It was a Wednesday afternoon when my exploration team and I were hiking down to the bottom of the hill to venture into a dusty old cave which by the looks of it, hadn’t been entered in about twenty years. It was an old book that was being pulled out of the shelf for the first time. The huge weighty door creaked and shrieked as we were heaving it open. The first step I took felt like I was stepping into a dungeon. I was quite uncomfortable as I had a fear of tight spaces and we had to crawl through parts of the cave which were literally sometimes thirty centimetres around.
We almost stopped breathing as we were trudging through dank, dark passageways that smelt of stale air and sand. To my great relief I discovered that we were approaching a larger standing area that could fit about fifty people, about one quarter of the way through the cave, to rest for a few minutes, but something was blocking my path. Something monstrous. Something hairy.
“Come on keep going” bossed Jono following me.
“Wwwait” I stuttered “what is that th th th thing in fffront of me?! It, its HUGE!” Sure enough it was a spider the size of a dinner plate just dangling there in front of me by its web, which was as wide as rope. I tried not to move as I was too frightened that it might jump out at me, but all of the pushing and shoving behind me caused me to fall forwards face first into the spider. I could feel the long bristly hairs brushing my eyeballs. It was staring at me with thousands of diamond like eyes. I couldn’t shuffle back because so many of my mates were jammed up behind me. I could see the beast’s blade like fangs creeping towards me about a hairs width away from my flesh… Screeeech the fangs pierced my skin in a split second. The pain was immense. It was as if its venom was scratching each and every one of my nerves. I was rolling on the floor foaming at the mouth. It was a piranha tearing my flesh. I was having a fit. The spider landed on the floor and bounced around a little bit before it jumped up to Alex the team leader but he hit it away with a rock and it smacked against the wall like an egg splattering. I can’t remember much after that but I seem to recall Alex approaching me with a syringe (well it was more like a harpoon) and injecting me with some sort of green liquid. I awoke in a musky old den eleven days later with my leg muscles still spasming. I was feeling really confused about what had happened. I think that the spider’s venom must have erased part of my memory.
I find it quite ironic that I overcame one fear but from then on had a fear of spiders.
Roman Giuffré
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