The black night shrouded the old asylum, with the exterior lighting dimmed and affected by its gloom. Its stone walls radiated a dark and cold presence, confusing the warm summer month. The lightning tried to illuminate it more but only caused brief shadows that led to a more haunting look.
  He laid there and stared wide eyed at the wall across from his bed. Drool slowly oozed out of his mouth. He was on his stomach, where they threw him last onto the uncomfortable and poor excuse of a mattress. The hard stone floor might be more comfortable for him.
  He could feel the spiders crawling all over him. The medicine they gave him was slipping, his cocktail of numbing drugs. ‘They were not real,’ they told him, but they were to him. A tear in his mind. A hole that could not be closed they came through. He saw it in front of his eyes and close to his face. Regardless of if his eyes were open or closed. It was visible only to him. The drugs and their constant pricking or biting made him immobilized. Each prick was a small and quick drink that drained him.
  They chattered in a constant, irritating noise that never relented and could drive one mad. The chattering was like the insistence of children who only can think of themselves. He could feel a thousand of their feet moving across his body. The not so soft lacing of their feet that spiders walk like fingers across keys on a piano. ‘Make it stop’, he desired to scream, ‘give me back the drugs’, he wished he could demand at the empty room.
  Mental exhaustion from his ordeal was an understatement. The need to scream for a thousand years laid deeply suppressed within him. His anxiousness rose to new bounds from his need, conflicting with his inability to get up and get them off of him, and it continued to rise with each passing second.
   It was the year two thousand and twelve, or at least that was the last year he remembered. Before he was just a fun guy who worked little and partied a lot. Made some money and sometimes bad choices as one typically does in life. Then one day, he noticed a tear in his vision. The tear obstructed his vision and could not see around it or through it. He hoped he was just a little ill or exhausted, so he lied down for a nap. When he awoke, it was still there. The tear took the shape of the state of Maryland, if one was to look at a map. Then along came a spider. The spider was behind the Maryland tear in his vision. It poked a leg slowly through like a thin plastic wall. Once it poked its leg through, it was game over for him. There were three, then five, then a dozen, then dozens, and then so many more he lost count. He never liked spiders to begin with. The drugs they gave him helped a lot and he could not see them or feel them. It also made his days go by so fast. He missed being himself and free, but that also meant spiders everywhere.
  He wondered why the drugs had lapsed and where the nurses were. He had been so heavily drugged that he slept most of the day away. They would dose him twice a day and bring him to the main hall. There, he would eat and interact little with the staff or the other ill residents. Then they returned him to his room. The drugs worked on twelve hour cycles. It was later in the day than it should have been. A nurse should have already come to take him to the main hall for his food and his regiment of drugs.
  Each second, a combination of a nightmare and torture, slowly pass the hours by, which felt like days due to complete awareness and assault by the spiders. He cried from his misery and prayed that a nurse would soon be by to give him his drugs to ease his torment and to slip him back into a drug coma. All he had was hope in those moments and visualized a nurse walking in to help him.
Suddenly, he noticed he could move a few fingers. All his anxiousness and torture twisted into a hot anger of action. He slowly regained more movement, and from that, he convulsed and spasmed. Some spiders retreated while others bite him more often. His suppressed emotions urged him onward with his desire to kill every one of them. He flopped on his bed like a fish out of water. In his retaliation against his capturers, his movements caused him to fall out of his bed and onto the floor. The hard stone floor came to him quick, and he slammed his left shoulder against the floor with his head bouncing off of it. He was not in control enough to prevent his fall. It was all gravity. The pain shot out at him from afar and it helped recenter his reality through the tangle of drugs, like a shout down a dark tunnel.
   He laid on the floor, trying to regain the control of his limbs, clear the cloud in his head, and to understand why he was no longer drugged. There was no time to wait, though. The spiders redoubled their efforts to contain him. They came at him from all sides and he saw six descend from above him in midair on their strings. They worked their way slowly towards him.
  There were many web bridges that crisscrossed the room and a dozen more spiders crawled along them. There was an order of traffic among them. The translucent, interdimensional spiders went about their tasks in their grinding busy life. He was their main vessel or entry and exit into this existence. They tried to corral him and attack him from the left side and then tried from the right side. They would leap on him to overwhelm him and all simultaneously bite him to drain him. He fought on and on. Time passed of this fighting and he eventually rolled on his stomach and got on his elbows. Their multitude of bites drained him and he could tell, but with the drugs slowly wearing off and his adrenaline kicking in, he could hold out against them.
  The constant chatter of each and everyone of them had grown exponentially loud and overlapping with an energetic noise. He would cover his ears, but he was trying to use his hands to escape. Their noise only increased his haste. If only he had some drugs. He crawled to the door and pulled himself up by the knob of his left arm that was throbbing from pain. His right arm was still immobile. They swarmed him, but he focused on his escape and the door. Once in a while, one would crawl out of the interdimensional rift in front of his eyes. His legs pushed a little, but not enough to stand up on. He tried to turn the knob but was unable. They crawled down the door, over his hand and down his arm. Their hairy bodies he could feel against his exposed flesh as they crawled on him. He clung to the knob like a cliff, afraid if he was to let go, he wouldn't be able to get back up. Their bites subdued him and weakened him. Crawling up on his face and biting his skin and one even bit his eye.
  He went ballistic, full of adrenaline. He slapped himself silly at the spiders, killing them. Their transparency seemed to vanish with slight pressure. Thankfully, no guts or residue of the large tarantula like spiders remained afterwards. In the reprieve of the last spider assault, he rested some. The urgency to continue rang loudly in his head. He knew the next swarm would be upon him soon. He had some strength in his legs and got to his knees, and he turned the knob, but it was locked.
  He could not believe he was trapped in the room. The walls and ceiling of the small room seemed to move in on him. He panicked at the thought of being there any longer. The twenty or more strands of web that the spiders crawled on felt closer. Lightning flashed outside, and the lights flickered. The boom of thunder was close by and mocked him for its freedom. He continued to turn the doorknob in desperation. A sound of a cry for help left his throat, that seemed small and silent in the crowded room. He was sure a man screaming was nothing new and would attract little attention in an asylum. There was no room for reason, only action.
   Maryland displayed fully in front of his vision, a little longer than the length of his thumb. It obscured his vision with it being directly in his line of sight. He had to move his head to see clearly what was in front of him. He didn't need to see the spiders descending on him again from the bridges. A dozen came and with them, their loud and constant chittering.
   He turned around and saw them. Their fat plump hairy bodies wiggling their legs and working their way toward him. He could not make it out, but he thought he could see them flexing their teeth, eager to bite him. He pounded on the door more urgently and screamed with all his might. Their chittering filled his ears and mind as an offbeat and dreadful symphony. He turned back around and froze in fear. Their descent seemed to slow. Their inevitable claim upon him with their constant bites that drew no blood but drained his energy.
  He lashed out in fright and desperation against an enemy that would never relent. He sat up and swung around, slapping the spiders that were the size one of his hands. Some he deflected, but others got on him. They bit him as soon as they could. The sharp sting of bees was what it felt like. With the bite, he slapped them. Their bites sunk into his soul and left him feeling depressed and unresolved to stand. He collapsed in the corner against the door, feeling weighed down and low on energy. He tried to shake the feeling, but it was there and there was nothing to do but feel it. His defense also slowed down, but he still brushed them or slapped them away.
   In his lethargic state, he noticed something. The asylum was an older building. Above the door was a glass window that was open a little and the spiders were crawling through it back and forth. A small flicker of hope emerged in his state of despair. It was large enough to crawl through.
Freedom. Though, he knew he would not really be free, but he could not think beyond the constant Maryland dimensional phenomenon staring him literally in his face. He took what he could get. In a sudden rush of a small amount of happiness and a goal he knew he could achieve, he stood up and moved the bed. He had thankfully regained all his motor skills as he stood up on the bed and began his journey through the window above the door.
  He broke their highway strands as he stood up and spiders went everywhere. He must have broken twenty strands, and some clung to him while others fell away. The suddenness of this confused the spiders, as some lept at him and others scurried away.
  In his constant battle for his sanity and escape, he did not have time to reason out their highway strands around the room. He looked through the window and to his astonishment; the spiders were not only in his room but had built highway strands in the hallway as well. Hundreds crawled along the opposite wall and highway strands back and forth across the hallway. Dozens poured through the window opening and scoured him.
  “They aren’t real,” he lied to himself as he pulled himself up, trying to ignore their swarming of him.
  Their chittering was loud. Lightning flashed and several seconds later, thunder followed. He tried to shake them off, but they held on. His chin reached the window as he attempted to climb through, but could not get himself high enough. His feet dropped back on the bed. He attempted a second time and pulled himself up. The spiders were biting his knuckles, hoping he would fail again. Too many bites to count. It was like a storm of bees. He got his left elbow over the edge and that helped as he pushed himself up over the edge of the window.
  Lightning flashed, and the lights went out completely. In the darkness, the grip of gravity claimed him once again. The fall knocked the wind out of him and the only thing he knew was pain. The darkness and pain completely disoriented him. He laid twisted in confusion of what was up or down. In the dark, he saw nothing but the bright light of Maryland shining back at him, not helping at all. The onslaught of spiders subsided from his fall, taking many, but not enough. Always too many spiders to kill.
  The bites he endured left him in a heavy depression, and he rolled over onto his back. Their bites zapped him of his energy and will to get out of his room. His eyelids felt heavy and was ready to drift off into sleep. Their random stings upon him felt almost like someone else and not him. He just wanted to lie down in a graveyard plot and pull the dirt over himself like a blanket. And for him to hold the roots of yellow flowers in his hands with the green stem and yellow petals above the ground for others to see.
  Suddenly, the lights came back on. He slowly opened his eyes to see a long hallway. His eyes burst wide open at the realization he got out of his room. Hope blossomed within him and gave him a second wind. He ignored the drowsiness and slapped at the spiders that still clung to him. Pain shot through him as he moved his left arm too quickly. He must have landed on his left shoulder when he fell, again.
  Hundreds of spiders crawling on the ceiling deeply disturbed him. They stayed focused on their tasks as obedient soldiers do and paid him no mind. Just at the sight of them, he became overwhelmed and felt guilty and responsible for their existence outside of him. A spider crawled up to the dimensional gateway and raised its front four legs up towards him. It was not trying to crawl out, but perhaps trying to communicate with the others. The jittering began immediately and, like always, was insistently. It’s stupid eight eyes glared back at him in their disgusting ugly and hairiness. He rolled over onto his right hand and knees and began crawling down the hallway. Unknown if it was the correct way or a dead end.
  He thought that his whole life had become a dead end. His frantic actions from a desperate man. Afraid of standing that they would get him quicker, his knees quickly became sore on the hard, smooth, and cold stone floor. He pushed through it and continued onward.
  He came upon a ‘T’ intersection and peered around the corner on his right. There were iron bars that blocked the hallway that had a door in the middle of it. He saw a man sitting at a desk with a tv on it. The tv had sounds of laughter that only made him angry. There was nothing funny anymore. That stupid spider in front of his face still waved its arms up towards him. Then he heard behind him the chittering. He looked back and saw that they had regrouped and were coming for him. They crawled down the wall he was closer to and some re-diverted their attention from their task to him and spun their web down to the floor to come towards him. The one in front of his face was directing them. If only he could reach through and squeeze it to death, but the portal was only one way.
  He went toward the iron bars. There was no time to think, only fear of the multitudes of them and being covered with them again. Their sounds grew as he crawled on his knees and with one hand. He did not know what would happen when he got to the bars: either salvation or more of the never-ending nightmare. He had no option but to flee, and he did just that. The sounds were even closer to him. All he could think of were their bites, feet, hairy bodies all over him. He got up on his feet and ran with all his might. They were not as fast as him.
  He ran into the iron bars with a thud. Panic rose to get the locked iron bar door opened as he fought it and shook it, hoping it would suddenly open. He forgot all about the man sitting there who must have the key. The tv show laughed, but he felt like it was directed at him and his futile attempt to be free of it all. He looked over and finally got a good glimpse of the man. His desk was a disheveled mess filled with empty soda cans and candy wrappers. The man was sitting and leaned back in his chair with his feet propped up on his desk. He sat covered with hundreds of spiders and wrapped in their translucent web. The guard’s eyes were wide from fear and panic. He seemed immobilized from the spiders.
  The spiders were real. A sense of dread and shock entered him as he looked down at the guard. All his hairs stood on end at the realization. He wanted to laugh, to cry, and to scream at his horrible nightmare was no longer a nightmare. The chittering was approaching him from down the hall. He saw spiders descending slowly upon him from above. They were all growing desperate; including himself. The guard left the old metal key on the table. He quickly grabbed it and unlocked the door and ran as three landed down on him. He slapped at the feeling of their feet on him.
  He ran down the hallway, and there were still hundreds above his head. He never noticed before, but there were going through the windows above the doors. They were feeding off the other patients. He came to a corner and heard a telephone ring. He stopped, fearful of how many staff would be in the office ahead, and trembled at the thought of if his life was only going to be filled with fear constantly. The spider that was rallying the others had vanished at some point; he did not realize when that was. He slowly walked forward towards the office. Of course, there were hundreds of spiders going in through the window above the door, but also the door stood wide open. The phone kept ringing and ringing. After ten rings, it would quit and start ringing again. The spiders were no longer chasing him. He must have out ran the group, but he knew he needed to continue to flee. He did not know where he would go, but he just wanted out. The door was opposite of him and he had his back against the opposite wall. Slowly walked over to glimpse inside. He saw dozens of highway strands and saw one of the staff in the chair. The person sat covered in their web and hundreds of spiders. The phone rang with emergency and continued to echo loudly. He quickened his pace at seeing the first cocooned person and then saw two others. They were all doomed. He bolted into a run again as the phone continued to ring out.

   Maria jumped a little at the lightning flash.
   "I hate lightning," she spoke aloud to no one. She went back to her notes and writing the report quickly while standing in the hall. She was a latina doctor that was in charge of the night shift. Her boyfriend was a handsome bartender, and she worked nights so they could be on the same sleep schedule. She was great at her job and everyone loved her. Her beauty helped, but mainly her personality.
   The lightning flashed again, and she jumped again, angry at herself and the lightning.
   "Dios Mio!" she cursed under her breath. She knew it was an irrational fear, but she still seemed to jump a lot during thunderstorms.
   "Why can't we get anyone on the phone from the third wing?" she asked, annoyed.
   "I don't know. Maybe the storm or something..." Mark said with his eyes closed and one hand over his eye. He had a cup of warm coffee in front of him.
   "Mark, what is wrong with you? Why are you so sleepy?" she asked him.
   "I don't know. I have had three pots of coffee. I just can't seem to wake up," Mark told her.
   "That is a lot of caffeine, Mark, and a lot of sugar that I know you put in your coffee. You need to be careful. You might get diabetes," she warned him.
   "I know I will get diabetes. My father and uncle both died from it," he told her.
   "Mark... Mark!" she startled him awake. "Call them again! We need to finish those transfer papers by tomorrow and they have the files."
   She briskly walked away from the front desk. She did not like to stand still. Some of it was her fear of being fat like her mother, some was the lightning that night, and other was she did not like her office. It smelled like the day doctor. She respected him, but that was it. He was a creepy man in love with her.
   She went back into the office and sat down at the computer. After five minutes of typing an email, she got up and walked back to the front desk. Mark was still fighting off sleep.
   "Mark, did you get ahold of them?" she pipped.
   "They aren't picking up," he told her.
   "I am not walking down there to get those files. I can't! I have too much to do here. Can you go get them?"
   "No, you know I can't leave here, Miss Maria. They will fire me," Mark told her.
   "Mark!" she pouted.
   "Miss Maria, I was looking forward to not working for a white man for a change. But you yell more than any white boss I ever had."
   "My mother was the loudest on the block where I grew up. My brothers would get in trouble all the time. They could hear her on the other side of town. I am docile compared to my mother. If you want me to yell, just ask me. I maybe short but I can be very loud," Maria told him. A phone started ringing in her office. She rushed back in to answer it. She was hoping it was the third wing, but it wasn't. It was a wrong number.
   "MARK!! Could you please go get the files?!" she yelled from her office.
   She walked back out while filing out a form on a clipboard. She did not look up, "Mark!?"
   "Miss Maria, you know..."
   "Mark, I will take full responsibility. And I have seen your job. It is little of nothing. You are to answer the phone and greet the visitors. We have no visitors, it’s night! And push the button if there is trouble. I think I can do that while you are away... getting my files we need."
   "Miss Maria..."
   "Go or if you don't, I will tell them we don't need you on your six month review!"
   "Miss Maria, that is low down," Mark told her. He stood up and grabbed his warm cup of coffee and walked out from behind his desk. The phone rang and even though he was closer, Maria sprinted around and answered it before he could get close. She shoo'd him away with her hand, encouraging him to get the files.
   The person on the phone started talking about something that was not about a hospital and she hung it up. "See? It was the wrong number, again. Now go get those files!" Mark started walking towards the third wing and along the way was about to grab another sugar packet for his coffee but then Maria yelled, "And no more sugar!!"
   Mark sighed and put down the packet and walked into the main hallway. Then a man came running down the hallway.
   "Dios Mio!! Why is a patient running around!?" Maria yelled. The man locked eyes with both Maria and Mark and froze. Maria pushed the button for help at the front desk.
   "Maria, you didn't just push the button, did you?" he barked at her.
"Mark, a man from the third wing has escaped, and no one is picking up the phone down there. He might have killed them!"
   "He has no blood on him," Mark told her.
   "Something is going on. How can he have escaped?" Maria asked. Mark had no response for that.
   
   He looked up at the black man holding a cup of coffee. He was an attendant and covered with spiders. Not as much as the men before, but enough. The woman at the front counter came around and looked at him from a safe distance.
   "Why is he looking at you like that?" she asked.
   "He is crazy. Why do they do anything?" the black man replied.
   "Just stay right there, ok?" she told him, "Mark, make sure he doesn't leave."
   "I know my job, Miss Maria. Been here for ten years," he put down the coffee cup and walked towards him.
   "Look man, just keep cool, alright?" There were a lot of spiders on this man and he didn't want to get close to them. He backed away from Mark as Mark slowly approached him. He had noticed there were fewer spiders in the halls here.
   "What is your name?" Maria asked him. He gave it to her. She ran around to the desk and looked him up. "He is non-violent but heavily medicated by his delusions. We need to get him his shot," she told Mark. He noticed Maria had no spiders on her. It might have been she moved around too much or there were not enough here. She left out of sight and it was just him and Mark.
   "Everything is going to be ok," Mark told him as more spiders came down upon him. He could see them bite him and as they bit him more, the heavier his eyes got. Mark shook his head at the sudden onset of sleepiness. The man grabbed his coffee and took a drink and rubbed his face sleepily and yawned. He felt like this was his chance. He started walking away from Mark and around the corner to the main door.
   "MARK!!" came a voice behind him. It was Maria with a needle and Mark jolted back awake from her yell and realized where he went. Mark rounded the corner and quickly got in front of him.
   "Sorry Miss Maria," Mark told her, "I got him!" Standing guard in front of the double doors like a goalie.
   "Where the hell are those guys at?" Maria asked Mark rhetorically.
   The chittering background noise he had gotten used to, and it was a little more quiet than usual. Then that all changed. Within Maryland interdimensional portal, a much larger spider appeared. It's chittering was louder and stronger; commanding. It started its chit chant and all the other spiders joined in. A louder and slow rhythmic chit chant. He then saw two men walk around the corner further down the hallway. Something was off about them.
   "Ok, we just need to give you this injection and everything will be ok," Maria told him, holding the syringe in her hand.
   "No... NO! Don't you hear them? It’s louder now! The spiders!" he yelled out at them.
   "What spiders?" Maria asked.
   "I told you he is crazy, Maria. Don't pay attention to what he says, just focus on drugging him," Mark told her.
   "I just came from the third wing. They are all covered up in spiders. All I see are their eyes!"
   "Spider eyes?" Maria asked, freaked out. Lightning flash and she jumped a little.
   "They are all over him. And all over the others down there. They are just sitting there, wrapped in their cocoons. But now... the big spider... Maryland..."
   "What the hell is he talking about?" Mark commented.
   Maria was getting a little freaked out over what she heard. She told herself it was all a coincidence. The other two men slumbered forward as if asleep and dream walking. Their eyes were all he saw with the rest of them covered with spiders and the webbing. They had spiders all over their heads and it was as if they were controlling their movements. They all chitted with the large spider.
"Noo.... NOOO Don't you see them? They are being controlled by the big spider!" he yelled at them. The two men lumbered forward towards him. Maria noticed how they walked in a zombie like state.
   "What is wrong with you guys?" she asked them.
   "Just really sleepy. I can't seem to wake up," one of them told her.
   "Hold him down," Maria ordered.
The chittering pounded in a rhythm and grew louder as the two men held him down. The spiders crawled off the two men holding him. Bee stings from their bites as the needle moved forward to put him under.
   "We need to get this guy tied down so he won't escape anymore," Maria commented to no one as she injected him.
   "NOOOOoooooo!!!!!!!!" he screamed and fought with all of his might as the drugs took effect.