Caught a spider in a glass and let it go, but then I didn’t wash the glass and put it back. Now I’m waiting to see who drinks from it first cuz you just know what’ll happen.

Come on down to the common room at Golden Flower dorm and place your bets!

I've been sick ever since that night in the common room. Fortnite with neural interface mods, telekinetic air hockey, and that creepy Cat Statue staring at me. I swear she stares at me wherever I go.

I think I caught some kind of bug.

I woke up that night with a fever, my skin itching all over, and feeling like I was going to throw up. I grabbed a glass from my dresser and barfed up all this white stuff. It was wet going out, but as soon as it hit the glass it turned dry, and sticky, like cotton candy.

I haven't been able to get out of bed since, and keep hacking up the stuff. The room's a mess.

Anybody seen my roommate?

I'd been in a fever for days, and when it finally broke I found my room was a mess. It was like wet tissue paper had been spewed on everything and dried. Had I been just tossing my kleenex everywhere? No wonder my roommate left.

My joints were so sore, crawling out of bed was torture. Standing was a chore, and even the slightest movement of air around me felt like sandpaper.

I had to claw my way through the fibrous white gunk to get to the door, and it was there, to my horror, that I found him--my roommate, Jiminy C. He was slathered in the white mess, pale and weak, but as I wiped the gunk away from his face, he stirred and looked at me. And screamed.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!"

“Dude!!!! You’re a SPIDER!!!!”

It took awhile for Jiminy to stop sputtering.

“Look at yourself! Look at your arms!!”

My arms were long. And hard. And hairy.

Jiminy had been trapped, horrifically pinned by the sticky white sputum, and watched my transformation over the course of days. My bed had become my egg sac, and what he saw crawl out was different from what went in.

Somehow I was still able to form sounds through my mouth parts.

"The... door...."

I used my claws to tear Jiminy free from the dried webbing, and together we scraped the rest from the door and cracked it open.

"There you are! I was wondering what happened to you guys. What's up?"

It was Candy. My sort-of girlfriend. Standing in the hall with a plate of cookies.

It felt good to stretch my legs. Also the first time these spider legs had ever been stretched. I was much bigger than before though, and there was barely enough room for Candy and I to walk side by side in the halls. Jiminy walked behind us. He was used to being a third wheel.

"So, you're a spider now," said Candy.

One thing about Psyhigh is you don't get stared at in the halls. Other students will just rightly assume they're hallucinating, or you are, or it's a glamour or you're messing with their heads. Or they'll assume you're an actual giant spider, which is also no big deal.

"Oh, it's you, Scoty. Didn't recognize you there for a minute."

It was Frank, the Hobo Spider, hanging out in the breezeway.

"Hi Frank."

Candy was taking me to the cafeteria, since it had been days since I'd had a proper meal.

There was a sign taped on the door.

CAFETERIA CLOSED, BY ORDER OF THE SOUTHERN CHEMICAL GIANT

"Waddaya suppose THAT means?" asked Candy.

She gave me a screwball look, tore the yellow tape off the doors and swung them wide.

"ACK!! ACK COUGH COUCH SPUTTER ACK"

White smoke billowed into the hall.

"WHO DARES DISTURB..... THE SOUTHERN CHEMICAL GIANT??!"

“It says here that the Southern Chemical Giant collapsed like 100 years ago, back in the seventies”

Candy was reading from an old copy of the Anthropomorphic Corporate Journal in the library.

“It liquidated, and the surrounding area was declared a superfund cleanup site, and it was never seen again.”

“That thing in the cafeteria sounded pretty convincing.” I was learning to work my mouthparts much better.

"Stuff like that is hard to contain. It gets into the water cycle. You know, pesticides..." said Candy.

Candy was sitting on one of those old chairs at a table in the library. I'm too big for chairs, so I was just kind of filling space, standing in the room. Candy came over and put her arm around one of my forelegs.

"I'm glad you're here. I think this Southern Chemical Giant could be bad news. The signs are all over the place now."

Candy and I hadn't really... touched... since I became a spider. I'm extra sensitive now, so it's way more intense for me. But my exoskeleton is hard, and covered with spiny barbs.

"I'm sorry if my skin is kinda... rough."

Candy stroked the hairs above my big eyes, just below the other eyes.

"I think you're a handsome spider."

SUMMER FUMIGATION SPECTACULAR

The warmth of summer always brings a special glow to campus. Flowers are in bloom, lawns are getting mowed, and class schedules are reduced. That's why it's a great time to fumigate!

This year's freezing cold winter, followed by the exceptionally torrential spring, created the kind of dank, festering ooze that squalid, tenebrous creatures love to lay their loathsome eggs in. Now that summer's here, those eggs are hatching in droves, basking in the raging, unfiltered UV rays beating down through our crippled atmosphere. As a result, the school is literally crawling with vast armies of tsuchinoko, death worms, slobbering ghouls, redcap goblins, and spiders.

The school has partnered with the Southern Chemical Giant to utilize the latest in organic and humane pest removal methods in ridding campus of this foul scourge. You'll be seeing their signs throughout campus as they work their magic, all leading up to the culmination of their chemical ritual this Friday, the Summer Solstice.

Students are requested not to enter any areas cordoned off by the Southern Chemical Giant, and to wear appropriate protective gear and rebreathing apparatus both indoors and outdoors at all times until the haze clears.

Sincerely,

Big Jim
Student Activities Coordinator
Class of '99

Drifting banks of smoky gas filled the gardens of lower campus. Candy and I crept through them. Jiminy had fashioned me a rebreather, fitted to my giant spider head, out of his lantern. Candy had hers on too, but wasn't wearing enough protective coverage elsewhere.

"Hey, you're not either, Mr. Spider!"

At the center of the gardens, near the slimy old pool, you could just make out the altar. It was composed of massive structures--a huge alembic, a gigantic athanor, a monstrous Moor's Head still--all standing up on gargantuan prong legs, as if they were enormous bronze spiders themselves.

"AVICIDE, BACTERICIDE, MOLLUSCICIDE, NEMATICIDE!"

It was the Southern Chemical Giant, emerging from the fog, calling his incantation.

"There he is!" said Candy.

For a giant, he really wasn't that big. He had to climb to reach the top of the Hessian crucible.

"HERBICDE, INSECTICIDE, FUNGICDE, RODENTICIDE!"

"GO!!!" Candy cried.

My eight, much longer legs traveled faster than Candy's. I crossed the small lawn and hurled myself at the spindly legs of the crucible.

"VIRUCIDE!!!!!"

The Southern Chemical Giant fell into the crucible as it crashed, his body fizzing and dissolving and sputtering in its toxic spew.

The crucible lay broken on the lawn, oozing red muck into the slimy pool.

"Liquidated. Once again." said Candy

After the poisonous gasses cleared, Candy and I worked our way through the wreckage.

"@Big Jim will be here soon. We should go..." said Candy.

Still, we couldn't help ourselves. The red ooze that had seeped into the pool was still bubbling, and the equipment of the altar was strewn all around. We counted seven broken flasks, each with a different kind of bean-shaped pod inside it.

"I think they're still... pulsating..." said Cindy.

I began to roll each one up in a ball of silk. I couldn't really help myself. It seemed like the natural thing to do, lifting each one up in my forelegs and covering it with a stream of webbing.

"Look! Bubbling out of the pool!" Cindy cried.

The algae-filled muck of the pool had turned black, but bobbing up to the top was a big white egg.

"Can you catch it?" Cindy asked.

I lifted it out with my long, spiny legs.

"Quick! Before they come!"

And we skittered off into the wood with our prize.

"That darn cat!" Candy gave me her crazy screwball look.

We were lost in the wood. I had crashed us a path through the bracken, escaping with the egg, but I had no idea where we were. I'm more of a house spider, I guess.

Somehow I had led us to a small clearing. The morning fog was breaking up, and blue sky was starting to show through.

And there, standing in the middle of the clearing, was that creepy @Cat Statue. There was a big silver bowl in front of it. Just the right size for the egg I was carrying in my forelegs.

"You don't think this is somehow... related, do you?" Candy winked.

I'd seen the @Cat Statue around campus. A lot of people had. But it was always in the background, part of the scenery. It had never come up and confronted me before.

"Who you gonna trust, eh? It's not like @Cat Statue has ever tried to poison the whole school," Candy said. "Maybe she knows what to do with it. Maybe she's the only one who *can* do something with it?"

It's true. The Southern Chemical Giant was kind of out of our league. We were lucky to get out of that alive.

There was just something about the @Cat Statue I didn't completely trust.

"There's something about the @Cat Statue I don't completely trust," I said.

"Well, sheesh, it's a cat! Give it a break!"

I set the egg into the bowl.

"Hey look! A trail!" said Candy.