Ani is seeing spiders and other creepy things on her bedroom ceiling just as she’s falling asleep every night. This story starts off like a horror or first-contact story, but there’s so much more to it than that.

The spiders always come just before I fall asleep. Not every night, but often enough, they erupt plague-like from the far corner of the bedroom ceiling, dangling overhead from invisible threads or dropping onto Carissa’s pillow. When I jerk away from the touch of their skittering legs, they disappear. The black and brown of their heavy bodies dissolve into shadow.