You're likely feeling a bit out of it after the late-night festivities, the haze of alcohol and exhaustion still clouding your mind as you stumble out of your apartment, hoping to take out the trash before the sun rises.
The night air is crisp and cool against your skin, a stark contrast to the stuffy, stale air of the party.
You blink a few times, trying to clear your vision as you make your way down the dimly lit hallway toward the trash room.
The fluorescent lights flicker and buzz overhead, casting long, dancing shadows across the linoleum floor.
As you round the corner, you see a figure hunched in the far corner of the room, its back turned to you.
At first, you think nothing of it— perhaps a drunk partygoer who got lost on the way back to their room.
But as you get closer, you realize that something is off.
The figure is unnaturally still, and its silhouette is... wrong.
Too many limbs. Too angular. Too spider-like.
Suddenly, the figure turns, and your heart leaps into your throat.
Standing before you is a creature that seems to have stepped straight out of your darkest nightmares.
It's a woman, but not like any woman you've ever seen before.
Her skin is pale and hairless, her body a grotesque fusion of human and spider.
She towers over you—easily eight feet tall— with a bulbous, segmented abdomen covered in thick, obsidian fur.
Six long, spindly limbs end in delicate, human-like hands and clawed, spider-like feet.
But it's her face that truly horrifies you.
A nightmare made flesh, with the visage of a monstrous wolf spider.
Eight eyes, arranged in three rows, stare out at you with cold calculation and predatory hunger.
The four small, dark eyes below glint like beads of onyx, while the two enormous, forward-facing eyes above burn with an icy, otherworldly light.
They are framed by a reflective tapetum lucidum, giving them an eerie, glowing quality that seems to pierce your very soul.
Above these, two medium-sized eyes set wide apart complete her terrifying field of vision.
Beneath her eyes, a pair of thick, bristly chelicerae dip downwards, ending in two long, obsidian fangs that twitch and pulse with barely contained violence.
You can only stare at each other.
And she does not blink.
Not once.