Black. Why is everything black?

Everywhere I looked I saw the same, black, black, and more black,

up, down, anywhere I looked an endless abyss stretched out before me. It was as if I was looking at the night sky except that it was lacking stars. An annoyance that was behind my eyes flared up into a sharp pain.

Ugh, and this headache is killing me, what the hell happened last night

I recalled the events that happened the night before, or rather, I tried to. I could only get to the part where I went to bed, anything before that was gone. How drunk did I get? Wait, no, I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. While I did enjoy the occasional beverage, I didn't drink it for the alcohol per se, I just liked fruity mixed drinks and I highly doubt I got drunk off of that, I never did.

So, what did happen?

Knocking me out of my reverie came a certain numbness from below my waist. You know that feeling in your legs when you sit in a certain position for too long and it screws over your nerves or something? That feeling that can only be described with what old TVs showed on screen when there was static on the screen. Cosmic background radiation I believe it was called, an interesting remnant from the big bang almost 14 billion years ago. Yikes, my unlimited supply of useless science facts surfaced again.

Well, basically that feeling was all that I could feel down there, increased tenfold, to the point where it actually hurt. Is this what they call a lucid nightmare? Where you are in fact dreaming but you can still feel pain and fear?

I had become interested at some point in the concept of Lucid Dreaming and tried out certain techniques to induce them as a way to escape the boredom of reality. Being able to fly and slashing people in half with a sword seemed a lot more attractive than winning imaginary arguments in the shower.

I had read this could also backfire completely and get you in a state where you lost all control of your body and inherent panic would set in. I wasn't sure if that was what I was experiencing now but it was the only thing that could explain what was going on right now. At least I wasn't panicking... yet.

God, I hope the boogeyman doesn't show up.

I regretted my thoughts almost immediately as I felt a cold trickle down my spine, like a drop of water or a finger gliding down my back.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck I jinxed it.

Panic started to set in as much as I tried to suppress it, I knew fear would only make this worse, I had to think rationally in face of the irrational, ironic.

Okay let's try to wiggle my toes.

Nothing, no luck.

What? Where were my toes?

I read that toes were one of the few things you should still have control over when in sleep paralysis. Internet, you have failed me!

'Okay, backup plan, try to think very hard of a place where you want to be and will yourself to that place, this is your world you can do anything you want.' I tried to reassure myself.

I needed to get a grip on this godawful nightmare in order to get out. I tried to think of the playground across the street from my apartment building. It was a simple place, a wooden seesaw, a swing set and some tunnels in an artificial hill for small kids. I tried to imagine what it looked like but all I got was a blurry image, I knew the objects that were there but it seemed as if I was unable to visualize them.

Okay, What is actually going on? I was damn sure I knew what it looked like, I saw it so many times in a day when walking to the kitchen, how could I not see it right now?

I was getting frustrated. I was not necessarily panicking, I always managed to suppress that emotion fairly well. I was just getting incredibly annoyed that whatever I tried didn't seem to work. I sighed in resignation; the next step would be to try to relax fully.

And so, I did. I tried emptying my head of any and all thoughts and just let my mind play out whatever it wanted to. This turned out to not be a whole lot of things.

Nothing happened whatsoever besides this killer headache continuing to wreak havoc on my brains.

After what felt like an eternity, but I guessed would be closer to an hour, maybe a bit more, hell I had no idea if the concept of time applied here, I decided I had enough of waiting. I opened my eyes slowly, secretly hoping to just wake up in my bed. To my disappointment, but not to my surprise, I was still drifting in this endless void.

'Fuck', I simply thought in the maddening silence, for lack of better words to describe the madness I found myself in.

I jerked my head back and was met with a jolt of pain from the back of my head.

Right, seems we're doing this the hard way.

I repeated the motion and felt the pain getting worse.

After all, what's the worst that can happen?

Again, I jerked my head back and I swear I could actually see a speck of light in the distance. After another jerk and load of pain I saw it get closer and expand into a small beam.

Gods, I hope I'm not dead or dying, if I am, please let there be something else than this. An eternity of floating around in empty space with the worst headache in the history of headaches did not seem to be a kind fate, after all. After I jerked my head back yet again the pain shot forward and merged with my headache into an explosion of pain and my vision went dark.

I did not know when I did regain consciousness. This killer headache never seemed to have gone away, however. For some reason my eyes did not open as easily as I was used to, my eyelids seemed to have been shut tight with some kind of light adhesive. When I did get them to open my vision was all blurry, lots of black to the left and a ray of light coming in from the right side as if someone was looking for something in a dark room with a flashlight from above.

Ugh, at least I was back, or well, I thought I was. When I did not feel my mattress under my back but instead a hard, damp, rocky surface I knew something was amiss. When I combined that with the fact that I still had this infuriating headache and the fact that I still could not feel my legs, or arms for that part, I came to the conclusion that something was wrong, very wrong.

This time I did actually start to panic, I could only suppress it so much. Did I get drugged? All clues I gathered led me to believe I did. Memory loss, pain, loss of sensation. Then again, logic so far has failed me. The real questions were: How did I get here, and how do I get out of here? Also, where the hell was I in the first place?

My hearing was the first sense that seemed to work normally, as I heard all kinds of sounds that I was not used to in my semi-urban life. Songs of birds came from the distance and reverberated in whatever chamber I found myself in. Mixed in between I heard the hooting of an owl.

Directly to my right I could hear the drip, drip, dripping of water on a rock, I assumed some had got on my shoulders and hair too since I felt a sticky mess of my long hair on my shoulder and back.

I quietly waited as my vision got less blurry over time. Most of the blackness remained, however, confirming that I found myself in an actual dark chamber.

While waiting I was silently praying that the worst thing I could imagine had not come to pass. A gust of warm wind rolling over me interrupted my thoughts and confirmed what I had feared. My body was fully exposed, naked and left for dead in some damp cave in a random forest.

I had been drugged and most likely raped afterward. I could not feel my arms or legs, had no idea where I was, and would actually risk dying if I could not find a solution to my immobility issue. Perhaps the only blessing in my situation was that I could not remember a damn thing.

I wasn't someone to easily break down and cry, but I actually felt broken in this moment. The psychological stress combined with the physical pain and numbness, the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness made tears form in my eyes.

The ray of sunlight had snapped me back to reality when I felt it warm up my shoulder. This allowed me to see part of my body for the first time since waking up in this dark place and what I saw shocked me. Even with my still slightly blurry vision I could see blood all over my shoulder and breast. Parts of it had dried but there was still a lot of fresh red liquid sending me into further panic mode.

My long hair that used to flow down and stop at the bottom of my shoulder blades, that I took care of and pride in, was stained with the color. It had been blonde once but now all I could see was red literally dripping from it.

I was not yet finished freaking out over all the blood when I saw something move in the corner of my eye. Turning my head left I tried looking what was going on in the direction of my lower body. Surely enough, something moved?

I squinted my eyes forcing to see through the blur, when I did my vision became much sharper than it had been up until now. Some long black shadowy ''thing'' was raised in the sky. After adjusting to the dark after few moments and focusing even harder I saw more shadowy black things raised to the sky, then another.

One of them suddenly twitched and I felt my heart sink as I started to get a clearer image of what it was. It was a spider leg, a massively oversized hairy spider leg. My mind screamed, my mouth would have too, but no sound was produced.

I FUCKING HATE SPIDERS, my mind went blank with pain and fear. The blood started to make sense to me now,

IT FREAKING ATE MY LEGS. Oh god please, no, don’t let me die like this.

Another sudden twitch from multiple of those nightmare inducing limbs made me bash my head against the wall behind me in shock and knock me out.

I was floating. Was this the end? Drugged, kidnapped, raped, left for dead and eaten by Australia's Ultimate Lifeform? What a shitty fate this was.

I wondered if my family would miss me. Thinking of, I couldn’t picture my family. I couldn't remember who my family was. I couldn't remember names, nothing. Hell, now that I thought about it, what was my own name? When did I forget? Was this my soul being stripped of my memories?

When I opened my eyes, I found myself back in what I initially thought of as a nightmare. The same black abyss that was hell for me earlier now seemed to be preferable over what I had experienced just now.

Confused. I was utterly confused as to what was going on. Was this still a dream? Was what I experienced a dream in a dream? What kind of inception shenanigans were these?

A false awakening, I had read about those before, where it would feel like you woke up but you were still actually in a dream. Did that mean this was a dream in a dream in a dream? My confusion knew no bounds, it made my head spin. Spin, but not hurt, it seemed my headache had disappeared, a small light in this darkness.

I sighed in annoyance.

'Now what?' I thought in fear and desperation. I didn't care anymore; I had no idea what was real and what was fake. Everything seemed to blend together to create one completely messed up dream, or rather, nightmare scenario. I didn't know what to feel anymore, and honestly, I didn't care. I just wanted this to end, one way or another. It seemed my wish was soon granted as I felt myself grow numb and my focus slipping away. I wished I would never have to go through this again.

I seemingly awoke in the same place that I did earlier, except this time I felt... fine? No headache, no static in my legs, no numb arms, no blurry vision, it made me wish and hope what I had seen earlier was just a hallucination, there was no way spiders that big existed anyway, right?

Was I actually awake? What should I do if I was? It seemed my only pressing issue was figuring out where I was and figuring out how to get home. Home... now that I thought about it, where did I live again?

I seriously seemed to have a severe case of amnesia; I could not manage to put simple things together in my mind such as where I lived and who my family was. I was from the States, I knew that much, which State specifically was lost to me at this time. I guessed I would have to get out of this hole, wherever this was, find civilization and work my way from there, somebody was bound to know where I lived, whether it be police or people familiar with me.

I let out a long, audible yawn. I had never woken so messed up before, which was not a hard thing to state given the extraordinary circumstances that I found myself in. I rubbed my eyes and started thinking of what I could do to get back to my life.

While rubbing something felt... odd. I took my hands away from my face and looked at them. Sure, they were caked in streams of dried blood, I was still alive so I guessed wherever the blood came from was not lethal. No, what really struck me was that in front of my face, in the very dim light of this dark place, I saw two pairs of hands. No, I wasn't drunk. Was I having a stroke?

I followed the dark shapes, from the hands to my shoulders and found out that they did indeed connected to my body.

The fuck?

I grabbed my right wrist with my left hand and I was sure this was not an illusion. I then grabbed the other wrist on my right side and surely, I felt that as well, but somewhere else entirely.

WHAT THE FUCK?

I stared in a dumbfounded manner at two sets of arms, MY two sets of arms. What the actual F happened to me? I could open and close them, I could move them, I could feel them. I was shocked, I did not know how to feel, sure I had four arms which wasn't natural in any way. I may have been slightly freaked out but not overwhelmingly so.

What happened? Was all I could ask myself.

I grabbed a strand of my hair and held it in front of my face. Sure, there was blood mixed in between but I could not deny the fact that my hair was red, through and through. It was blood red where I expected it to be light blonde.

I looked at what had become of me from top to bottom. Hair as red as blood, then my shoulders with arms, beneath that was another set of arms. Tracing further along I noticed my chest, were they smaller? Now that might be the first thing that actually could have had me smiling, if only I could.

They had been too large before, at least in my opinion, to the point where my back actually hurt. People would be surprised to know that extra-large generally isn't preferred by the wearer. They were by no means small right now, though.

Moving down I could not help but notice an incredible itch down my waist. I had to squint my eyes again to be able to see what hid in the dark. Shock struck me again when I saw the faint outlines of what literally drove me into the wall before. I felt no pain or panic, heck, nothing could surprise me anymore, after all.

I sighed as I felt my mind take on a way too nonchalant attitude towards my predicament.

'I am so not okay with this', I repeated to myself, but found no meaning in those words, as if it were a lie, my mind playing tricks on me.

Right on cue, I could see a twitch happening. I have to say somewhere deep inside I felt comfortable with it this time around, eerily so, I obviously shouldn't be, I knew this. What was wrong with me?

''Fuck, this isn't happening.''

I managed to speak for the first time and noticed my pitch had changed, it sounded much more feminine and softer than what I was used to. This definitely wasn't me, or at least, not before.

After hearing my voice, and quite honestly admiring it, I bent over and ran my hands down my exposed body. When I almost got to my waist, I felt tough hair poke into my hands like needles. I gritted my teeth and allowed my hands to go down further until my skin stopped being skin and was replaced by the same hair that poked into my hands a few centimeters earlier. I mindlessly tried to find the skin under the hairs and found a hard smooth surface beneath.

I exhaled slowly and was lost in thoughts. I kind of knew what was going on, but still refused to believe it, I mean, who would? It's not every day that your arms get replaced by double the number and your legs by quadruple the number. At least that's what I supposed had happened, I hadn't counted them yet, and quite frankly, I wasn't looking forward to it.

I fucking hated spiders.