Frithelfrothel

 Lucy sat watching the spiders darting in and out of their burrows. She wondered why they took all the effort to hunt and burrow when they could be like other spiders and spin a web and just wait around for their food to come to them. She figured it had something to do with evolution. Spinning a web requires energy resources too. A spider appeared at the entrance of its burrow, froze, and then darted across the path, diagonally away from where she sat. Its legs moved so fast it was almost as if it was flying at low level along the ground. Lucy wondered if such a difference existed in humans too. Those who spun webs and waited to catch whatever they needed, and those who went looking, not content to stay in one place for too long. She considered herself. She couldn’t really decide if she was either. She still lived at home and went to college during the day. In a way, she was going out hunting for knowledge, but on the other hand she didn't have to go anywhere else because everything she needed was provided for her by her parents, so it was as if she was sitting in a web. And besides, humans only have two arms and two legs… but they do have ten fingers…

“Lucy! What are you doing down there?” It was Monique.

“Looking at spiders,” she called back. 

“Weirdo” Monique muttered, and strolled down to meet her friend. “I’m going to get a coffee. Wanna hang out?”

“Sure,” Lucy said, and joined her friend on her trip to the cafe.

Frithelfrothel, a juvenile Geolycosa domifex, felt the thunderous vibrations of Lucy’s footsteps as they boomed away across the green expanse. What the hell was that thing? A large animal for sure, but it had such unnatural colours! It had watched him but made no attempt to attack, even though he would have made an easy snack for it. Maybe he was too small for it to bother. It had left a peculiar scent on the grass and a cloud of humidified carbon dioxide hung where it had been sitting. It had left part of its weirdly coloured pelt behind. Frithelfrothel scuttled over to investigate. He touched it tentatively. It was unlike anything he had seen. It was constructed out of millions of knots of what seemed like thick scrambled abdomen silk. The closest thing he could compare it to was the food traps the Araneidae arachnids made, and the colour was something like a tiny part of the spectrum that he sometimes saw coming off those traps when the sun shone on them. 

The ground began to vibrate again. It was coming back! Frithelfrothel was exposed out on the green expanse. It hadn’t attacked him before, but that was no guarantee it wouldn’t this time, or even tread on him by mistake. He snuck onto the pelt and hid in one of the folds. He could make out the enormous outline of the thing through the holes in the pelt, getting closer and closer. Suddenly, everything went wrong. Frithelfrothel found himself upside-down. It had shed its pelt; why was it picking it up again? Why on earth would it want it back?! He clung on to it for dear life as he felt himself lifted far, far above the green expanse. He could see the bush that he lived in from above, and the flowers behind that, and the bushes beyond those, further than he had ever ventured in his life. He saw the brown towers where the Araneidae lived. They looked so strange from far away! Further and further away they receded until Frithelfrothel was no longer near anywhere he recognised. He was flung violently back and forth inside the fold in the pelt in which he cowered, and he sensed there was another of these monstrous creatures alongside the one that had picked him up. They were making extraordinary vibrations in the atmosphere. The experience was hellacious. He reckoned he could escape injury if he jumped, but the way he had come in had been folded shut and he was trapped. The green expanse had now disappeared and instead he found himself being carried across a dark expanse, devoid of life. Every now and then terrible, odorous, monstrous contrivances thundered past, spewing noxious gases, and the two creatures raised their voices to be heard over the cacophony, only adding to his terror. What had he done to deserve this? Frithelfrothel wondered. He had abided by the natural order. He had only hunted things big enough to feed his hunger and not laid waste to creatures just for fun as some of the other arachnids sometimes did. The tortuous swinging and crushing and vibrating and odorous gases never seemed to end! It was awful! But then all of a sudden, it did. It all suddenly stopped. The air felt different. He couldn’t see the sky. There were many more of these enormous creatures in this space, all breathing out humid air and vibrating in weird unpredictable ways. Strange scents assaulted his senses. With the exception of the enormous creatures the place felt devoid of any natural life. 

“So anyway, I told him that if he really wanted to know what I was thinking he’d have to come up with better ways of guessing. Guys are so basic. It’s as if they SPIDER! SPIDER! SPIDER!” Monique shrieked. “Get a newspaper! Oh shit there’s no newspaper! Use a menu!”

“Chill out Mon, jeez. You’re making a scene!” Lucy replied, much quieter.  “It can’t hurt you. It’s just like the ones I was watching in the garden just now. They just want to be left alone.”