John sat in the humvee, reading the mission statement over again. It said the location was a hospital in Reidsville, North Carolina. Cone Hospital. Small and quaint but around four floors. Not much on the entity itself, but the statement said, "Large arachnoid entity. DO NOT TOUCH THE WEBS. BURN ON SIGHT."

John didn't need much convincing, even if he did like spiders. Spiders were like him. They felt nothing except the basic instinct to survive. No love for humanity, no hatred for those that sought to destroy it, nothing. The reason he worked the job he did was that it was practical. The facility kept the world safe, and that kept him safe. Simple as that.

As the humvee drew closer to their desired yet undesired location, John could hear a crackle. Almost like the sound you hear if you press your ear to one of those static balls with electricity inside. He could smell the rain in the air, yet the sound of rain did not accompany this crackle.

John felt the humvee leave the dirt road and land onto a stretch of smooth asphalt. It then slowed, and John felt the swivel of the vehicle as it found its final resting place in the hospital's parking lot. The crackle had grown louder, and as John exited the vehicle, he saw what was making the sound.

Large sprouts of red lightning were blossoming from the top of the building rather than from the sky. Like those blood lilies he saw in a documentary once, John liked documentaries. The crimson lightning lit up the sky, which had been darkened by menacing grey clouds that blotted out the sun like the dark waters of the ocean that hide the seabed beneath.

John was not phased, even if the show of power was a little daunting. He had seen many creatures with power on this scale before.

He took a few steps toward the building and felt the electricity in the air grow even more potent.

As John reached the double doors of the emergency room, the electricity was so vigorous that his neatly coiffed black hair stood up like the hair of a startled cat. He opened the doors to see an empty waiting room. Unnervingly empty. Even those uncomfortable plastic chairs they made you sit in were nowhere to be found.

John didn't hesitate to step onto the linoleum. As he did, the chairs appeared. Precisely as he imagined them. Teal with that weird texture that always made him cringe. He thought it was strange but moved forward anyway.

He thought again that the place was strangely devoid of something. Something important about any room. It was people, And almost as if by magic, people had appeared. Well, not people, exactly. They were all one person, a little girl with dirty blonde hair cut into a bob and pale white skin, ashen as a full winter's moon, wrapped neatly in a teal hospital gown. She was everywhere. John could even see the top of a blonde head behind the desk.

It was then that John realized precisely what was happening. Something had burrowed into his mind's eye. Something was changing what he was seeing. Making it look as normal as possible, but it's never seen a human before. At least no human besides this little girl that was scampering about where there had previously seen no one.

John closed his eyes and cleared his mind. He thought of nothing. Absolutely nothing, and as he opened his eyes, there was indeed something there. The walls were covered in a thick red past as well as webs. Webs as strong as steel. Stoenger even.

He held his simple, practical Zippo up to the thick and tacky webs with the hope it would set them alight; it did not. It would take something more robust to set them ablaze. He stepped forward, even so, spreading the webs apart with his bare hands, and they stuck to John like taffy. He moved forward yet again and did this repeatedly until he reached a room. The room with the girl.

The little girl, who could barely stand on her own. The girl, who could barely breathe without assistance. The girl, who couldn't move without a nurse to hold her up. Yet again, he moved. He knew it was a hallucination; he knew it was fake.

John moved past all the rooms, up the stairs, and passed the other rooms. Silently ignoring her cries for help, her pleading for assistance, simply ignoring her pain. Hoping each time he was right. Until he reached room two hundred and three. Until he arrived at the room with the golden door, which he was sure wasn't real.

John stepped through webs that were thicker than before, webs that stuck like a wall of pure glycerin or melted sugar. The room with the girl. The poor little girl.

John pressed his foot in harder and harder. Seeing the girl stung up like a marionette. He knew this creature was in trouble; he knew it needed help. Maybe even more than the little girl did.

He could hear its cries of confusion. Weeps, really. Terrified pleas for assistance from beings that didn't understand a word it was saying.

"Retmaru techma dosh meht. Retmaru techma dosh meht!!" john could hear it say in his head. Only it wasn't just in his head. It was coming from the girl as well. This sweet little girl who looked as rail thin as a newborn foal. Legs trembling, eyes watering, mewing newborn foal.

John didn't feel for the creature exactly or the girl, but he did understand being lost. Far from home and needing help from a world that didn't care.

A memory resurfaced suddenly and unexpectedly. John's last memory of his parents. His father, a kind and understanding man with a tendency to drink a little too much, and his mother who wouldn't come home until midnight because she worked two jobs to support them. Both of them walking out of the front door, hand in hand. They would later get into a fatal car crash that would leave thirteen-year-old john with his drunk uncle, who, unlike John's father, couldn't handle his drink as well. Nor could he control his anger.

John pushed the memory aside, he didn't have time to reminisce on old memories. He had a job to do.