So the Story goes...
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Veranassessee carried the box carefully, periodically checking to make sure it was securely fastened. He was sure Dr Bronkelhampton would be pleased with the initiative he’d shown. Buying 100 breeding pairs of Blue Bonnet Spiders was a stroke of genius, he thought. They were known to eat mosquitos, and Veranassessee (or V’ass for short) was confident that he’d made a wise decision.
Bathsheba didn’t feel even a bit guilty for not telling that fool V’ass about the habits of Blue Bonnets. Cash was cash; he’d paid handsomely for the spiders, and Bathsheba congratulated herself. She wasn’t creating V’ass’s reality after all, now was she? He had chosen to buy the Blue Bonnets; His choice. His choice too to pretend he was a man; Bathsheba wasn’t fooled for a moment, she knew V’ass was a woman underneath those manly clothes.
Bathsheba cackled, and set about attracting the next fool into her shop.
The air was filled with anticipation. Phurt was feeling it for a few days and it was not the usual intuition stuff. It wasn’t conveyed by the silky threads or her web or of the other webs of the others like her… it was in the air, and it was very exciting.
All her sisters were excited also and it was mainly translating by a deep hunger. It was associated with the hunt. It felt like a new thrilling game of sort.
But now, all they could do was being patient ‘til the arrival of the new preys. It’s been so many seasons since the last ones came to their island.
There was still a vibration in the air she couldn’t dissassociate from the main one, the exciting one. The main one was so intense that she even was doubting of the slight uncomfort of this weird one. She wanted to talk with the Elder Narani. She was the most sensitive of her kind, and the oldest also. She would surely know about this vibration.
But first she had to found a gift
and wrap it with the finest silk she could create. She began slowly to move from her centered position on her web and a subtle mechanism in her bodyconsciousness began the process of generating that finery and the poison that wouldn’t kill her gift.Narani was waiting patiently for her sisters to unfold their own desire. She had multiplexed their personal threads of desire for a new game to generate the magnetic field that was attracting the machinery of the 2 lEGGed creatures. She knew them well, as the oldest sister of her tribe, she was linked to all her “sisters”. And actually there were none of them that wouldn’t be a relative of sort. She had managed to maintain her own children on the island.
Her cousin Ararog had also managed her own nest in England. She was connected to her through a strange egg, white with threads of pistachio in it. She could speak from very long distance with that object, that was merely helping her to focus her energy in the most probable direction. She was doing well and there had been lots of movements for her too.
smelled some chocolate cake in the distance… it seemed delicious and she was so hungry… needed chocolate Aldous Mc Gaughran farted contentedly, causing some disgusted glances from the other customers, he smurggled puffing on his cigar. He was feeling aroused by that beautiful blond chick dancing on the stage of the saloon and was making his decision about their family.
He
would have her.Albert the mosquito was playing with a gigantic creature to the hide and seek game.
He was quite a daredevil mosquito and had managed to survive for several days in the same space arrangement.He was close to the fulfillment of his intent and ready to move to other areas, but still in this reality… maybe he would choose some other species as he was incorporating some Praying Mantis aspects for a few days now.
All he remembered was the name “Akita”… He was not sure that it was his name, perhaps it was not, but he had taken it as his own.
He’d been stranded on that island for so long he barely remembered whether he’d had a past before. In the beginning, he had taken an inventory of the passing time, but soon had discovered that days were irregularly long, and nights would sometimes last for more than one day, so that it was all pointless…
The toughest part had been to live in good intelligence —he couldn’t really say harmony— with the predatory hairy nest of the daughters of Narani. But at least he’d made clear that he was able to defend himself and retaliate if needed…— Thanks to me, grunted a big dog half-focused, his head on his lap.
— Yeah, mostly thanks to you, KayKay had appeared a few days after Akita discovered himself on that strange land. He was no common dog… In fact, Akita was wondering that it may only exist in his mind. Kay had been approaching him, more than he had tamed it, and soon Akita found out that he was no dog at all.
He was, as Kay had said, an inugami or dog spirit, able to shape-shift, and willing to bond with Akita. He’s said Akita his previous owner had died, and that he would have to die with him unless being adopted by another…
Akita had been reluctant at first, finding that there was something unclear, but he had agreed anyway… Better be with a faithful and powerful dog-spirit than die in the webs of the giant spiders…
All he had to do was to name it. And so he named it Kay.
Kay couldn’t be seen by most of the creatures in the forest, though the most sensitive could feel his presence. However, he could decide to take a more corporeal form, but that exhausted both Akira and Kay, and was rarely done. So most of the times, he was roaming the island in spirit form, which didn’t mean that he was powerless, far from it.— I can sense something’s coming, growled Kay who took the shape of a big two-legged werewolf…
Somewhere during the 23 rd century
“aaa AAAA AAAAA Tcheeeew !”
…
“Hiiiiii?! Oh Fracking NOOOoooo!”The shriek had been heard in the whole facility.
Phefia Beryl was the first on the spot where Vinya Grey had been playing so exuberantly with her vocal chords.
— Vinnie? Are you alright?… What just happened?
— Oh, Pheffy… I think I made an awful blunder…
— What do you mean?
— You know, my last experiment?
— The g…
— Yes!
— What?!
— They poofed away…
— Away?… You mean, all of them? Oh bugger… A few minutes later, Vinya and Phefia were around a white table sucking on straws picked into white and red polystyrenoid balls.
— Vinnie, you look terrible… That last geomagnetic storm had not done very good on your DNA I’m afraid.
— And the worse is that each time I sneeze, I blow up wormholes… I thought it would go better very quickly, but last one was big and lasted long enough to let the whole experimental herd wander off in another time/space and/or dimension…
— Yeah, that’s pretty bad… But wherever they went, they probably will die very soon… Imagine… With their stiff legs anytime they see something frightening, I guess a mere mapgie could easily have them for dinner…
— Such a pity… I was close to doing something great with them… When we discovered these fossilized blue spiders, I knew it was the first step.
— Bwah, this rehydrated frogrog is the grossest thing I’ve ever drunk… But yeah you’re right, the first results were very promising. The spiders venom could provoke very random and deep mutations.
— And all we needed was a little more control on the direction of the mutations.
— Anyway they’re just goats… You possibly can’t have breached a cosmic law with a handful of GOATS…
— Hope so Pheffy, hope so…
San Demangelo, 1848
Elroy was laughing… Hey Joe, Twi! he shouted A letter from Uncle Ernie!
— Uncle Ernie? How’s the old bat doin’? asked Twilight
— He’s sending his greetings for the new year, and babbling about last dead people in the neighborhood. But there’s something funny. He’s saying that he’d just acquired some funny goats. Like popped in, out of nowhere. At first he’d thought of a joke, but apparently no one’s been claiming them. He’d thought them dead, they were a dozen laying stiff on the ground, but when they started to wake up, they went down again like broken dolls. Apparently the magpies on top of the tree had been scaring them. Ahaha… Where does he get such strange stories…
— Well, magpies are scarey, Twilight said meaningfully, with a side glance at Joe…
— Whatever… At least he’d been giving us a good laugh. He’s saying he’s gonna breed the horny beasts, and start a Fainting Goat Fair (or FGF) in Marshall County. Perhaps we could get there next Thanksgiving…
— Depends when the Freak Show’s coming to town, mused Twilight, I hope to see them soon…The preys weren’t so easy to catch. Phurt had some difficulties after they had fallen from the sky, destroying a nest in the process. Most of her sisters were upset and would have killed both of them at once, but Narani had insisted : they had to be kept alive.
The female was the most aggressive, she was shouting and struggling, she managed to knock out 2 of them, they were youngsters, but nonetheless experienced huntresses. The male was hurt. Phurt was surprised at how bigger than the female he was. Most unusual she had thought then… When she had told that to Narani, she had just breathed quicker to show her amusement. Narani was wise and old… very old. Maybe it was time for her to let another sister take her place.
Phurt froze in anguish, she was most astonished by her thoughts. Something definitely weird was happening. Was it what she had sensed before the arrival of the preys? It was changing her from inside. She had to hide this part of herself to her sisters. Narani had never been challenged, there was no recalling of any such event. Narani was the memory of her sisters. Nothing was hidden to her… until now.
Something had changed in the vibration of the collective of her sisters. Narani had felt the modification of the flow since the arrival of that human device. Her sisters had only found 2 humans, a female and her male. There should have been a cub. The mother was still smelling her offspring.
Narani hadn’t tell that to her sisters, they wouldn’t understand. Though the threat that Phurt had felt before their arrival… the threat was from this particular child.
Phurt was thrilled.
Something smokin’ big was approaching. A breach between dimensions, with potentials for her to start a new colony of her own…
She started to hiss devilishly.
Old Narani is becoming too soft.
While the attraction of the hole was intensely beckoning, Phurt had been appointed by a strange twist of fate to the guard of the prisoners by the Old Mother.Bugger Narani whisspered Phurt, why not just kill them, these stupid two-legged animals. Why the pain of keeping them alive? Good thing the daily dose of sedative venom had them quiet now. They would only scare the mooing preys. Stupid, stupid.
Of course, it would be easy to just sink a little more than usual her sharp tooth into their neck so fragile. A regrettable accident…
Phurt couldn’t help but smile a grin as wide as her hairy eight-eyed face. But she wasn’t known as the Doctor of Breath for nothing. Her mere breath could be as sweet as a jasmine scent or terribly deadly. She had never missed a target, never could have.
She was no mere Spinner; how could the Mother have put her to such a slighting task. Degrading. For her, the most promising Hunter of her generation to be doing this while they all were securing the hole perimeter.She would have to go. Something was nudging her to move, something like a fluid water sound, that whispered that nothing could happen to those prisoners. No one would be fool enough to dare to enter the Nest.
Ahaha, why would she care? Nobody would know. And the little ones would alert her in any case.With a prodigious jump, she sprung to the forest in the direction of the hole. She couldn’t be denied her destiny.
— Is it gone now? a voice whispered under a pile of giant ferns
— I think it is growled Araili’s voice Thanks to the Snoot’s power of suggestion, I suppose… The Snoot might find spiders eggs delicacy enough to help us in our rescue operation.
— Shall we go there now? Kay? Ready to go and report back if everything’s clear?
— Ready. Rafaela was not finding it very difficult to jump on the rocky slopes. It was only difficult for her to remember to stay physically focused so that Anita wouldn’t fall to a certain death. And of course, even more difficult to resist to the attraction of nibbling a few crunchy thistles and brambles that grew here and there.
But Yuki’s attention was here to remind her, and so far, their progression had been smooth and easy.But all of a sudden, the small pink nose of Yuki raised in quicker spasms sniffing the air intently.
— What? What? asked Rafaela who almost forgot her focusing. What?! Did I fart or something?Anu who was having the time of her life jumping on the coarse back of the goat giggled at her clueless question.
— I think the spiders are moving too. We’ll be reaching the hole before them, and the Snoot tells me they won’t be moving close to it. But they won’t let anything or anyone get out of it. Let’s hope dear Armelle will spot a path for our friends.
— Not to worry, Rafaela said matter-of-factly, Army is good at spoohtting. She’s the best I know at that.
— OK, let’s move on… Claude was finally seeing a pinhole of light, at a close distance. He could just continue to crawl out his way to the light, and he would soon be release. And to cheer him up, he reminded himself that no man nor beast he feared, with his phenomenal strength agility and speed he now had. Too bad he didn’t have any time to get a proper super-hero attire he smiled to himself.
On Tikfijikoo, the Magpie’s energy maze-cloak was now lift. The fury of the cyclone was now in its full power, and the Magpies were starting their swift deployment.
The item was left unguarded in the operation room, as far as they could tell, and in the chaos of the elements, surely a few magpies would be unnoticed.They had to move quick now. The portal would be opened soon too. They couldn’t come back without bringing “it” back with them.
The portal has opened, we must hurry said Araili
Araili had felt something more, that he didn’t want to share yet with Akita and his spirit dog Kay. He had felt that something, or someone was trying to make its way from the wortex. However, the whole area was tightly held in a sort of quarantine by the giant spiders. Their genetic ancestral memory was aware of previous huge bleedthroughs like this one, and they had what humans would call “prophecies” amongst their kin, of such occurrences being heralds of tremendous upheavals.
Araili, who was extending far beyond this guise of a lynx that he had taken now, smiled when he thought of how some of his earthly medieval focuses would have been similarly frightened by natural events like eclipses.It did not take long to them to find Anita’s parents. They were right at the spot that the big arachnid had just left, wrapped in silky spider bandages with little skin left to breathe.
— They seem alive. checked Akita. Heavily sedated, but alive… Now, we’ll have to get them out of here quick.
— I think I have an idea smiled Araili. Claude had finally came out of what he thought was just a strange tree, but then, his preternatural senses where telling him something was wrong. This place looked different. No, this place felt different.
And smelt different too.There were soft sounds, crawlings he could hear, very near his place. They were coming from him, but he would fight.
He jumped on a tree, and in a few vigorous movements, was perched on top of it.
He almost gapped when he saw the black circle of huge spiderly creatures around his tree.They were staying at a distance from the wortex. But for how long… He couldn’t wait for his death.
From the top of the tree, Claude jumped unscathed. Taking a look around, he found exactly what he needed.
Breaking a few sharp bamboos poles, he started his move to the black circle in a prodigious and accelerated run. From atop a nearby tree, Armelle was considering the whole scene. The wortex would probably last a few hours, perhaps a bit more. Anita, Rafaela and Yuki were about to be here soon, she had warned them of the spider circle, so that they would hide until she has found them a way to get through.
She had not expected someone to come out of it. That may be her way…
Phurt was coming closer and closer now. She could feel the surge of power, and the trepidation raising all the hair on her legs. She couldn’t possibly confront all of the sisters. Not yet.
She had to find a way to get past.As if Arachneiax, Goddess of her kind had heard and answered her plea, a dying cry, confusion, and call for help came to her senses from a border of their circle. A perfect diversion…
The confusion that Claude had made on the spiders ranks had been all that Phurt had waited for.
In her agitation she hadn’t felt the signals that the Mother had been hurt during the fight.The only thing that obsessed Phurt now was that a way was now clear for the giant spider to go nearer the “wortex”. She could feel it, it was coming from the elder tree, the roots of which went spreading miles and miles away.
Perhaps she could subjugate that raw power, consume it wholly and become one with it.But, as she went closer and closer, she started to feel as if she wasn’t the one eating or absorbing it, but the reverse was true. She started to struggle as she felt sucked into the wortex, crying as she felt doomed to oblivion, as old Narani had been telling them. How stupid had she been, she should have heard her. And as the Mother was now dying instead of becoming the new Mother, she was now about to die with her.
But now was too late for laments. She had to embrace her destiny, and if it meant to die, she would, with pride. They all had felt it simultaneously. Armelle and the Snoot on the borgulm tree, Yuki and Rafaela, waiting with Anita near the perimeter made by the spiders, and Akayli the werelynx, carrying the mummified parents.
— What’s happening Claude asked to the owl
— One of the giant spiders went through the hole, and we’ll have to follow her said Yuki to Anita.
— The good thing is that the turmoil will keep the wortex opened a little longer Akayli thought to himselves.
Armelle, go open the way now the Snoot whispered to the owl, then poofed away in a gurgling liquid sound.
When Phurt awoke, it was all dark and the soil was sodden and drenched and she was all wet to the tips of her fine black and white hair. Her pairs of eyes blinked as a bright lightening illuminated the whole place.
It looked like a forest, and though everything was silent now safe the sound of the cyclone, she could tell there was water not very far, and that place had all aspects of a body of land surrounded by waters.
Jumping on her fine legs, she took a look around, looking for any clue… where she could start to build her new nest. The little ones would be soon requiring her attention, and she would have to secure a perimeter for them and herself. Who knew what unknown danger was looming in this unknown place?
As if answering her silent question, a thunder rolled into the sky opening it in two in a flash of a thunderbolt, revealing somewhere in the less dense parts of the forest, a protruding tip of what seemed a huge white dome-like structure.
That would be perfect indeed…Coming from it, a shriek suddenly filled her ears, parts of which where so clearly in the ultrasounds part of the spectrum that she could hear it perfectly…
HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-ah!
Glo was beaming.
— Aye, I think we got them all the nasty buggers!
— Good riddance! Good thing we took off our clothes, with all that nasty pomegranate juice everywhere
— Odd that those magpies gushed all bloody purple blood everywhere
— Odd indeed, now ye mention it, Sha
— What’s that “indeed” business all about now? Speaking like a bloddy ascended being are ye? Sharon said while readjusting her bra.
— Ascended beings my tits, never ‘ere when ye need them… Now, look at all this purple juice stains now, ruined all our beauty treatments…
— So what we gonna do of this UV lamp now? Sharon asked
— Odd lamp… Looks more a skull than a lamp to me, Sha…
— Yeah, they got bizarrest tastes ‘ere, with that clever doctor…
— Sure, that one obviously doesn’t know how to put lipstick properly, now you say it…
— UV skull-shaped lamps now… Next thing we know, we got magpies’ Bloody Margies
— Bloody Margies! Ya’re so smart Sha, ahahaha!
— I reckon we better keep it safe… Poor Vessie seems to have much on her plate with that sexy Italian… don’t want to make another bloddy blunder …
— Ya’re the brain, I reckon Sha. Let’s find Mavis and have some snacks… That honeystuff in the fridge was sooo addictivePhurt had been prowling in the woods for some time, but the illuminated structure at the center of the island was more appealing than the damp trees and mud holes to build her nest.
And it was also like a sort of huge container of fat and tender food she could tell.
She had spotted three delicious looking entrées: sorts of human cross between
and …She jumped on the top of the part of the building were the three giggling entrées were heading towards. There was a window on the top of the dome which was easily opened. She wouldn’t attract attention now the rain had ceased, and that way she would be smelling the delicious suntan-cream sauce and pheromone fumet. She started to drool but before she noticed, a large gooey blue snotty pool had landed on the floor just in front of one of the meals.
Good thing the ensuing confusion left her location still concealed, she thought…
She had trouble discerning them as anything else than a big juicy appetizing blob of energy, but Phurt could tell they would come back; apparently, the light was enticing them.She would wait till they come back…
And build her nest in this warm place full of light… Phurt started to glide herself through the roof window into the room. She hadn’t noticed how the blinking lights were making her dizzy. It was coming from that strange ball of light…
She started to gaze into it, mesmerized by what she could see…
But somehow, it felt like her energy was becoming more compact…
What was happening?
It was all so fascinating…
Was she shrinking? She loved that feeling, like she was becoming more concentrated, a compact ball of sheer power!
She was hungry for more! She would devore this world!HEEEEEEEEK!
SPLATCH!
— What was that Glo?!
— A bloddy spider ‘ere! And now it’s all stuck under my foot like bloddy sticky Toilet Paper!
— Oh come on, now we can dance!— “I’m sure some weaving of threads can be done at a later date if necessary, if it doesn’t weave itself. Did you see the weaving quotes?”
— “Well, it would be like asking shaven sheep to have their mops of hair on the floor weave themselves on their own…”
— “Text/textile ~ weaving a story, which was where mother goose came in!”
— “And how would she know the first thing about weaving, she’s only got feathers on her back!”
— “Ah but she weaves a good story”
— “She doesn’t,… she pens… That’s what I call weaving… We need more giant spiders! Are you still … game?”Phurt knew there was something strange, her previous memory was that she was dead and now she seemed to be perfectly alive and alert.
The environment was strange, though. It was all full of little balls and she could see many headless people. Compared to them, her size was quite ridiculous and she prefered not to make her presence known for the moment. She will have time later for her projects of conquest of the world. But is what world was she?All at her thinking, she didn’t see the creature coming and she almost died again out of fear when it began to breath in the air around. Maybe it was some kind of hoovering creature. She began to feel the vibrations as the dog (who has his head on for a change) began barking to notify his master that he has found the strangest little creature aroud. The master of the dog was a child of New Peasland and when he saw that strange little creature that he had never seen before, he called for his mother, who in turn didn’t know the little creature at all, and she asked her neighbor what it could be, but the neighbor didn’t know as well, so the went together to the mayor who in turn didn’t know what to think of it, but he was sure it had not been spotted before by a mayor of New Peasland, he would be the first, and he asked the kid to entrust him with his find and that he would tell him soon about it, thank you!
All alone in her matchbox, Phurt started to relax, the last few event had been frightening and she couldn’t do anything to escape her assailants, but the eventually let her alone, even if it was in some kind of jail.
MOUAAHAHAHAHAH, she laughed of her little spider laugh, which resembled more to a little squircking sound than to a laugh, especially in the New Peasland dimension. She had laughed because the walls of her prisons seemed quite tender and it would not demand her too much effort to get out. But for now, she was exhausted and needed some rest. It was not everyday that you found yourself alive again.
“These tapas are lovely, eh, Leo, what are they?” asked Bea.
“Arana Rebozada, whatever that is, some kind of squid I suppose, nice and crunchy anyway, whatever it is” replied Leo, who couldn’t remember the names of any of the characters in the new thread either.
Fishing into the depths of her capacious handbag, Bea pulled out a battered Spanish dictionary. “Oh here we are” she said, as she swallowed the last tasty morsel. “Breaded spiders.”
Phurt was vaguely aware to have been alive in different times, and in different surrounding. The memories kept coming at the oddest and less practical of all times, like this one when she’d jumped through the talking glass. They were nevertheless precise and vivid enough to be more than just strikes of fancy. Besides, she was but all a fancy spider.
The last one she remembered (and the ten previous ones before it) was being admonished and crushed (literally) by the words (and the one uttering them) “you and your kind are not welcome here!” Actually, if you wanted to be precise, the previous to last time, she’d been drowned in the pipes —but still, she could hear the fateful “you and your kin… gurgle gurgle.”
She didn’t know for certain when and where she’d vowed to gain dominion over these Crushing Others, and all her failed attempts and these strange karmic glimpses that had her reincarnated over and over certainly did help, if so slightly, to get closer to this goal.
Now she needed a nice dark and clean place (yeah hence the stupid tub of last which proved to be clean enough, but barely dark for long enough) to spin a nice thin web and gather enough food for her dear little ones.
Sadly, Phurt’s couldn’t make any cobwebs other than all wireless —kind of defeated the purpose, when you gave it thought.
Reception and connection weren’t any of the new dwelling’s forte for now.So she wrapped herself in a cozy dark corner of her new cave, tucked in a blanket of great warmth and subtle mucous design, and her nine eyelids being closed one after the other (from right to left, and top to bottom), started to dream of delicate and headless sheep.
Meanwhile, Phurt was distraught.
Perhaps it was an unfortunate consequence of her experimental breading but the thing was… she didn’t seem capable of spawning anything else than little hot buns.Suddenly it all became clear to Nasturtium. The Releasing of the Bird had gone awry with The Tampering of The Code. The giant invisible spider web tea bag that was to enclose all that annoying blubbit nonsense that was wreaking havoc all over Peasland had blinked out while nobody was focused on it.
Obviously, as any well versed bridge tart would know, it could just as easily blink back in.
In the back of the garden, forgotten by the children, lying unsuspectingly still in that place lost between the pine trees leaning against the wall separating the garden from the nearby graveyard was a lost chocolate egg wrapped in lemon chiffon coloured wrapping, its topmost part almost flattened as the toil of the sun had started to melt the delicacy.
It started to jump… and slowly crack open.
Liz felt someone tug at her almost transparent pink silk gown. She tried to ignore it as she worked hard to recall the young woman’s name, she had it on the tip of her tongue.
The tug got stronger and Liz feared that whomever was doing it they were going to tore her silk veil. She turned around, her irritation colouring her high cheekbones with a nice tint of pink and gasped.
“What I do with the spiders,” asked a small woman with dark skin and wearing a rainbow sari. “They’re so big big, and SOOOO hungry. They’re going to eat the guests only.”Liz shook her head, seeing the curls of her newly acquired blond wig bounce about her face. She looked at the cocktail. What did Roberto said was in those? she wondered.
“What spiders?” she asked. The maid pointed behind Liz with her chin. When Liz looked she almost dropped her glass. A swarm of colourful giant jumping spiders were running and jumping near the swimming pool, frightening the human guests, while Roberto was riding one of them in his sparkling cowboy costume, laughing like a teenager.
“So?” asked the maid insistently. “What I do?”
Liz was confused.
“Why are they here?” she asked, “I don’t understand. Where’s Godfrey?”“They are the daughters and sons of Narani from the giant spiders island,” said a man with a beard in a WWII uniform. A ghost dog barked silently at his feet.
“Of course,” Liz said. But it was too much for her and she gulped, all at once, the remaining fifteen jewels of condensed information floating in her cocktail. She shoved the glass in the maid’s hands and said: “Bring me another,” before she collapsed under the afflux of so much knowledge.
