[ IP ] Spider 's Lair .

Venom tastes weird. Do n't get me wrong, I'm no arachnophile. Just a normal guy, trying to make his way in the world. 
 
 
 
 
 But the spiders. Oh, the spiders! They crawl up the walls, the glass windows, the chandeliers, and even those stairwells the Lost Ones built. They lay their webs along it all, encompassing everything. 
 
 
 
 
 There really is n't anything to worry about the spiders. The small ones will scuttle away from you, so anything you ca n't see is n't a threat. Even the bigger ones - with their infectious bites - do n't do much. It's the monolithic ones that are scary. Spiders the size of dogs, wandering abandoned hallways, their eight hairy limbs lumbering around. 
 
 
 
 
 I do n't worry about those ones; they're quite rare after all. Only the most daring explorers come across them. Where I was going, there was nothing to be afraid of. 
 
 
 
 
 I looked down into the water. I could not determine whether or not it was clear or murky in the moonlight. My lamp provided a faint glow that caused the surface to glitter an orange color similar to a sunset. Not that I've seen too many of those. 
 
 
 
 
 I rowed on. The small, wooden raft ( boat was a bit of an overstatement ) drifted on. Only my thoughts did not continue. 
 
 
 
 
 In front of me was a pair of stairwells. The flooded bottom floor came up to the edge of the stairs, their rusty metal plates half-submerged. Ripples from my raft revealed a noticeable line indicating the usual water level. pulled myself to the stairwell. Its handles were rubber, oddly enough. As I stepped up to the second floor, the stairwell shifted. I do not know why the Lost Ones built their stairwells this way, but now was not a time for questions. I lifted my baggage from the raft. 
 
 
 
 
 I always visited ruins with the same supplies: A large, leather package, empty save a few small notebooks, foodstuffs, and a cylindrical bottle of the Bitter Pills. The notebooks offered me some security; should my body be found years later floating face down in the water, at least I could be identified by someone. Whether or not this was reassuring to me, I was not entirely sure, but better safe than sorry, as the Lost Ones used to say. 
 
 
 
 
 I lit my flashlight. It created a pillar of bright light in front of it - truly a masterpiece of the Lost Ones. It was powered by silver cartridges found only in ruins, often labelled, `` batteries'' ( I am told the correct pronunciation is bah-tries ). The Lost Ones did not find as much use for these as we do, I'm told, though how true that is is n't entirely known. 
 
 
 
 
 As soon as it was lit, I began observing my surroundings. The floor around me was littered with tiny, black spiders, each running from the light. My boots crushed them underfoot, which, I must admit, while necessary, was also quite cruel. 
 
 
 
 
 I began to walk up the stairwell - slowly at first, then, as soon as the gentle shifting of the stairs subsided, began to take large bounds. As I did, I observed my surroundings: pillars of painted concrete, now chipped and torn, held up a second floor above the submerged first. I waddled toward the empty shops beneath the fleecy cobwebs. 
 
 
 
 
 Piles of old, torn clothes littered the ground. The Lost Ones had surplus - so much that most of it still remains to this day. Should I have taken a liking to a tattered jacked, per se, I would simply have put it on. There was no real danger to it, as most of the supplies were still in good condition. Still, I had taken a liking to the tattered clothes on my back, and would rather not replace them with the equally-tattered clothes on the ground. 
 
 
 
 
 I was looking for supplies: metal scraps, nails, ammunition, weapons, and food. Also, a better pair of boots would be a nice gain from this exploration. I fumbled through what I could. And my attempts did not end empty-handed. About an hour after I started, I found a small pile of screws beneath an upturned trash can. A few links of metal chain soon followed. 
 
 
 
 
 I was almost ready to leave when I noticed something glittering across the balcony. It was large and metallic, so, without much thought, I walked over to investigate. I walked around a large, circular balcony overlooking the stairs, careful not to make a sound. When I reached the source of my curiosity, I spent several minutes observing it. 
 
 
 
 
 It was a small, metal table, with multicolored buttons and lights on it. It looked as if it had been turned off for years. But what stood out to me seemed unreal: a large, metal pipe, complete with a rounded red tip. Almost no rust was on the cylinder. Greed overtook me, and I attempted to remove it from its holder; no matter how hard I pulled, it would n't budge. I was almost about to give up when it clicked. 
 
 
 
 
 The cylinder fell out, but not before turning on an ancient machine. It hummed and vibrated with life, as if the entire building had been merely hibernating for so long. Then the screeching started. 
 
 
 
 
 The rust from the stairs scraped against the walls of the stairs, as they began to move, until the entirety of the stairwell was moving in a single direction, and one could stand on a single step and ride it all the way down. It also made a deafening noise. 
 
 
 
 
 I heard a flutter behind me, and did n't bother to look. I ran around the balcony, and right as I turned onto the stairs, I looked over the railing on the opposite side, and saw the largest spider I have ever seen. 
 
 
 
 
 It was roughly the size of a man, in height, though its legs easily filled up the space of a large bed. It scuttled toward me at an astonishing rate. I ran down the stairs, which were humming under my feet. Even the top stairs were wet ( indicating to me that the machine merely cycled through stairs, rather than create and destroy them as I once thought ), and I found it difficult to not slip. 
 
 
 
 
 When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I leaped forward onto my raft. The momentum of my jump pushed the raft forward, and, just as my raft was about ten yards away, I heard a loud crash as the spider jumped over the railing, and onto the nearly-malfunctioning stair-machine. I looked back to see it struggling, and, as a last ditch effort to paralyze its prey, began spitting venom from its large fangs at me. I ducked and covered as best as I could, only to feel it splatter on my shirt. 
 
 
 
 
 Oh, the spiders! They can kill. They killed off an entire generation before us. The Lost Ones died in an Arachnogenocide years ago.
