Davis scratched at his belly as he slept, absently thinking that gum was stuck there, but it was a clump of clotted blood, a spider bite. The bite became red, spreading across his abdomen. It hurt to scratch. And he was hungry, terribly so, constant and painful, a need he could not satisfy.He put ointment on it, and then the scab was impossible to get off. Davis finally dug it out, and hundreds of things fell out, tiny black dots that grew legs, and scampered away, baby spiders.

He woke up at that, terrified that his stomach was full of baby spiders and then relieved. He picked at the edges of the scab until it finally came off. Nothing fell out, but there was an inside bit that came out and that looked like a dead spider. He looked at it, waiting to wake up again, but he didn’t.