Frozen in total fear she had done all she could do. She was now cornered, trapped and exhausted.  Her frail body drained of the last drop of energy she had.    Her paralyzing panic left her unable to move a muscle and she couldn’t, even if she wanted to.

He had already spotted her again and he wasnt going to let her go now, especially after relentlessly pursuing her for so long. Why?

She wasn’t getting away this time. Up close she saw the coal black look of death in his eyes, the warmth of his stale breath weighed heavy on her body. He was after bloody satisfaction and going to get it.

Slowly, so slowly a thick, dark shadow enveloped her tiny skeletal frame like an icy shroud.  She made a futile, pathetic dash for the open door.  He preempted her move ‘Far too obvious, you foolish creature’ were the last words she heard.

THWACK!! It comes down on her like a meteor, embedding her in the floor. 

It is over.

He wipes the bottom of his shoe, turns to the little one “it’s alright.” he says “The spider is gone now.”

The above is a short piece of creative writing I jotted down after listening to a few authors giving tips on Itunes U.  I’ve been looking for a push to get back into my creative writing and was well and truly stuck.  Doing a few exercises and listening to Alex Garland chat about how he creates characters got me moving. 

The best thing to write about is what you know.  What you really know.  So, being an arachnophobic and having three, yes three huntsman in my home in the past month I thought that Charlotte was the perfect character.  I transferred my own paralyzing feelings of fear and panic when I come across one of these terrors and flipped it onto the spider.  How are they feeling? If they feel at all in those moments before being pounded into smithereens or gassed by Mortein!

The only picture of a spider I could look at without fainting