{"id":12792,"date":"2018-11-26T09:47:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T09:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/?p=12792"},"modified":"2026-10-07T13:18:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T13:18:42","slug":"the-spider-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/26\/the-spider-state\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spider State"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Solitanu's<\/p>\r\n

The Spider State: Surviving in a Tangled Web of Oppression<\/h2>\r\n

A loud voice kept reverberating in my head: `Spider State, Spider State.’ Yet nothing made any sense to me. The words hung in the air without meaning. All I could see were three gleaming black eyes staring at me, unblinking, refusing to look away. At first, I was intrigued, vaguely mesmerised. Then a sense of foreboding and panic swept over me. Who or what was this creature that was looking into my soul, examining every part of me like a wild animal surveying its prey? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

It wasn\u2019t just the staring eyes. I could feel a multitude of fine strands slithering over my flesh, probing and poking me at various points, \"Theexploring the contours and shapes of my body. Yet, I could not move. I seemed to be completely unable to do anything about it. I was paralysed from head to foot, deprived of all means of preventing this alien intrusion. It was as if I had been drugged in some way, given a lethal dose of a chemical substance that immobilised my body. I had no power to react, yet I was fully conscious and capable of sensing everything that was happening to me.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

When this three-eyed creature decided to perch itself on my nose and began pushing its hairy tentacles up my nostrils I screamed in repulsion. Yet, no sound came from my voice. Even my vocal cords had been stifled by this grotesque creepy-crawly. How could I have let this happen to me? Why had it been so easy for this dark creature to immobilise my body and insinuate itself into my mind? My terror was made worse by the deep sense of shame and humiliation that I felt at being so easily overcome.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

I averted my eyes from the creature\u2019s penetrating stare and saw myself reflected in the large wall mirror at the side of my bed. I gasped in shock. The whole room was filled with a black spidery web. I now understood why I could not move. My entire body was trapped in yards and yards of an asphyxiating twine that made all movement impossible. I was a prisoner in my own home, slave to an alien insect that had removed all shred of independence and self-respect from me. <\/span><\/span>It was then that I woke up from the ghoulish nightmare. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

\"TheI looked at my wristwatch: four o\u2019clock in the afternoon at Infinity Gateway. I was bathed in sweat and feeling nauseous. My skin was itching all over. I had scars and congealed blood from cuts in my body where I had been scratching myself. I could still feel spiders crawling over my flesh, over my arms, over my legs, over my face. I sensed them crawling into my mouth, into my ears. It was disgusting. Throughout it all, I had felt powerless to escape, paralysed from head to foot. I knew that an alien being was forcing itself into me, but I\u2019d been incapable of preventing it in any way.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

I took a shower to wash away my fears. The cool water splashing over my head relaxed my body but not my mind. I could not escape a feeling of utter repulsion at the thought of what had happened to me in my imagination. I spent the rest of the evening reflecting on it all, images of spiders\u2019 eyes staring into my face and long tentacles winding themselves around my throat, slowly strangling me.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

Then it came to me in a flash. My intuition made me feel better and worse at the same time. The physical discomfort I was experiencing disappeared as soon as my mind had come to terms with what had happened. The truth was quite simple. My imagination had been telling me something that I knew already. However much I might run away from the fact by burying my head in the sand and by losing myself in the daily routines of life at Infinity, the facts before my eyes were incontrovertible. I was slowly being asphyxiated by this Spider State called Anticlockwise.\"The My nightmare was yet another wake-up call. My mind and body had been completely colonised by an alien culture that prodded and poked me like a specimen in a jar. I had been taken prisoner by a spidery, tentacular force whose only ambition was to promote its own self interest at the expense of all ordinary citizens like myself.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

At every minute of every day, of every night, we are all prey to the searching and probing of the Spider State. We are trapped inside a spider\u2019s web that we have invited into our homes. There is no respite and no escape. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep and beyond, a spider is crawling all over me, delving into my mind and body. I need to escape from this infernal spider\u2019s web.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

Zeb Solitanu<\/a><\/p>\r\n

\"Z<\/p>\r\n

\u00a9 Zeb Solitanu<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Zeb Solitanu sketch by Jill<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

Anticlockwise Journal<\/a> – a compilation of Solitanu’s Blog posts – is on sale at Amazon<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n

Learn more about Blog Fiction<\/a> – follow Zeb Solitanu at Anticlockwise<\/a> and SpirianA <\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n

Explore the full range of Fictitious Books at fibs<\/a>, ZSol<\/a> and Essays<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n

\"Anticlockwise<\/p>\r\n

\"Solitanu's<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Spider State: Surviving in a Tangled Web of Oppression A loud voice kept reverberating in my head: `Spider State, Spider State.’ Yet nothing made any sense to me. The words hung in the air without meaning. All I could see were three gleaming black eyes staring at me, unblinking, refusing to look away. At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"two_page_speed":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["bg-stuff"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Spider State<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Spider State: Surviving in a Tangled Web of Oppression - 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There have been so many scare stories recently that even the most gullible amongst us are beginning to believe that the authorities are trying to pull the wool over our eyes.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anticlockwise"","block_context":{"text":"Anticlockwise","link":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/category\/anticlockwise\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fictitiousbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/The-Safrox-Plague.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fictitiousbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/The-Safrox-Plague.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fictitiousbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/The-Safrox-Plague.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fictitiousbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/The-Safrox-Plague.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fictitiousbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/The-Safrox-Plague.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":12790,"url":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/27\/checkmate\/","url_meta":{"origin":12792,"position":2},"title":"Checkmate","author":"Zeb Solitanu","date":"27 October 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Checkmate versus Chequered Flags: Independence Illusions in Estrellaxia Checkmate versus chequered flags is an unusual idea. 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The latest one though, the Cosmic Scandal, was particularly dramatic. It was as usual centred on the rich and powerful. The key protagonist was the Minister for Currency and Coinage, the exotically named Cosmicongo Spoletti. 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I knew that things had taken a turn for the worse when the Anticlock authorities began talking about the Great Wall. They made the announcement on a specially arranged TV broadcast to the nation. 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Once upon a time in a world of moral self-righteousness, nobody was seriously threatened by pain or death.\u2019 These were the opening words of a podcast I\u2019d stumbled across whilst trawling through the dark net one day last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anticlockwise"","block_context":{"text":"Anticlockwise","link":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/category\/anticlockwise\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Solitanu's Blog - Fictitious Books","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fictitiousbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Solitanus-Blog.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fictitiousbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Solitanus-Blog.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fictitiousbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Solitanus-Blog.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fictitiousbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Solitanus-Blog.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12792"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13430,"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792\/revisions\/13430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fictitiousbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}