The Spider- Emma Styles

Task 1:

“Mum, do we have to go?” Noah and I chorused together in the back seat of our rusty old car.

“Yes you have to go into the cave and learn the history of it AND YOU WILL HAVE FUN!” She replied almost wanting to have a full day of peace and quiet with Dad while torturing us at the same time.

“Yes Mum.” We moaned.

So we slumped all the way to the cave entrance where we met the rest of our tour group of no more than 20, including the leader. We were told to head into this cave with our torches, helmets and well looked after knees. We had to crawl as the cave ceiling was no higher than 75 centimetres from the floor. Looking back on it now I can’t see how we did it - trying to hold a huge torch in one hand, struggling to keep balanced with the other, and making sure we didn’t lose sight of the person in front of us.

After about 20 minutes of following one another in near darkness we arrived at the exit. Light again! We were then told we had to do it again (NO!) but this time go through a secret passage way. We followed these instructions, keeping the moaning to a bare minimum, again trying to keep directly behind one another. As we arrived at the secret entrance we found a surprise waiting for us; a creepy, eight legged creature, as big as a tennis ball.

I

HATE

SPIDERS!

So I refused to move. But of course I had to move eventually as I had to escape this dark cave. The voices in front of us became softer and softer, so we had to do something, and do something quickly. Kill the spider, I know, but neither me nor my brother Noah behind me wanted to. One of us would have to as the other 8 or so behind us were becoming agitated.

“I’m a girl and you’re a boy so you should have to kill it!” I said, obviously excusing myself from the task.

“Well, you were the one just giving me the equality speech about males and females being equal before we entered this cave!” Noah replied, almost too quickly.

“Good come-back but I promise to tell everyone in the group how awesome you are if you kill it!” I proclaimed.

Without another word he took off his helmet and whammed it hard onto Mr 8 Legs causing cold liquid to fly out onto Noah’s eye and my arm. Boy, was that a shock!!! At least we knew he had killed it because when we shone the light at the area of the ceiling it once sat all we could see were three hairy legs and half a body. So we crawled and crawled and finally found our leader and the rest of the group.

Noah thought he might receive super spider powers from the liquid but that’s another story for another time.