The nightmares, these visions of the people I had met recently were so vivid and troubling, I began to wonder if this wasn’t a message from the great beyond. I mean, if there was a big guy in the sky who was all powerful, and if perhaps I had upset him... or her for all I know, with what I did before coming here, that could explain the nightmares. So too could my eating habits, I mean seriously, one should be careful about what they consume before bed.

I got dressed in my uniform, combed my bed head into something passable for “tidied” hair, and stepped out into the hall. Right on schedule, Krys popped around the corner down the hall. She flagged me down and we proceeded to the cafe per our usual routine. This afternoon felt like a great day for tacos. Something about the shape of tacos always felt very at home in my mouth. No idea what it was, but hey, it’s not like they shaped my life. I got a platter of tacos, refried beans, and some rice, scarfed it down with my usual abandon, and smiled while I gazed about the room.

I was distracted mere moments later by a beeping from my bracelet. It was a quick message from Fianna. It was a question about where I was and a reminder that I had agreed to get measured. My mind blanked and I looked sheepishly at Krys. She looked at me, then my bracelet and I let her see the message. She giggled a bit as I got up and booked it to Fianna’s office.

When she opened the door, Fianna didn’t yell or scream. Instead she spoke gently, like talking to a child, and scolded me in that way that you could tell was rehearsed constantly. She then went about very efficiently taking note of my measurements on a chart she had premade, consulted the mock up of the dress that was already taking shape, and shooed me out of the room. She told me to come back before I went to sleep for a fitting and slammed the door on me.

I went about my day, keenly aware that it was Wednesday and I was promised a dress by this evening. No matter how amazing you were, you couldn’t make a dress in less than 8 hours. Unless you were Arachne, mother of spiders... maybe she’d be able to do that.

Speaking of spiders and Arachne, our focus this afternoon was on the origin of arachnids and lore surrounding them. I wasn’t in my mythos class today though, it was the religion course. Old religions and myths were just about the same thing, so they had some impressive overlap. And the Greco-Roman mythologies were some of my favourite, so I was eager to learn more about spider cults through to the modern day. They talked about the temple found in Peru, and the influence the idea of a spider god had in games and movies. We even had a brief discourse about spider based super heroes and Tabletop Role-Playing Games. It was rather disjointed, but incredibly interesting. Pictures of the common diagrams about spider women were displayed and explained.

I got up to leave at the end of the lesson and looked over at the professor. For just an instant she seemed to ripple and I could swear I saw mandibles protruding from her mouth, touching her fangs as she took a breath to answer a student’s question. I blinked and she was back to her usual self, all tawny skin and dark hair with regular human features. I noted Professor Voras glanced at me a moment while speaking and smiled a friendly and dismissive grin. Acting just like any teacher, I guess.

The rest of the day went by without a hitch, my minor dysfunction leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. But that all changed when I made my stop at Fianna’s office before getting a last meal and turning in. She opened the door and whisked me in the room quickly. I barely got out the word high before she began stripping me of my clothing. Now, I’m not going to complain when a beautiful woman wants to be a little forceful, but this might have been just a hair more than I expected.

“Fianna... FIANNA!” I yelled to get her attention. She stopped and blinked at me a moment before it dawned on her what was going on. She surveyed me in my skivvies and turned around rapidly.

“I am SO sorry. I was just... I was sewing and I needed to get this from the model to your body to finish final adjustments and I got a little lost in my own world... “ she stammered out, so blatantly embarrassed by her actions.

“I understand wanting to get a girl undressed, but you can’t just strip her like that. She needs to get ready for a thing like that...” I muttered, blushing from a combination of my more or less bare form and the impure thoughts jingling about in my head.

Fianna turned around, her face a little more composed. She took a moment to steady herself, but all I could focus on was the movement of her perky chest and those lips... just enough glossiness to them to make the engine really rev up... No, bad Lauren. You need to focus here, she didn’t mean to strip you. She’s probably not even interested in you like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.

FIanna returned herself to the task at hand, taking the dress and moving me about as though I were one of those art figures for drawing. Eventually she had pins where they were needed and was ready to do the minor adjustments to finish out the dress. She thanked me for my time and said she’s have me do one last fitting tomorrow after classes. It took a little to get myself back in my clothing, what with the raging storm of hormones and dirty thoughts begging me to strip her down like I had been, but I managed. Then I ducked out, went to get an evening meal.

I met up with Krys and Val in the cafe, went to one of the more popular sections, and got myself a heaping plate of paella and a steak. Both of my friends gave me a strange look when they saw the steak near clams and shrimp, but I just pointed at it and said “Surf and turf” and began my feasting. Val eventually ducked out to get to classes, and Krys decided it was a good enough time to sneak some dessert. She came back from one of the counters moments later with two chocolate parfaits and a mischievous grin.

I stumbled back to my room feeling very full and slightly off balance. I assumed it was from the little freak out I had earlier finally hitting me in full force. I decided I needed to sit down for a bit and get some homework done before I fell into a food coma, but every time I tried to focus, my mind blanked a bit or I got distracted. So instead of studying, I opened the mailer client on my PC and banged out a letter to my dad. I say a letter because this school was so posh that you could actually send a letter from an email and receive an email from a hard copy letter if you wanted. I didn’t know how I felt about someone else reading my mail, but being able to send an email in physical form through what I assumed was a really nice fax machine and getting it sent off for you was really nice.

Thursday was a blur until I tried on the dress again. Fianna made sure no mirrors existed in the room, so I had to take her word for how I looked. She reaffirmed that I looked great and pulled out a package from her desk. She passed it to me and told me to wear the contents tomorrow night when we were getting ready for the dance. I snuck a peek at the inside and went violently red in embarrassment. Inside the box was the single raciest set of underoos I had ever seen. The panties alone were nothing more than a very sheer fabric held together by (and I’m assuming here) the most miniscule thread ever. The bra was a push up, one of those fancy ones, with a brand name I didn’t recognize at all but assumed was really expensive since I couldn’t pronounce the name.

I looked over at Fianna, an expression of wonderment and confusion on my face. Her smile was one of mischief and cunning, and she took a moment to close the box in my hands. She then patted me on the arm and motioned for me to sit down, the promise to explain was implied. I sat on one side of her desk and she walked to the other side, sitting back in her chair like one of those cops on TV. You know the kind, they lean back and steeple their fingers while crossing their legs.

“As you are aware, I am head girl. To have anything less than an amazing companion for the evening’s festivities tomorrow would be... disappointing. And there are, as you likely have seen, certain unsavoury elements that would love nothing more than to remove me from my position and take over running the school in their own way. These gifts I present you will no doubt make you stand out a bit more, and I doubt any eyes will be able to stay off you for long. You have this... presence to you that feels somewhat intoxicating. Pair that with the dress I just finished, and you have a recipe for an eventful evening. You look amazing, enough to distract even me.” She said, her speech pattern seemingly forgotten in the heat of the moment.

“It’s just the dress, I’m certain. You poured your very soul into it, it’ll be amazing. I’m just there to fill it out.” I said in return, a sense of self doubt creeping in and chipping at the confidence I normally show.

“Nonsense. If it were just the dress I’d not have provided you those presents. Do you realize how hard it is to focus around you? It’s like waving a platter of grilled meats before the face of a corpulent person who hasn’t been fed in the last several hours.” She mumbled the last half of her comment, but I got the gist. It was sounding almost like... well, like she had a thing for me. I may be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes, but I’m not stupid, and even someone as slow as I am has to eventually get what’s going on. Don’t they?

I felt my face getting hotter and hotter as I contemplated what was happening around me, the implication that this gorgeous girl was interested in me as more than just a “passing fancy” kind of way made me feel a bit giddy. But then I felt that sense of self doubt creep in again, and I felt that little voice that puts you down slip itself into my inner ear. Why would she ever feel interested in you? You’re just the new girl, a charity case, she’s just stroking your ego so you’ll do what she wants when she asks you to. Just thank her and get this over with, you’re just going to get hurt.

I did thank her for the dress and the box of goods, and I hurried out of the room. My stomach wasn’t in the mood for any kind of food, so I just made my way quickly back to my dorm and curled in on myself as I sat on the bed. I don’t remember falling asleep, or even if anything happened between running from Fianna’s office to my room, but I do remember very distinctly the dream I had that night.

I was curled on the floor of an old stone building. There was moss covering sections of wall, there were cracks and holes in the ceiling, but not a trace of rubble or dirt on the floor. If I were awake, that might seem odd to me, but instead of processing that, I stood up. My bare feet touched the frigid floor as I wandered about to find an exit, but even as I moved there was no sound. The silence was incredible, and it made it all the more terrifying when I began t hear clicking and clacking coming from... well, everywhere. So I ran.

Even as I ran, my feet seemed to make no noise, and the clicking sound got louder. I rounded a corner after what felt like hours of running and found a dead end. I began to slowly turn about, and was greeted by the lower half of a giant spider and the upper half of Professor Voras. And as the professor crept closer, I could see the mandibles and fangs like I had seen them earlier. Eventually, she and I were eye to eye, and she grinned. Her fangs and mandibles clicking and clacking, she opened her mouth and whispered to me, “Better watch out, children.”

I looked down, and I was greeted to the site and sensation of millions of spiders climbing my legs. I looked back at the professor as she laughed. Her laughter resounded across the walls and in my head, causing an ache to start. But just as the onset of the headache could kick in, I felt all of the spiders bite into my body.