Page 109 of Reckless Obsession

The spiders drop onto the white tablecloth.

Then they move.

Fast.

So fast.

Their legs skitter over the table in a blur of motion, black shapes darting across white linen, and every single muscle in my body locks at once.

Air vanishes completely out of me. My whole body goes rigid, every nerve ending suddenly screaming. And beneath the panic, the older thing, the deeper thing, the ten-year-old panicked child slamming awake inside me with teeth.

I’m not here anymore.

Not fully.

The dining room fractures around the edges. The light changes. The noise distorts.

Some part of me still sees the table and the dishes, but another part of me is somewhere darker, smaller, somewhere I never truly escaped. Somewhere with that same helpless, crawling horror. Somewhere with the smell of damp wood and old fear. A place I have spent years building walls around so I never have to go back.

My mother swears.

A chair scrapes violently.

Someone yells Richie’s name.

But the sounds come from far away, muffled and wrong, like they have to travel through layers of water to reach me.

I can’t move.

I can’t breathe.

My skin goes ice-cold and burning hot at once. My vision narrows to a tunnel. All I can see is motion—legs, legs, too many fucking legs—

Run.

The instinct rips through me so violently I almost obey it.

I try to stand.

My chair jerks back, but my body gives out before I can get anywhere.

One second I’m pushing up.

The next, my knees are gone, my limbs have turned useless and numb, and the floor rises up too fast to stop. I hit the marble hard, not enough to hurt through the panic, just enough to register as impact somewhere very far away.

The room erupts around me.

Voices. Movement. Hands.

None of it reaches me properly.

My chest is convulsing now in short, broken attempts at breath that never quite become one. I drag and drag and drag for air, but it won’t come. It feels like a fist closed around my throat, lungs, and my entire ribcage. The more I fight for it, the worse it gets.

I hear my mother.

I know it’s her because there’s a tear in her voice that I’ve heard only a handful of times in my life, and every single one of them still lives somewhere inside me.

“Maksim—”