This story is about 5,800 words so I am just posting a piece of it.

It is about a guy (Josh) who ends up in a plastic Pepsi bottle as a result of a college professor's experiment. The professor put him in the bottle for safekeeping, but Josh managed to knock over and onto the floor, but couldn't get out because the bottle's sides were too slick.

This piece starts out with Josh sitting on a cotton ball that was in the bottle with him, trying to come up with a way to escape.


Pushing those thoughts from his head, Josh refocused on how to escape. The sun, now dropping out of sight like a huge, orange stone, shown through a window on the far side of the room pushing the shadows of common furniture across the floor like the profiles of mutated giants. The thought of pulling bits of the cotton ball apart to form a makeshift rope was just stating to formulate in his mind when he caught movement outside the bottle and felt the air leave his lungs in a terrified rush.

It was just a flash in the corner of his eye, but it was definitely something moving. Heart pounding, he leaned forward on the cotton ball and strained to see through the warped plastic. Nothing. Then he saw movement again in the form of a black shadow darting across the floor.

Josh stood up. He felt his entire body prickle with gooseflesh. His first thought was it may have been a mouse, but what it was, wasn't near as disturbing as wondering if would it try to get in the bottle. He thought he could see a dark shape just sitting outside the front of the bottle and tried to remember if it had been there before. He wanted to move closer to get a better look, but he thought if he remained motionless long enough whatever it was, if it was anything at all, might just go away.

The sun was down far enough now that everything in the room had an orange glow, and dust particles floated through the air like bloated snowflakes. A lamp was on somewhere behind the bottle, but it didn't do much to fight the shadows that had enveloped the bottle.

After about ten minutes, that felt more like ten hours, whatever the thing was in front of the bottle still hadn't moved. With the room going from orange to gray to black, it was hard to tell, but Josh was starting to convince himself that it was nothing more than a piece of trash that had been there from the beginning.

He took a deep breath, pushed himself off the cotton ball and took a step towards the front of the bottle. His heart was still pounding, but nothing like it was when he thought a killer mouse was about to attack. With his next step, the bottle shifted slightly under his weight, and Josh instantly found himself begging that the shape had been a mouse.

The bottle's movement caused the shape to stir to life. Darting forward, it put one of its long black legs on the side of the bottle. Josh was reminded of the movie he had seen last summer called Eight Legged Freaks in which a herd of giant spiders wreaked havoc on mankind. In the movie, the spiders were the size of jacked up four wheel drive trucks, but when you find yourself the size of a nice, juicy cricket, a normal sized spider suddenly becomes just as terrifying.

The first leg was joined by another, and Josh could hear tiny scratching sounds against the side of the bottle. He tried to take a step back, but found that his feet had decided that staying put was the best option.

The second leg was joined by a third and through the dim glow of the desk light, he could see the spider stretching its legs up towards the bottles exposed opening. Now four legs were scrabbling at the side of the bottle, and the scratching sounds became louder. Sounds that would be totally undetectable in his regular size, now raked at his ears like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Using its back legs for support, the spider stood against the bottle and stretched itself out. Josh felt his stomach roll when the bottle rocked almost imperceptibly on its curved surface. Then, when it finally hooked a shinning, black claw on the bottle's mouth and started to pull itself up, Josh broke the trance he was in and scrambled backwards towards his only refuge.

When he reached the cotton ball he slipped and almost fell, but managed the keep himself upright by and pulled himself behind it. Behind him, a snicking sound, like hedge clippers snipping thin branches, joined the scrabbling noise.

Josh felt himself starting to hyperventilate. He closed his eyes and begged himself to calm down, praying that he would wake up from this nightmare and find himself back on the hard mattress of his dorm room. Unfortunately, Josh didn't wake up. He just continued to sit in the bottom of a cleaned out Pepsi bottle, gasping for breath, with his back against a Wal-Mart brand cotton ball.

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After what seemed like an eternity, the scrabbling noises stopped and Josh slowly opened his eyes. He half expected to see the dripping fangs of the spider inches from his face, but the only thing he saw was the distorted image of the empty Hamster Village box through the back of the bottle. He was regaining control of his breathing and allowed himself to think that maybe, just maybe, the spider had given up and moved on to easier hunting grounds. He turned his head to look at the front of the bottle, but the cotton ball blocked his view forcing him to lean forward, and as he did what he saw made his heart freeze in his chest.

The spider's head was poked into the bottle's opening and was framed by four of its legs. A cluster of lidless, black eyes rested above two hair covered fangs that ended in sharp, black tips. The eyes reflected the light from the lamp, shining as emotionless as polished eight-balls. The legs gripped the curved inside of the bottle ready to pull itself in, and the way they were twitching made Josh know it was going to happen any second.

He felt his head get a heavy, dull feeling and realized he wasn't breathing. He forced himself to take a breath, but pulled it in slow, fearing that just the movement of his chest could be enough to cause the spider to pounce on him and sink its sharp, hair covered fangs deep into the meat of his back.

The complete opacity of the spider's eyes made it impossible to tell if it was looking him or not, but Josh felt certain it was. It just sat there, staring back at him with a look that lacked intelligence, but was full of hunger. Whatever brain it had, was wired for one thing... kill anything that moves and suck the life giving juices out of its body.

Josh didn't want to move, but knew he would never win a stare-off with an arachnid the size of a rodeo bull, so he started to lean back behind the cotton ball. As he did, a thick strand of cotton hooked to a belt loop on his jeans, causing the cotton ball to shift positions. Josh froze. He hadn't paid enough attention in biology to know if spiders hunted by sight or feel, but he hoped it was feel.

The spider remained in its position with its legs twitching and the cluster of eightballs gleaming. Josh now felt'¦ no, now knew that it was just waiting for him to make a move. Just waiting for him to get up and start screaming and running around the inside of the pop bottle turned dining hall so it could-

In a motion so fast that Josh didn't even have time to say his final prayers the spider pulled itself the rest of the way in the bottle and slid down the smooth curved surface directly at him. He squeezed his eyes shut and rolled behind the cotton ball just as the spider slid into it, pushing it partially on top of him.

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