Unreal Serial: a new series of short stories in serial form.

Wicked Web, Part 1/6

The little spider didn’t mean to destroy human civilization. Like all creatures, its intentions went only as far as its imagination, and its imagination went only as far as its instincts. Thus, the only thing the spider thought that fateful night was of eating bugs. Humanity’s end was the furthest thing from its mind. That was but an unintended consequence.

Yet maybe it was the spider’s lack of imagination that did us in. It was a breezy, spring night on a mountain cabin porch overlooking an evergreen valley. But the spider didn’t weave its web around the eaves where night wind might blow. Nor did he tuck his snare between the porch’s wooden spindles or under the yellowed security light that attracted delicious gnats. 

Instead, the little spider strung its string across the door frame, side to side, corner to corner, back and forth, creating a crisscross as deadly as it was intricate. And delicate: Dan came out for a cigarette and walked right through the spider’s trap.