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Shadows darted across the walls, the hall’s high ceilings echoing Cecil’s footsteps on the wooden floor. He still had no clue why his glorified community college had such fancy architecture, especially for the goddamn office building, but at least his adventures to ask for an extension on his essay were made a bit more exiting. He could barely remember where his professor’s office was, but he just had to walk through a few long hallways before he arrived. He opened the door half-thinking that he probably should have knocked first.
(Later, when Cecil looked back on this memory, when he considered how much this tiny mistake costed him, the closest description of the emotion he felt was a deep, visceral grief.)
Because, when Cecil opened the door, he did not see a tired 40-year-old doing paperwork, he saw a tired 40-year-old arguing with a giant humanoid spider. A giant humanoid spider that shot the most intense terror he had ever felt- and, with one exception, ever will feel- directly into his heart.
Spiders swarmed his vision, and he stumbled back. He almost felt them crawling on his face, but it was more intense than touch. He could distantly hear more yelling, more frantic than angry this time, but the swarming took up most of his mind. His back hit the wall, and he fell down, ending up curling into a ball. He could feel them building webs now, encompassing him- and then, a shock of horrible pain in his head, and all the fear in him- a feeling that, before this, felt like it was going to be with him forever- disappeared.
It wasn’t over though. Something slashed a line in his arm- in his delirious state, he figured it was one of the spiders- and everything started to hurt, especially his wrists. The word metamorphosis appeared in his head, and he realized what the spiders were doing- building a cocoon. It did not come to his mind that that was definitely not what spiders did.
The pain ravaged his body for two minutes, total, and then the spiders and their webs scurried away. He, weirdly, wasn’t scared. He felt... fine? Maybe it was just shock, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt more.. permanent.
“Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
Right, there was another person here. Cecil murmured something along the lines of a “yes,” and sat up. A brown-haired person with golden, thin-rimmed glasses was bent down in front of him. He looked exhausted, and a little frantic.
“Uh, Cecil Robinson, right?” The professor- Mr.Parker- said, avoiding eye contact. Cecil nodded and caught sight of the spider-things carcass, a knife shoved into its eye. It was leaking a bright, glowing yellow liquid and its arms were turning to black dust.
“W- what was that?” Cecil asked, “and what’s with all the spiders?”
“It’s- a long story?”
“Give me the tl;dr.”
“You just got a very, very violent introduction to a world that most humans can’t even fully perceive,” he said, “and, well, the spiders are just because Jonah here-“ he gestured to the corpse- “is incredibly committed to his aesthetic.”
“I don’t.. what’s with the, swarming?”
“..What swarming?”
“Yknow. The spiders fucking crawling all over me?”
“That.. that was probably a hallucination,” Mr.Parker said.
Right, imperceivable. Of course it would have some negative effects on his mind. Cecil still didn’t know why the fuck he was more curious then scared.
“So, the only person on this earth that can perceive- whatever the fuck these things are-“
“I like to call them Entities.”
“-Is a 40-something journalism professor.”
“I didn’t exactly ask for this either.”
And, the conversation continued like that. Cecil went home- forgetting to ask for the essay extension- figuring it was just a really weird fucking day. Only later would he notice the web glands on his wrists, and the glowing veins on his arms, and realize things were changing very, very, quickly.