Short Stories

Story 1: Unexpected Inking

Prompt: You are showering one morning when you notice a tattoo on your body that you're quite sure you don't remember getting.
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I woke up in a sweat. I couldn't remember why.

It was Saturday morning. threw on a T-shirt that was a size too big and a pair of sweats. I trudged down the stairs into my little kitchenette, and popped a bagel in the toaster. Like every other Saturday, I went back upstairs to shower. I undressed, and stood under the hot running water.

My mind cleared, my eyes closed. I inhaled the steam that was rising from my body, and exhaled slowly, as if meditating. I opened my eyes after a few minutes of standing there and started to wash myself. As soon as I looked down, I saw a black mark right under my belly button. I tried scrubbing it away but it wouldn't even smudge. When I touched it, it hurt. I looked closer, and realized that it was a tattoo. I screamed.

It looked like a little spider, and I had terrible arachnophobia. I jumped out of the shower, whipped a towel around my body, ran into my room and fell onto my bed, breathing heavily. Thoughts filled my head. When the hell did I get a tattoo? I swear this wasn't here last night. All that had happened last night was, I got takeout pizza, spent about 3 hours calling my boyfriend, and went to sleep around 9.

Then I remembered. I had had the strangest nightmare.
—
In my nightmare, I was in the middle of the woods. I heard distant screams that came from all around me. The sky was black, and there was no moon or stars. The trees seemed to have formed a circle around me, keeping me from escaping, or even thinking about escaping. I started to sink into the ground, quickly, and as the earth enveloped me, my shrill scream joined in all the others.

But once I had fallen through the earth, I landed in a small dark room. I couldn't see anything at all and I wondered if I was blind. And then it started. First, just one, then another, then another. I couldn't move at all, and I felt my whole body tingling as small insect legs started climbing my body. There were hundreds. I tried to yell, but no sound came out. Even if I could scream, who would have heard me? The spiders covered every inch of my body and began wrapping thick layers of silk around me.

A red light started flashing and I could see the room I was in. I had felt it, but now I could see that I was tightly wrapped in spider silk. The red light revealed what had been hidden in the shadows - a spider. This isn't like a daddy long leg you see in the corner of your living room, or a tarantula you see in the pet store. This thing was huge; one of its legs was probably the circumference of my entire body; it's fang the size of your largest kitchen knife; it's 8 eyes like bowling balls. I was so terrified at this moment, and I sat there waiting for it to take my life. But it spoke. "είστε ο επιλεγμένος" it said. I didn't recognize the language but in two seconds my brain translated it. "You are the chosen one," it had said. And as it's fangs came toward my chest, I woke up.
—
It was a very scary dream. And it had seemed so real. But here I was, breathing, laying on my soft bed. I went into the bathroom again and looked in the mirror.

A little black spider 🕷 was tattooed right above my belly button; it was definitely connected to my dream. When I returned to my room, I almost screamed. Well, I did scream. There was a woman sitting on my bed. She had short, wavy black hair, and was wearing a sparkly, black dress. "είστε ο επιλεγμένος," she said to me. I stood still in my tracks. "You are the chosen one," she had said. It was her. It was the spider.

I started sobbing, and screaming. "What do you want from me?!" I cried out.

"Darling, it's okay. Your mother is here now." And she looked at me with all 8 eyes.