Out of This World Gaming [~ read description]

Chapter 6: Confession

"All right, have a great day at work." Clover waved Zander off, closing the door and sighing. It won't be long before Iris would wake up and run downstairs. She looked over at the crutches leaning against the couch - Iris's gait wasn't perfect, but the doctor cleared her of needing their support all the time now. 

With the time she had now, maybe she'd fix the child some breakfast before she woke up. Or maybe she'd be minimalistic this morning and whip up a couple mugs of coffee, assuming a small dose wouldn't harm Iris nor her sleep schedule. 

That was until she heard shrieking from upstairs. Her body jolted and froze as the scream resonated throughout the house; Clover thawed out and ran upstairs. As soon as she met a leveled floor and followed the sound of terrified shrieking, she found Iris backed into a corner of the hallway. 

"It's moving, Clover! Help!" Clover looked over at the wall. It was a spider, a mature black spider that crawled tentatively down the wall. Iris was motioning to run, but her feet remained frozen in place as her eyes stayed glued on it. "Delete it, please! Delete the creepy crawly!"  

"Delete?" Clover raised an eyebrow as she approached. 

"U-uh- I mean annihilate! I mean.. uh.. get rid of it, please!" Iris hastily corrected herself, begging for dear life. Clover's lips curled into a smile as a snicker rushed out between them. "You're laughing! I'm about to die and you're laughing!

"Relax, will ya?" Clover looked up at the spider. "This is what we call a spider, and I think if you took a closer look at it, you'll see that there's nothing to really fear." She walked closer as she informed, causing the little girl to flinch as she got in close proximity to the arachnid. 

"Nothing to fear?" Iris stole a glance at it, but quickly averted her eyes. "Just look at that! It has too many legs for comfort!" Suddenly, Iris's eyes started to glow a soft orange, her interface in her sight retrieving data about the lifeform in front of her. 

"It's a living thing just like you and me. The only thing it wants to do is survive. Just watch me." Clover approached the wall and extended her hand to the black speck on the wall. It crawled onto her hand without a second thought, causing Iris wince and watch as her hostess welcomed the arachnid. "See? There's nothing to be afraid of." 

Then Clover felt a small prick on her palm at the same time Iris stopped scanning the intruder. "Hey, are there such things as dangerous spiders?" 

"Well, of course. Why do you ask?"

"My scans- I mean past research," Iris lied through her teeth just barely, "made me realize that you're holding a Black Widow. It didn't bite you, did it?" 

Clover closely inspected the kind of spider it was. It was small, black, and her heart dropped when she found out that a red hourglass marking was on it. She screamed, "kill it!" She flung it off of her hand. It was thrown a few feet to land on Iris's dress to which the brief silence was interrupted by piercing screams of horror as she fumbled to run away. 

"Get it off me, get it off me, get it off me, get it off me!" She flew down the stairs into the living room. 

"Come back here so I can kill it!" Clover pleaded as she held one of her shoes in her hand whilst sliding down the staircase's handrail.

The spider clung to Iris's dress like a popsicle stick glued to a piece of paper. It almost blended in with the imprinted black rose blooms scattered on the clothing. Iris stopped momentarily to see where the arachnid went so she could dispose of it. 

It wouldn't be long before she discovered that it was crawling up her body towards her neck. With a deafening shriek, the artificial life form's hand rained down upon the crawler and tried to brush away the pest. Unfortunately, she was so blinded by fear that she didn't realize she accidentally brushed the spider off onto her guardian's body, much to the fright of her and Clover.