Page 384 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

She tried to pull away, but Morgan refused to let her go. “Don’t. Let’s not worry about this now. We still have to get out of the film, so let’s just take it one step at a time. All right?” When Audrey didn’t respond, he cupped her face and met her watery gaze. “All right?”

Sniffling, she nodded. “Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”

It wasn’t the kind of acquiescence she knew he would have preferred, but at this point in the film, beggars couldn’t be choosers. The light around them began to dim and experience told her the vacuum was coming.

“We’re going to have to redo the scene,” Morgan told her.

“Right,” she said unenthusiastically.

“Do you remember what you have to do?”

“Argue with Trevor, dance with you,” Audrey reached up to cup his cheek, “realize my bracelet is missing and then leave early.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” he assured her. “Just grab the bracelet and get out of the cave again, running as fast as you can.”

“And you’ll be right behind me,” she finished as the air changed all around them. The light became blinding and she though she tried to hold onto him, the vacuum sucked her from his arms.

The desert sun was beating down upon her shoulders as the vacuum swept Audrey from the sock hop to the spider’s cave. She stood on the cliffside, her feet seemingly rooted to the rocky ground as she stared into the darkness. Both the huge spider and the debris from the rockslide that had hopefully killed the monstrous thing were completely cleared from the mouth of the cave, leaving the gaping blackness of the tunnel waiting before her like the open maw of a nightmare.

Audrey took two hesitant steps forward, close enough to peer down the inclined tunnel as far as the daylight would illuminate, but there was no sign of the bracelet. She took two steps back again. She’d have felt so much better about going in there if only she could see the body of that smashed, crushed, totally dead spider somewhere out here.

Of course, there was still the egg sac tucked safely in some hitherto unknown place to contend with.

Maybe baby spiders were like kittens. Maybe their eyes and ears didn’t open right away. Maybe they needed their mother to hunt for them or they died right away.

Audrey fidgeted her fingers. Somehow, she doubted it. Monster restrictions that tight did not make for very exciting horror movies.

The scene reset itself twice before Audrey managed to drum up enough courage to venture into the mouth of the cave. Creeping in past the edge of the light into the dusky darkness, she felt her way along the wall, searching the ground for signs of the bracelet. There were only rocks, however. Nothing at all sparkled in the dim and failing light, but from deep in the cave ahead there came a soft rustling sound. Like the ticking of spiders’ legs clicking over the rocks.

The sound froze Audrey for a moment. Her knees trembled and her breath caught in the back of her throat.

The rustling faded into silence, and after a moment of strained listening, Audrey dropped to her knees, sweeping her hands through the dirt and rocks. She crawled deeper into the darkness, feeling through the rocks and the dirt for that stupid bracelet until she heard the rustling again.

The sound successfully froze her in her place. She stared into the darkness until it faded back to silence. Every hair on her body was crawling and suddenly the cave seemed to close in suffocatingly around her. She swung her arms wide apart, sifting through the dirt in her desperate search for the bracelet once more.

Nothing. There was nothing this way.

Turning back towards the light of the cave’s entrance, she felt her way back up the path while behind her the rustling noise became clicking, like the clicking of many spiders’ exoskeletons against the rocks.

Jumping to her feet, Audrey ran for daylight, without the bracelet. She could have cared less if the scene was doomed to repeat. Glancing back over her shoulder, just before the vacuum and bright light reclaimed her, she saw the entire mouth of the cave swarming with hundreds of spiders as tall as her knee was high.

The breath was sucked from her lungs before she could scream. When she finally regained her equilibrium, she found herself standing at the entrance of an ominously still and quiet cave. There were no spiders in sight, no sound but for the faint calling of some distant desert birds and the whisper of a breeze. The warmth of the sun beat down across her shoulders once again.

And through all this, there was no sign of Morgan.

“Like hell I’m going back in there,” Audrey muttered, but she made no move to leave. She had to go back inside; there was no other way around it. She had to get the bracelet or spend the rest of her life standing here, staring at this stupid cave.

“This is ridiculous,” she scolded herself, wiping her sweat-dampened palms on her skirts. “Just find the damn thing and get out again. You’re the heroine. You’re not going to die.”

And look on the bright side, at least now she knew one area of the cave where the bracelet was not. She wouldn’t have to look there again.

Once again, she ventured into the darkness, dropping to her knees right there at the entrance as she crawled, sweeping her hands from side to side in search of the necessary jewelry. Crawling deeper into the dark, she widened her search until she heard the clicking of the spiders coming up out of the earth.

She continued searching for as long as she dared, and then ran back out into the sunlight. On her fourth trip in, just as the clicking began, she finally found it. She glimpsed the sparkle of gray gold an instant before her fingers touched upon it and Audrey scooped the bracelet up with a cry of victory.

A deep rumbling sound not unlike the earth-shaking boom of hell suddenly break loose, the bowels of the cave below released a tidal flood of spiders and the blackness came alive with movement. Baby spiders as big and large cats came crawling out from everywhere—the ground, the walls. Even the ceiling. Audrey screamed, but though her mind yelled ‘run’, her feet rooted her to the ground. They swarmed over her, the clicking of hungry mandibles drowning out her horrified wail.

The light flashed, the vacuum sucked, and Audrey was deposited, still screaming, back at the beginning of the cave. That was one experience that she didn’t need to repeat twice. And now she knew exactly where the bracelet was.

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