I had an insane dream in the early hours of this morning.
I was at my parents property in north Queensland, standing by the shed to the right of our house if facing from the back yard. Towards the rear peak of the shed was a small hole in the corrugated iron, and through this hole flew an endless stream of flies. Not the annoying little domestic flies you may see stalking the cake crumbs on the kitchen bench that you forgot to clean away – I’m talking massive, monstrous blowflies that you could imagine feeding off wild buffalo carcass in the 45° outback heat. They were the size of bumblebees, and heavy to the point that their overworked wings were having difficulty keeping their bodies afloat in the air.
There would have been thousands of them, possibly even tens of thousands, all appearing out of nowhere from this hole and flying in a relatively straight line towards our house. I followed them for a hundred metres until I arrived at our carport, just to the right of the garage, where I was faced with a scene that any arachnophobe would rather select suicide over. Instead of a car, the area the blowflies were flying right into was full to the brim of thick white spider webs, complete with countless enormous and excited arachnids of all colours and types, their labyrinth of adhesive mesh bringing the journey of the poor flying insects to an abrupt end. Among others, I recognised tarantulas, golden orbs, redbacks, huntsmen, funnel webs, wolf spiders and birdeaters. God knows what else was there.
The spiders would pounce on the flies the very second they found themselves entangled. I could see their fanglike chelicerae penetrate the outer skeleton of every one of the blowflies, the venemous injection killing them on the spot, before cocooning them with their neverending stream of silk to keep them fresh for use as a future meal.
I stood there for a few minutes taking in this scene before me. The combination of spiders, web and blowflies eventually became so thick that I couldn’t see out the other end of the normally car-filled space any longer. It was then that I noticed a strange crawling sensation on my face, as if there was a pitter-patter of tiny feet beginning around my lips and meandering toward my neck. I placed my hand on my face and quickly retracted once I realised tiny, baby spiders were populating my palms. My mouth opened, and out of it vomited a black stream of these diminutive creatures. They had used my stomach as a breeding ground and were now escaping into the world, ready to grow and wreak havoc on any blowfly unlucky enough to cross its path.
And then I died.
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It’s a good thing I’m not scared of spiders huh?