Page 158 of The Most Dangerous Games

And isn’t that what people say when they describe the feeling of losing their minds?

I was ready to climb the walls.

Alek wishes there was a way for her to do that right now.

Except these creatures would probably follow her.

She looks down, already feeling them on her even though they aren’t, at least not yet.

Alek has always had a phobia—a pathological one, really—about any kind of snake or spider. The “creepy crawlies,” she’d called them as a child.

It was why, when she’d been given her choice, she had chosen Antarctica over Chile, which she’d been told was crawling with awful creatures.

She’d admitted that all the way back in Ohio.

Only now the creatures are everywhere.

This can’t really be happening, she tries to tell herself.

The Host often spoke about mind games.

That’s what these had to be.

It. Can’t. Be. Real.

Somehow it is.

She is wearing white jeans.

She can clearly see the first spider moving up from her left ankle now, taking its sweet time.

She starts shaking her leg frantically to get it off her.

It doesn’t work.

The spider keeps moving.

There isn’t a lot of light in this room. But there’s enough for her to see other spiders, and now snakes, circling her feet.

She tries to kick them away.

It just makes more of them appear.

Alek can’t help herself now.

She screams.

And then feels the first bite.

Looks down and sees the first black spider, which has already made its way up her left leg to her thigh.

She slaps at it frantically with her hand.

Still screaming as she does.

Now there is one on her arm.

She tries to swat it away.