The Outhouse

When I was three I was locked in the outhouse.

No-one knew I was there.

I was locked in for a week.

My family had gone on holiday and they thought I was at my Uncle Steve's. He thought I'd gone on holiday with my family. I had been stropping about the whole thing, because I wanted to stay at home and play with my mates.

They left without me. Like the cat.

I realised I was locked in when I woke up. 

In the outhouse.

I'd snuck out to the outside lav before they left.

It stank so badly of Jayes pine I had to scrunch my nose. 

God! it was as if someone had blended a whole forest and poured its thick green blood down the loo.

I'd had a number two and shredded my arse with that awful Izal bog roll. I could see the red spots on the paper. 

I hated that Izal.

I must have fallen asleep in a deckchair, set up inside the small building for my Dad to varnish later for the summer. 

It was nearly dark when I woke. 

I tried the outhouse door but it had been locked, no doubt my Dad securing everything in sight before going away with our family to Cleveleys for the week.

When the remaining daylight in the lime-washed room faded to black it was then that I started to panic.

Darkness. The shroud of night.

It drained the inside of the building like a bleed. I froze.

As I stood there, rigid with fear, I began to sense subtle changes around me. Rustlings, knocks, creaks and shuffles.

The air altered. It was smellier. Wetter. Colder. Dangerous.

Something small flew past my head and touched my hair. I shuddered, ferociously rubbing my scalp to remove any trace of whatever had flown by.

It was a bird. A tiny sparrow, trapped inside. Like me. I felt a kinship to the other prisoner and wanted more than anything to get us both out of there.

The sparrow let out a hideous shriek and in the corner of my eye I saw the pitiful thing spun round by unseen fingers and wrapped in cobwebs like a pound of mince from the butchers. It hung there next to something much bigger webbed up with whiskers poking through.

Silence. 

Thud!

An invisible object landed close by.

And then in a shaft of moonlight, something huge crawled out in front of me, a creature easily as big as my fist;

An enormous spider.

I was transfixed: terrified and fascinated in equal measure. 

How could such a thing grow that big? Was it the solitude of the shed? The stolid light?

No. 

I knew the answer when I saw what was in its fangs.

It was a tail.

But by then it was too late.

The winter in the outhouse was a long mean hungry season.

It had run out of rats. And cats.

No-one heard my terrible scream.

It was muffled by it's furry fatness piling into my open mouth and grunting with pleasure all the way down!