I Among Dogs

Chapter 2: Encounters

~ Day 0 – 5:49PM ~

Remember how I said I wouldn't be able to build a hut in less than a day? I guess I was glad that I ended up fooling myself. Over the course of five hours I had been able to build a small and decent house composing of a few fallen logs and large leaves strewn across the ground. I was more lucky that I was able to keep it held out without any rope to hold the structure into place. Let's just hope it stays like that.

One look at the sky and I could see the sun a good distance above the horizon, the daylight colour slowly turning to a very faint orange of evening. Night was gonna fall and I'd need to eat again before heading to sleep. At the moment, I was currently taking a slow walk just for a bit of exercise, all the while making sure to not stray too far away from the lake to avoid getting lost. The hallway of trees and shrubs just seemed to repeat itself like I was actually walking in circles instead of straight forward. Only very few things stood out in place like the occasional rocks or any wildlife in the area that I managed to get a good look at without scaring them off.

Eventually I stopped in my tracks when I noticed something ahead of me through the foliage in front of me. It was like a wall of dirt but to my left there was a cave-like entrance, bordered with vines. As much of a risky idea as it sounded, it seemed like a more better option for shelter than my makeshift hut that could fall apart at any given moment. Wanting to make sure however that no hostile animal had already made it's home in the cave, I slowly approached the entrance and called out.

"Hello?!"

My call echoed within the cavernous walls inside, no doubt having travelled far enough for anyone inside to hear but I didn't hear anything in response, not even the footsteps of any creature inside. I waited for a minute or so to see if anything would approach the cave entrance but nothing showed up. I slowly started to make my way inside, my footsteps being audible enough to echo a little but not as loud as when I called out. What only filled the silence was the very faint sound of moisture dripping from the ceiling deeper into the dark tunnels. Even with the light from the outside illuminating the first steps inside the cave, I couldn't find any evidence of anyone else having ever even set foot into the caverns. I soon blinked upon realising I had wandered far enough into the cave at the point where the outside light wouldn't be able to reach inside. I reached for my lighter, using the remaining light left and turned it on.

Turning on the lighter would prove to be a mistake as the very first thing I saw was the very last thing you'd want to see alone in a cave.

A rotting human skeleton laid against one of the cave walls. My heart was racing with terror, but not just from seeing the bones of another person who had possibly died much long before I even came here, but the fact that I could see that the skeleton was home to at least a dozen spiders. No, not spiders. Tarantulas. These were probably the biggest arachnids I had seen in my whole life, about the size of an adult hand. Now I wished I never went into this cave. There was no way in hell I was going to share a cave with a corpse swarmed by spiders big enough to devour a small bird. To make matters worse, some of the spiders seemed to had noticed my presence and faced me before rearing their front legs up and hissing, almost as if they were demanding me to get out. I was now hyperventilating at the sight before me, scrambling backwards and ended up tripping backwards on a rock behind me, making me fall on my rear end. I felt the lighter fall out of my grip as it's light went out, putting me in even more of a panic as I rapidly felt around the stone and dirt floor for the metal object, letting out a breath of relief upon feeling the cold steel. I felt around for the small switch and flicked it on, illuminating a horrifying image that will forever be burned in my memory. One of the spiders I had seen on the skeleton had made it's way onto my arm and raised it's legs, revealing it's fangs and there and then I knew what it was about to do. I screamed in sheer terror, loud enough to wake the dead as I swung my arm to fling the arachnid off before it could sink it's fangs into me. I immediately stood up and fled for my dear life, out of the cave within seconds. I will never go back in there, lest I end up in the same fate as whoever those bones belonged to.