'Spiders' by Miranda Kate

Lucy screamed.

“Hit it! Hit the bloody thing! Quick!”

Max remained calm on the sofa, and looked to where she was yelling and pointing.

“It’s a light bulb, Lucy. I took it out yesterday when I was changing it.”

Lucy looked at him incredulously. “Max it’s got legs, it’s moving. Look!”

He looked at it. It just lay there.

“It’s not Lucy.” He turned to the telly and flicked channels.

She jumped up and grabbed a magazine off the coffee table. “Well I’ll do it then.”

She whacked the windowsill with the rolled up mag and there was the popping sound of glass shattering all over the floor.

“Argh! It’s running towards me!” She continued hitting the windowsill.

Max frowned and yanked his eyes from the telly to see what she was on about. He leapt from his seat as the thing scuttled up the window. He backed up to the door.

“Bloody hell Lucy, it’s huge!”

“I told you!” Lucy backed up too, joining him at the door. Then they heard a rustling from the corner of the window, and several more fanned out across the wall.

“Oh my god there’s a whole family of them!” Lucy pushed Max out the door and slammed it shut quickly, holding onto the handle as they stood panting in the hallway.

“What do we do now?” Max was never good in a crisis.

They could hear a scratching sound on the inside of the door. Lucy’s panicked eyes flicked around them as shadows in every corner seemed to move.

“Run!”

They bolted for the front door, screaming as they ran down the garden path out onto the street. As they stood on the pavement panting, they looked back at the house which seemed to be sprouting spiders from every crevice until it was a mass of crawling blackness. They heard more screams as their neighbours joined them on the pavement, and watched as each house was taken over.