Chapter Twenty Seven
Attack of the Bloody Great Spider

“Oh bugger!”, exclaimed Hapless, looking down. “Come on, let’s get out of this shit hole as soon as we can”. He marched off quickly.
“I’ll catch you up”, said Ro, stopping to tie a bootlace. “We’d ….” He did not finish the sentence because suddenly, there was scream. He looked up to see Hapless lying on the ground ahead. When he reached him, he was laying, apparently dead, on the path. Stricken as he was with horror at the scene before him, he lost none of his wits, and rifled through Hapless’s pockets. He found the torus and, attaching it to one of the apparently endless supply of self-repairing chains that presumably were commonly available in those days, slung it around his neck. It was much heavier that he’d expected, and he wondered how Hapless had managed to carry it around for so long. ‘No wonder he stoops’, thought Ro, ‘but he often complained of tiredness, I suppose’. Little did he know that the tiredness was partly brought on by ionised particles coming from the radioactive core of the torus, particles that were even now changing the DNA in the cells of his own chest. Strangely ironic that his family had always avoided holidays in places like the western side of the Lake District, the coast near Dungeness and Norfolk, and the north-west side of Chester.

Now, the proximity of the torus gave him a dose of radiation equivalent to that received by people who live close to a nuclear installation. He hopscotched slowly down the path towards the telephone kiosk, having decided that this was serious enough to dial 999, when he heard a commotion behind him. Some public school types were having ‘sport’ with Hapless’s body. ‘They’re everywhere’, he thought, as he ran back down the path, with no idea of what he was going to do when he reached them, Ro shouted “Shite!”, but the ‘gentlemen’ had already run off with Hapless’s wallet, and indeed were fighting over his Tottenham shirt. One voice rose louder than the other’s.

“What an ignoramus you really are! This fellow ain’t dead, don’t you know. You really are absurdly rustic sometimes” On hearing this, Ro felt like a bit of a Charlie. As he approached, a renewed stench filled his nostrils. Hapless had apparently let another one off. The ground was wet with spilt Pimms. As he knelt over Hapless’s body, he saw it move. Suddenly, it sat up. His face was distorted with terror, Hapless asked, “Has it gone?. Did you see it?”.
“What are you talking about?” asked Ro, “You’re delirious.”
“No!” replied Hapless, “There was a huge spider; massive! It must have been two inches long at least. It fell right on me; I thought it was going to eat me!”
“What?” gasped Ro, amazed, “A spider? You mean you fainted? Over a spider? I thought you were dead or something! What are you, some kind of girl?”
“That is uncalled for, un Pee See, and sexist”, replied Hapless indignantly, picking himself off the ground and brushing himself down. “It is perfectly normal to have a phobia, and not fair to ridicule people for having them”.
”A coward you are, Hapless; an expert on phobias you are not!”, retorted Ro, “What a pathetic wooss you are turning out to be. Whatever imagined fear you may have about spiders or other insects …”
“Arachnids”, corrected Hapless.
“Arachnids, then. Whatever you think of them, is it absurd to react like that. When this is all over and we have time, please remind me to tie you up and cover you in as many large and hairy spiders as I can find. Then you can put an end to this ridiculous and uncharacteristic behaviour. It does not become you. In the mean time, we have wasted several paragraphs on this nonsense already, and time is of the essence, so please come along”.
Suitably chaste, Hapless obeyed. After a few seconds, he spoke urgently. “Hey! Where’s the torus? What’s happened to me? Where’s my shirt?”.
“Here”, replied Ro, handing over the torus. He felt he could happily wait a little longer for the inevitable discovery of his missing wallet.