The Spider Diaries: Part 1

By Isobel Archer

In every town, in every home, behind every wall, there lives a house spider, plotting vigorously to scare the pants off every human in its sights. But there is one little girl who begs to be different. They call her The She-Devil. She absolutely adores them. So much so she keeps them as pets...to torture later.

But behind the wall, fugitive house spiders Bateman, Parker and Carmen have bigger problems. They must take on the vicious Spider Army, led by the sinister General Raimi, and attempt to take back their home... With no plan, no help, and absolutely no hope whatsoever.

Everything you thought you knew about spiders is about to change forever...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isobel Archer
• Release date: Jul 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310439056

Isobel Archer

Isobel Archer was born in South Wales. She lives with her husband, two children, and three dogs. And she is terrified of spiders...

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THE SPIDER DIARIES

PART 1

Written by

Isobel Archer

THE SPIDER DIARIES, PART 1

Copyright © 2015 by Isobel Archer

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

The right of Steven Jenkins to be identified as the author of the Work has been asserted to him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Different Cloud Publishing.

ISBN: 978-0-9932836-2-8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Bateman’s Diary

The Bedroom Wall

Velcro’s Pain

The Chain of Command

General Raimi

Fight or Flight

The Lone-Wolf Spider

Monsters

Confessions

The Glass Jar

Carmen

The Pipe

The Eight Commandments

Parker’s Diary

Mother Of God

The Interrogation

The Double Dare

The Firing Line

Raimi The Second’s Diary

Envy

About The Author

Other Titles

PROLOGUE

There is something very wrong with the house on Gilbert Green.

There’s dust everywhere, and the wallpaper has more bubbles than a salted slug. Everywhere you turn you can see half-eaten pieces of food—which is surprising really, seeing as The Fat Family owns the house.

Of course, that’s not their real name, but everyone calls them that. They seem to consume most of their food while watching TV in bed. Usually, when they rise in the morning, millions of food crumbs fall off the bedcovers and onto the carpet, which they happily leave there to rot and to attract the annoying ants.

Mr. and Mrs. Fat, also known as Lucy and Malcolm, appear to be a reasonably happy couple. Sure, Mr. Fat shouts a little when his food isn’t on the table on time, but that’s not too unreasonable for such a fat man. Mrs. Fat is the slimmer of the two, but she certainly isn’t the most attractive. At least he has a glimmer of good looks, lost forever in his baldness and obesity, but she, well, she’s another story altogether. She has white greasy hair, which makes it almost impossible to tell whether she’s as young as twenty or as old as sixty.

Despite living in such a bug-infested house, Mr. and Mrs. Fat both suffer from arachnophobia, which, of course, is bad news for them—but great news for the house spiders, the true owners of the house. Most of the time the hairy little creatures keep to themselves, trying to avoid being seen by crawling through the many cracks in the floors and walls.

But every-so-often they like to spend their time scaring the pants off their fat tenants.

Mr. and Mrs. Fat have two children, a boy and a girl. The boy is called Richie. He also suffers from severe arachnophobia. He’s fat, ginger, and ridiculously ugly. The daughter, well, she’s a completely different species. She does share the same love of food as the rest of the family—and she is extremely ugly—but for some, unfortunate reason she doesn’t seem to suffer from arachnophobia. In fact, she thrives on torturing and tormenting the poor, defenceless spiders. Many have died needlessly. That’s why they call her The She-Devil.

She’s every bug’s worst nightmare.

It can be a treacherous place for the hundreds of spiders that dwell in the house on Gilbert Green; however, there are much worse things to fear than The She-Devil.

But once again, that’s another story altogether.

BATEMAN’S DIARY

THE BEDROOM WALL

God I’m bored, I thought, as I sat on the wall of Mr. Fat’s bedroom. I had been sitting there for nearly four hours, and three of my legs had gone to sleep. I decided to try and wake them by tapping them on the wall, but of course that did absolutely nothing. It didn’t matter though, because I was too preoccupied with Mr. Fat, who had just woken up and seen me almost immediately. I could feel his terrified eyes burning into my fur. Mrs. Fat was nowhere to be found, so I thought that this was a good time to pester my fat friend a little. After several minutes, I slowly moved a few inches to the left; his staring eyes followed me closely. I stood still again for a couple of minutes, just to give him a chance to calm down, but after a while I thought it would be amusing to sprint to the corner of the wall. Mr. Fat was shaking in fear, and sweat was now dripping down onto his chubby face. I continued to observe his staring eyes—he somehow had the ability to avoid blinking for several minutes at a time. I began to wonder whether or not I should move a little closer to his bed, but then I would run the risk of a frantic slaughter by a Stephen King book or something. No, this was just as much fun.

I took a deep breath and sprinted as fast as I could to the other corner of the bedroom. This proved simply too much for our over-weighted hero to handle.

LUUUUCYYYYYY! HEEEEEELP!

Hearing a grown man—who’s twice the size of me, times about ten million—screaming for assistance is quite a satisfying experience, especially when the assistance is in the form of his dear wife.

Mrs. Fat burst through the door looking extremely hot and bothered. She didn’t offer much help. Instead, she performed a crazy gorilla dance in an attempt to scare me away. After failing miserably, she reached behind her and picked up a weapon.

Her weapon: A rolled up copy of Diet and Fitness Monthly.

Her target: A tiny House spider.

Her plan: To hit the wall as many times as possible with her eyes shut tight.

The result? An even more terrified husband.

I started to wonder how long I could stay in one position without being hit. But as the shockwaves from the striking magazine flowed towards me, I soon began to realise that it wasn’t such a good idea after all. Each hit came closer than the last as if the more practice she had at hitting the wall, the better she became. Either that, or perhaps she’d had the sense to open her eyes. I had to get a move on. Panic set in and I started to think I was about to get seriously hurt—or killed—and be forever immortalised as another stain on the bedroom wall. And just as that thought popped into my head, I was hit on my two back legs, propelling me off the wall and onto the carpet below.

All I could see was the darkness of Mrs. Fat’s foot from above. My rational thinking had taken a holiday, and I was left with a newfound ability to freeze. As the dirty white sock approached me, all I could hear, besides the muffled cries of: Kill it! was the familiar voice of a Spider shouting, Bateman! Over here! Quickly! Get up! I swiftly turned my head to see the face of the caller, but I could only make out