Close Encounters of the Monster Kind

Arachnophobia (Arachne)

Not a very creative title, but it'll do.

Jeremiah took pride in being the strongest man in the whole village. He was a stone cold mercenary, who wasn't afraid of anything.

Well... almost everything. He had one weakness: he was deathly afraid of spiders.

So you can imagine his horror when his party selected a mission to slay an Arachne who was building a nest near the village.

"Can't we find some other monster to kill?" Jeremiah asked.

"What? Scared?" They asked him.

"What?" He said, "no... I just think an Arachne is too weak of a monster to fight!"

"Then we'll get it over with rather quickly." His party leader, Macon said. Macon wasn't as strong as Jeremiah, but he was fiercely intelligent, and he was quite the people person. "Unless you're afraid of a little spider."

So they went off to kill the Arachne.

On the way there, their rouge, Holly, stopped them.

"I'll go search ahead, you all stay here." She ran off, searching for the spider monster's web.

Macon and Holly were the only two who accompanied Jeremiah, the rest of the party were currently busy with some other job that involved dealing with a slime problem out in the town's sewers.

Macon yawned, and began flipping through a spell-book he had in his bag.

"Alright, I'm gonna go take a leak." Macon said after five minutes. "Don't go anywhere."

He disappeared off into the bushes, and Jeremiah waited for a solid ten minutes before he began to get a little antsy. Normally he wouldn't worry at all, but today they were hunting a spider.

"Uh... Macon?" He called, "you okay?"

No response.

He heard rustling in the bushes, and looked towards it.

"Is... someone there?" He asked, trying to stay calm and keep his compose. Come on Jeremiah! He thought to himself, you're the strongest man in town! You've killed way stronger monsters than an Arachne! ...spiders... why'd it have to be spiders?

"Boo." A voice said from behind him.

Jeremiah screamed and ran, afraid to look behind him.

Macon started laughing hysterically. So he was afraid! Wait till the rest of the party hear that Jeremiah the Barbarian is terrified of a little spider!

Meanwhile Jeremiah was running like his life depended on it, and didn't notice the web he was about to run into until it was too late.

He was now currently trapped in the web of the one monster species he was terrified of. Great.

He tried to reach for his weapons, but his arms were stuck.

He began praying to the gods that the Arachne wouldn't notice him.

"Fuhuhu~ a little fly got caught in my web..."

Fuck you gods, Jeremiah thought to himself.

He tried not to scream in terror as an eight eyed face loomed over his, looking him over.

"What a catch!" She grinned, and Jeremiah turned deathly pale. She got even closer to him, which made him turn pale, and he struggled to try and break free.

"Go ahead, tire yourself out my dear..." the Arachne said, caressing his cheek, "there's no escaping my web..."

She let him struggle for a bit, giggling at his attempts before finally reaching towards his pants, ripping them off of him.