COLIN LOCKERBY FOUND himself once again spending his Friday night alone. He lay sprawled on his well-worn sofa, lazily indulging in emotional support snacks, and watching crap television. A stale, sweaty scent of neglect and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos filled the room.

For the briefest of moments, Colin wondered if he could muster the energy to reach for the remote control, but the effort was immense, and he concluded he was no hero. A nature documentary flickered on the TV screen, casting dancing shadows across the dimly lit room as the narrator introduced Colin to what he would be watching for the next hour.

‘The world of the Ochyocera arachnid is a complex and fascinating one. Innumerable rituals and duties fill their fleeting lives.’

‘Jesus Christ, not fucking spiders!’ Colin hissed in revulsion as the creatures swarmed across his sixty inch screen.

‘Spiders are usually considered solitary creatures. However, the Ochyocera live in vast colonies, a bustling metropolis, home to a thousand soldiers, all diligently subordinate to the whims and fancies of their singular queen–a much larger beast, and matriarch to a single genetic brood.’

A close-up of the spider queen rhythmically ejaculating her babies into a yellow gestation sac made Colin’s stomach churn. His gaze drifted to the centre of the lounge floor and an upturned glass under which he had trapped and condemned an unwelcome house-spider earlier that evening.

‘Mother and mate to her soldiers, the queen rules over her domain with an iron will, her subjects bound to her by an unbreakable bond of loyalty and fear. It is a position of unparalleled importance to the survival of the colony. Yet it is also a substantial burden. As the only sexually active female, she spends almost 99% of her adult life either mating or birthing.’

‘Are you watching this?’ Colin called out to his tiny prisoner. ‘You’re bloody disgusting, the lot of you.’

A broad shot of a thousand crawling spiders suddenly filled the screen as they converged upon a small lizard that had wandered too close to the colony nest.

‘What do you even need all those eyes and legs for? You’re just ugly fuckers, that’s what you are.’

Colin rolled off the sofa and onto his knees. He shuffled across the floor to the glass and bent down to inspect its contents. He glanced between the television and his captive, disturbed by how similar the spiders looked.

‘You all look the same.’

The spindly little body under the glass appeared weak, a result of dwindling oxygen and lack of nutrition. A sudden twitch of hairy legs made Colin recoil in disgust.

‘Argh! Bloody disgusting little thing.’

‘As the matriarch reaches the twilight of her years, other females may rise to challenge her for dominance. If successful, the victorious contender will take over the mantle of matriarch supreme. This is no mean feat, for once a new queen is established, the entire nest is purged of all traces of the previous allegiance.’

‘I’ve had enough. I can’t watch this anymore. And you,’ Colin glared at the spider, ‘you’ve definitely gotta go.’

He grabbed one of his discarded trainers from under the sofa and raised it, ready to execute the prisoner. Taking a deep breath to compose himself, he tentatively lifted the glass and slammed down the trainer upon the spider with all his might. A satisfying squelch signified the job was done, and Colin’s world was the better for it. He lifted his shoe, and what remained of the spider was a gooey, mangled mush. Colin breathed deeply and smiled a smug, self-righteous smile to himself.

‘Oh yeah! Who’s the daddy now, motherfucker?’

‘In her dying moments, the old queen excretes a highly potent pheromone, and at once, the entire nest of soldier spiders realigns its allegiance to the new matriarch. What follows is nothing short of carnage. The new leadership replaces the old regime, and the colony immediately sets about integrating the new queen’s genetics.’

From his periphery, Colin spied a tiny movement. He quickly spun his head to determine its source, and to his horror, saw another spider. This one was slightly larger, and very much alive. It scurried out of the shadows and disappeared under the television cabinet. Colin sat bolt upright in shock, staring at the dark gap the spider had disappeared into. It was then that he noticed movement from above him … another spider.

‘In unison, as if sharing a telepathic connection, the entire colony of soldier spiders advance towards the new queen with a singular compulsive objective: that of repopulating the colony. Thousands of soldier spiders converge upon the new queen…’

Colin held his breath in terrible anticipation.

‘…and begin the mating ritual.’

Tiny little spots of light appeared in the shadows of the room. From the ceiling, from the floor, from under the sofa, from the light fitting, from all around. Thousands of tiny little pinpricks of light. As Colin shuffled back toward the sofa, the tiny lights swayed with him, following his every movement. It was then that the terrible truth of his predicament revealed itself. The tiny lights in the darkness were, in fact, eyes, thousands of little eyes, all transfixed upon him. Slowly the creatures emerged from the shadows, all spindly legs and twitching pincers, baying for a clearer view of the Queen-slayer.

‘What ensues is akin to a scene from a horror film and certainly not for the squeamish. Thousands of spiders, intoxicated by the death spray of the previous queen, are filled with a supernatural and animalistic desire to mate.’

The spiders, as one, charged at Colin, a mass wave from all directions of eyes, tiny hairy legs, and fangs. All frenzied, not in anger or revenge at the death of their queen, but filled with a frantic, beastly desire to copulate.

‘They charge the new queen, without decorum or care, tearing at each other in their desperate bid to impregnate her. This barbaric and vicious ritual can last for days, if not weeks.’

Colin let out a desperate scream as he scrambled up from the floor, but in doing so fell with an outstretched hand upon the glass, and it shattered, cutting him open and causing him to drop once again to the ground. This time, his head connected hard with the wooden floor and instantly subdued him. Through the pain and the haze in his eyes, he stared beneath the sofa to see yet more spiders. And then, as if some silent telepathic bugle had sounded, the spiders charged. Within moments, Colin was enveloped in a creeping darkness of legs, eyes, and fangs. He disappeared beneath the heavy carpet of tiny arachnid bodies, all frenzied in a sexual heat, desperate to rape their new queen. Burrowing into every hole and orifice they encountered and then creating their own if they didn’t. They disappeared into his ears, and eyes, nostrils, and mouth, forcing their way into his eye sockets, beneath his clothing, and even into the fresh bloody wound in his hand. Colin’s screams soon became muffled whimpers as the squeals of a thousand ecstatic spiders began their long and violent act of mating.

‘The matriarch Ocyocera arachnid, an ancestor of the common house spider and easily mistaken for one by the untrained eye, will have earned a position of respect and diligent authority for the rest of her years–If she survives.’