done. I started shivering when it crawled onto my foot, and then a wave of pain shot up my leg and through my body, sending agonizing tremors that could only leave me there on my bed, gasping. Ordinary spider bites shouldn't hurt this much.
The black widow left, then. It wandered back to the webbing in the corner of my bed and sat there, waiting. "Ashley? Are you okay?" I heard my mom calling me from the kitchen downstairs.
"Yeah... yeah." I groaned. "Just fine."
"Okay, well, we'll be leaving for dinner soon! Dress nice, okay?" she called.
"Yes." I gasped and jerked on my bed, trying not to make too much noise. Then, to my disbelief, I saw the webbing around my ankle twitch. Thin fibers of webbing stretched from the mess left on the wall and reached down towards my ankle, latching me to the wall. Then from my ankle, more spider web sneaked its way to my other foot, then pulled my foot softly to the other. I struggled and tried to yank my legs away, but the material was so strong!
Like small white snakes, more fibers wiggled their way up my legs, trapping me, and I knew that there was no way to escape. Wasn't this how spiders ate their food; trapped in its own webbing? The web was soft and silky and damp, and if it wasn't for my sheer terror, it would have felt... nice. Comfortable. I began crying softly when the material crawled up to my waist, then glued itself to my skin.
It had stopped moving, leaving me in a dreadfully uncomfortable position to contemplate what had just happened, and what would happen. The black widow had appeared again... above my face. My breathing was shallow as it came down on a single strand of web, then landed softly on my fingers and began producing more webbing on my hands. Then, the same process happened again. Only some webbing covered my hands, but the rest began snaking its way up to the top of my bed to the web the spider had already made.
It had planned this, I realized.
As the fibers reached the spider web, they latched together and began tightening, pulling me up from my bed to dangle. Movement was hard, and I could only turn my head to see where the spider had gone, or to see my mom come in and instantly begin screaming. She ran over and pulled the scissors from my desk. Then, she snipped a piece of the web, testing it, and I shrieked. "Mom! That hurts!" Neither of us could believe it, but this webbing was part of me, and I would share its pain.
"I'm probably going to be here for a while. Mom! I'll catch up on homework!" I suppressed a smirk at the look of disbelief and frustration that crossed her face. With that, she turned around and left, heading to work, mumbling something unintelligible.
I sighed, waiting for something thrilling to happen. Not even my cat had come up to visit me in the tortuously long time I was left hanging above my bed. Occasionally, I'd feel strange itches or feelings in my hips and legs; the part constricted by the web. Eventually, I had lost feeling in my legs and couldn't move my toes. After a while, the webbing grew thicker and larger and I could feel some sort of liquid from the webbing covering my waist.
I heard something snap in my hip, then I lost feeling there, too. I thought that the bones were being crushed or disintegrating, but for some reason it wasn't hurting... it only felt nice. More time had passed when I could move my legs some again, and they felt so much lighter and sleeker, but I couldn't feel my toes, like they weren't there. But I could move something else too, two more things, in fact, behind my legs. I could feel that my spine had extended to twice its normal length, and from it had grown three pairs of appendages, all of which I could move, barely, as they were curled up in this tight webbing, this cocoon I was forced to be in.
The cocoon had grown much larger now, and much heavier. Or at least, whatever part of me had swollen enough to bulge the webbing so much was very heavy. I could feel so many different joints and more of my body than there should have been. Then, I felt something give up near my hands. The fibers were loosening. And before I knew it, I was free! Or at least my hands were. I fell down onto my bed with the rest of my body still attached to the wall.
I reached forward and felt the webbing, and how wet and sticky it was. Then I heard some popping sounds and snaps, as individual fibers fell loose.
All of a sudden, the entire cocoon fell apart, sending the rest of me down onto my bed cold, damp, and covered in whatever liquid the cocoon had created. But the most horrendous part of all was the new body that was before me. What were my legs were now long, thin, black spider legs. Past that, six more legs lay curled up against my... cephalothorax? (I think that's what the schools called it...) Then, there was of course this gigantic, round black abdomen patterned with the signature red hourglass shapes of a standard black widow.
Carefully, I rolled over onto the floor on my stomach, then tested my eight legs and pushed off from the ground. Extending to full height, my head nearly touched the ceiling. I was at least three feet taller than I used to be before the metamorphosis. I felt my body again, amazed at how smooth and black it was, and how simply the hard exoskeleton of a spider blended into my skin just below the waist. Then, the tiny black widow walked up to me, and I'm sure I heard it say "You're welcome." before it crawled up the wall and out the window. I had a feeling it wouldn't return.
But what would I be thankful for from this? That I would now be forced to cure myself of arachnophobia? That this would make me better as a person? I didn't need a life lesson, but I'd grow used to this, I was sure. I walked over to the window and opened it completely. I crawled out of the window and onto the outside wall of the house, nearly throwing up at the thought of me sticking to a wall and looking down towards the ground, which seemed oh so far away.
I crawled up to the roof, and using some of the new organs I now possessed, released webbing of the same strength as the cocoon to the gutters, then set my new legs against the strand. Slowly, I generated more web and sank my way down to the backyard, landing in the garden.
It was strange, having all of these extra organs and limbs, and wondering what my health instructor would think of me having two digestive systems, two hearts, etc, but maybe I should thank the spider. Hopefully being half-black widow won't be as frightening as actually seeing, and meeting, a black widow.