R = Redback Spider, A to Z Blog Challenge

These things are terrifying. They are like mutant black widow spiders, but they live in Australia, so they are 9,000 times more poisonous, disturbing, and terrifying than they need to be. They aren’t even an inch long, but they live in untidy webs in warm, sheltered locations. Where are those locations? Human residences.

Tiny evil.

They kill their prey through a horrifying manner (of course), injecting venom then wrapping the prey…to suck out its liquefied insides. This bears repeating. The venom liquefies its victims’ insides and then sucks them out.

You would think that it only attacks small bugs, right?

Wrong.

The venom in a human starts with pain around the bite site which becomes agonizing and travels and lingers for 24 hours. You sweat, get nauseated, vomit, get headaches, and agitation (likely from being bitten by Satan’s Arachnid). Fortunately, since these are the most common spider bites in Australia, there has been an anti-venom since 1956, and there have been no more reported deaths since then. BORING!

First aid time.

This, of course, means that I cannot really use them in my plots for world domination or evil, evil revenge. I suppose I could just scour more of Australia to find something terrible. *sigh*

Incidentally, just to freak you out, the females eat their mates like the black widows, and they have about 250 babies at once. Hopefully someone comes and kills the egg sac with fire, holy water, and the warrior spirit of Joan of Arc.

Alternate letter considerations: The rack, rat torture, revenant