User blog:MrTyeDye/The Nightmare House (Part 2: Leni)

Previous Chapters: (Lori)

If there was one thing Leni loved about going back to school, it was showing off her new clothes to her peers. Every year, Leni spend the weekend before the first day going on a marathon shopping spree at the mall, picking out the cutest dresses and accessories she could find and compiling them into a chic, fashionable, eye-catching back-to-school ensemble.

Such was the case this year, when the strutted into her homeroom decked out in a teal dress and a matching skirt that came dangerously close to breaking the school's dress code, along with a pair of white, velvety heels that made sharp, percussive clicking noises as they struck the tiles of the floor. On top of that, she had just received a haircut the day before, one that shortened her bangs and "opened up her face", as the barber put it, so there was no way her classmates wouldn't notice at least something different about her.

"So what do you guys think of my back-to-school outfit?" asked Leni, strutting in front of the class. "Pretty hot, right?"

Leni's big, shining smile started to dim a little when she heard the response. In lieu of the glowing, enthusiastic compliments she expected, she heard a few muffled giggles scattered throughout the rows.

"Oh, s-sure, Leni," said one boy, choking back a chuckle. "You look... great. *snort*"

Leni cast him a wary look. "Ooookay," she said, her smile now all but completely gone.

"Oh, don't mind him," said the girl next to him. "He's just being closed-minded. I think your outfit's fine. Really... you know... retro. *snicker*"

Leni eyed her confusedly.

"What are you talking about? It's just a regular - OH MY GOD!"

Leni looked down and, to her horror, saw that both of her calves were enveloped by two fuzzy teal leg warmers. The muffled giggles around the class erupted into full, unbridled guffaws.

"W-what?!" she cried, aghast that she was even touching such a dated, tacky crime against fashion. "I don't remember putting those on! Or buying them! Or even seeing them!"

Sadly, her protests did nothing to weather the storm of laughter buffeting her from all sides of the classroom.

"I swear, I don't!" she cried, raising her voice above the din. "These aren't mine! See, I'll take them off, like, right now!"

Leni kicked off her left shoe, sending it skittering across the classroom, grabbed the end of the leg warmer near her ankle and gave it a tug. Much to her frustration, it didn't budge.

"Mmmf!" she grunted, pulling harder and harder to no avail. The leg warmer was wrapped tight around her limb, clinging to it like a second skin. "Who... what... how did I even get these on?!"

The scattered giggling and tittering across the classroom only fueled her efforts. With her teeth clenched and splotches of red forming on her cheeks, she grabbed the end of the leg warmer with both hands and pulled with every inch of her might. Eventually, her efforts sent her toppling off her feet and onto the floor below. The entire class was now treated to the sight of a student rolling around on the floor and straining against the unyielding fabric, letting out a long series of pained grunts that were starting to devolve into screams. At no point did it occur to her to ask someone for help, but it wasn't likely that anyone would step in if she did.

Finally, with one good, hardy yank, she managed to pull one end of the garment up over her foot. She sighed with relief as she looked down to evaluate the progress she made. But that feeling of relief was extinguished once she saw that the other end of the leg warmer was still wrapped taut around her thigh.

Wait, her thigh? Weren't leg warmers only supposed to cover the area from your ankle to your knee? In fact, Leni could have sworn that the leg warmers did only come up to her knees the last time she checked. She would have noticed if they were longer. What was happening?

Leni gave her eyes a good rubbing, convinced that she was only seeing things. Once she opened them again, though, she saw that the top end of the leg warmer was still wrapped snug around her thigh. What's more, her ears picked up a faint rustling sound coming from the garment. She bent forward to take a closer look, and nearly choked on her own tongue when she found the source. The leg warmer's gaping leg hole was snaking its way up her thigh, like a boa constrictor swallowing its prey.

"Wha- what is this thing?!" she shrieked. "Somebody get them off me! Give me, like, a knife or some scissors or something!"

But nobody came to her aid, and before she knew it, both of the leg warmers were wrapped tightly around her entire limbs, from upper thigh to toe. And worse, they were getting tighter. The garments that were already far too small for her were starting to shrink around her legs, putting them in a deathly grip. Leni could do little but scream, flail her legs about and bang her fists on the floor, as the pain made it impossible for her to stand back up.

"WHY ISN'T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING?!" she shouted as the leg warmers continued to put the squeeze on her poor legs. Eventually, the compressive force proved to be too great for her legs to resist - and they gave in. A sickening crunchwas heard, along with a stomach-churning gurgling noise comparable to the sound of a truck running through mud. Leni howled in agony as she felt her quadriceps and calves get crushed, flattened and juiced. What were once a pair of thick, healthy, strong legs were being reduced to a withered pair of husks that couldn't support the weight of a toddler, much less a teenage girl.

It was at this point that the teacher, who had been silent since she entered the classroom, finally decided to stand up and address the other students.

"Class," he said, "it is now feeding time."

Before Leni could even ask for whom, the teacher spun around to face her, looking down at the now-helpless girl with a maniacal grin and fire in his eyes. He let his jaw drop open, and out from the depths of his throat came four hairy, grotesque spiders.

"NOT SPIDERS!" yelled Leni. "A-anything but spiders! Somebody get them away from me!"

Leni, with her legs now rendered useless, frantically pushed herself across the room with her hands, desperate to escape the abhorrent arachnids. As she neared the wall on the other side, she saw the teacher take a jar off his desk and dump its contents - a thick, opaque, orange liquid - onto the floor below. The spiders all descended from his body and started lapping the liquid up. Beaming, the professor set the jar back on his desk, and Leni's heart sank as soon as she caught a glimpse of the label:

Super Spider Growy Stuff

Sure enough, as they sucked the liquid down their throats, all four of the spiders' bodies started to swell and expand. Bigger and bigger they grew, making their grotesque facial and bodily features all the more visible to poor Leni. Each one inflated past the size of a tennis ball, then a football, then a basketball, then a fully loaded backpack, until the crowded classroom started to feel a bit too cramped for them. To make some room, one of the now human-sized spiders used its scaled up strength to grab the teacher's desk and toss it out the window.

And just when Leni thought her situation couldn't get any worse, that same spider then turned its beady eyes - all eight of them - towards her.

"Look over here, fellow spiders," it said in a slimy, slithery voice. "It's a helpless human girl. What shall we do with her?"

With her overtaxed heart working double time, Leni scrambled away from the spiders, only to find her path impeded by the wall. She curled into a ball and whimpered as the four enormous spiders closed in on her. Leni couldn't decide what she found more repulsive - the thick, coarse hair coating each of their spindly legs, or the stench of insect carcasses emanating from each of their mouths. Or those eyes... dear lord, those eyes. As far as Leni was concerned, eight was far more than any creature needed, and the thirty-two total she saw resting upon her didn't even have pupils, or irises, or anything. Just black, hollow, featureless voids.

"Perhaps we could enslave her!" said the first spider.

"Or eat her!" said the second one.

"Or enslave her and then eat her!" said the third one.

"Or eat her and then enslave her!" said the fourth one, prompting the other three to cast a peculiar look in its direction.

"...Okay, that last one didn't really make sense," admitted the fourth one. "Whatever. The point is that she's ours now."

The fourth one then turned its back to Leni and expelled a thick stand of web out from its spinneret, which wound itself around Leni's ruined legs and bound them together. Leni bent forward and tried to tear the silk with her hands, but it was too tough, too fibrous, too sinewy for her to break a single strand. All she could do was get her hands hopelessly tangled and stuck to the freshly spun web.

The fourth spider, whose web was still attached to its spinneret, skittered out of the classroom, dragging the now-immobilized Leni out of the room and into the hall.

"HELP ME!" Leni screamed at the top of her lungs. "DON'T LET THE SPIDER TAKE ME AWAY!"

But Leni received no response, aside from the cackling of the spider dragging her. "Mmm, scream louder, human. It whets my appetite."

Leni wasn't typically inclined to heed a spider's request, but in her position, screaming was all she could do - so scream she did. Over and over, hoping vainly that someone, anyone, would heed her call, until her larynx collapsed from the pressure.

"Ohh, yeah, that's the stuff," whispered the spider, giving off a shudder of pleasure that caused the web to vibrate. "But enough stalling. It's time to wave goodbye to your friends, human."

It was then that the spider reached its destination at the end of the hall - the janitor's closet, which just happened to be open. Leni, hopelessly ensnared and too hoarse to even speak, gave the world she knew one last glance until it faded into blackness.

The sound of the closet door slamming behind her was the last thing she heard before she woke up.