The streets were eerily quiet. The alarm had cried out a warning before the Tendo household widened its scope to the whole city. It was not the quiet of sleep, but that of the grave. The street lamps cast a warm orange glow on the sidewalk. A tall girl with waist length indigo blue hair walked silently, knowing that she would be the first to know of this new threat to her town. She looked up at the sky and saw a large cloud of black. At first she thought it was a swarm of insects, but she could tell by the shape of them that they weren't insects at all. She ran to her closet and grabbed her binoculars, and looked at it.
Long, thin appendages crossed over each other. The strange design of the swarm made it look like a spider's legs. She was frightened as she watched the swarm, but her expression quickly changed to one of curiosity. Suddenly, the swarm began to move. Smaller ones broke off from the main body and flew about the town. She was surprised by this. Why was it moving? They should all be dead by now. Winter was already taking over the town and the swarm should have died with it.
As the swarm approached, she could see the human features developing in the spiders. These features were a bit more exaggerated than she had seen on Earth. The two most obvious were their heads and tails. Their heads were far larger than any of the alien drones, and rounder. Their mouths were small slits and their internal organs were visible through them. Their tails were as long as their spindly bodies, and they swayed side to side. The other features were smaller and led to a more spider like appearance. Their eyes were small and round, and their shoelace shaped pupils didn't move. This could only mean that they weren't putting out an image. A musical tone suddenly emanated from their mouths. It was steady, higher toned than A-flat, and the tone went on for a long time before changing to a deep bass tone. She pulled out her earplugs to listen.
As the swarm neared the house she showed up in the window, and she watched the giant spiders crawl up the porch and over the windowsill. Their smooth, shiny shells made them look like painted wooden spiders. Some of the tiniest spiders were climbing out her bedroom window and through her air conditioning vent. They were so small they were completely black, like the insects that haunted her childhood nightmares. The girl told her mother that she couldn't sleep because they were getting in. She wouldn't tell her mother what she was seeing as far as the spiders were concerned. Her father scoffed at her fears, but she heard his footsteps as he crept up the stairs of the porch and into her room.
The window was covered with spider-like creatures. More approached the room through the vent, and a few hung on to the window sill and made their way into the room. They ran down the side of the bed and across the blanket. She fell back, gaping at the black mass of spiders that had suddenly entered her room. As they slowly made their way across the blanket, her fear quickly turned into empty shock. Suddenly a voice caught her attention. She stood up with a jerk, and the blankets slid off the bed.
"What's the matter with you?" her father said as he turned on the light. "I heard you cry out, so I came up. . . . What the hell are these?" He held up the closest one. It was covered in red spots and was thrashing around like a loose thread on a branch. He let it crawl into his hand, despite his mild disgust.
That was when the swarm of spiders hit. Its size was beyond what she had imagined. Its millions of legs bounded forth, and she was thrown backward into the presence of her father. The shattering glass almost didn't hurt her at first. Her body had been covered in hundreds of small pincers. The spider legs pushed her eyelids open, and they promptly pulled off a large chunk of skin. That was when she realized how much pain she was in. The movement of the swarm had moved a mixture of blood and spider legs across her entire body. Her screams were lost in the millions of wriggling legs that started rapidly seeking out her face. The swarm was drawn to her eyes, and they began to glow. Her eyelids filled with a glassy sheen. All the spiders around her froze, seemingly frozen in place as if they weren't sure what was happening. She felt her head fall back against her spine, and she was able to see the swarm through her legs. Her eyes fell on a very small thing. It was black, and covered in red spots. It was covered in thick, silky, black hair. The spot was the size of a dime, but so perfectly placed you had to wonder if it hadn't been painted on. It was precisely on her pupil. The eyes lit up, and her body convulsed. A great warm burst of pain rushed through her body, as if she had been dipped into a boiler and she could feel every fiber of her being being exposed. The screams of her father joined her own, as his skin was pulled off by masses of the critters. The lips of her mouth peeled off and she could feel her teeth separate from the gums. She could feel her muscles and tendons pull apart from her body as she convulsed. She couldn't see any of the swarm through the websbing in her eyes, but the spiders were still coming out of the vent and the cracks in the window. She could see several glowing around her, many of them stumbling around. The wound on her face was quickly closing, and she could feel the healing as it began.
Her father stood in the doorway and watched as the swarm of spiders that had entered his daughter's room made their way out. They rolled from her bed and across the floor, covering the carpet with a black, silk-covered blanket. They swarmed past him, scrambling in one frantic mass, towards the vent in the floor by the door. They crawled through it, protecting themselves in a tight formation. He could feel the presence of the swarm in the room, and it sent a chill down his back. He walked to the center of the room next to the bed. He reached down and picked up a small brown spider. It was covered in red spots and had a white belly. It screamed in his ear. He dropped it, and it ran under the blanket. He plucked up the blanket and threw it in the closet. Picking up the vent, he flung it across the room, where his daughter's posters were hanging. The side of the vent had been broken open, and he could see a large black tear. It was empty.