The Creatures Upon the Web

“Oh what a miserable world this is”, buzzed the fly wrapped up in silk threads like a mummified pharaoh and hanging upon a spider’s web, “That I should end up here and be lunch for an eight legged monstrosity”.

“It is not the world; it is I who have brought this upon myself”, said the bee who was bound up next to it and was desperately struggling to touch its own sting so that it might end its life, “It is my own weakness and foolishness that brought me here. It must surely be. Every person is in control of their own destiny. And if they fail it is because they brought it upon themselves”.

“Do not blame yourself”,  said a Daddy Long legs with its long legs trussed up in spider silk, “Life is fair. It’s just that, sometimes it is fair to fly’s and sometimes fair to spiders. If no flies were ever caught then the spiders would all starve and they would cry to heaven, Mother of all spiders, goddess with the eight legs, how can we poor spiders survive when you let all the fly’s go free. And so sometimes the predator must win and sometimes the prey”.

But the fly and the bee did not trust the Daddy long legs for, with his long legs, he looked far too spider like.

But then a dandelion seed that was caught upon the web spoke and it was sad too,

“Oh but what about I”, it said, “I could have been a bright dandelion with a yellow mane. I should be in a field with all my brothers but instead I am here, rotting upon this web. It does not seem natural. I’m not fulfilling the proper destiny of a flower”.

“Oh but it is natural”, said the Daddy Longlegs, “If every dandelion seed that blue in the wind fell upon fertile ground then the world would be yellow; there would be no other colour. Some always have to fail”.

“The weak fail”, said the bee, argumentatively, “The strong always survive”.

“Oh but you know that is not always the case”, said the Daddy Longlegs, “Strong or weak; good or bad; bad things may happen to all but, on the sunny side, this also means that good things may happen to all”.

“So I am not ugly”, said a butterfly with its pretty wings bound shut, “I thought, as I was hanging here, that I must be uglier than other butterflies. That is why fate has chosen me to be caught on this web while other prettier butterflies fly about in the sun”.

“Oh far from it”, said the Daddy long legs to the butterfly, “You are as beautiful as any butterfly but even the most beautiful butterfly may end up in ugly circumstances”.

But then a wasp buzzing around the web stopped to laugh at the trapped insects, “Ha-ha! Look at the insects caught on the web. You’re all going to be dinner soon”.

“Oh queen of heavens hive. Please let him be caught. Please let him be caught”, prayed the bee, burning with embarrassment and bitterness, “Then he won’t be laughing anymore”.

But the wasp wasn’t caught and, before long it buzzed away, losing its interest in tormenting the creatures on the web.

“There is no justice and no mercy. If there were that wasp would have been caught. That would have been poetic justice. That is how things end in stories”, said the fly who had read a story once, crawling across the pages of an open book.

“Aggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”, screamed the man bound up next to the fly.

All the insects looked over at him.

“What’s his problem?”, asked the bee.

“Oh him”, said the Daddy longlegs, “He’s just having a nightmare. Subconsciously, he’s wondering why his life is going nowhere; why all the dreams he had when he was young did not materialize; why though he is as capable as anyone else he will never go far within his human world”.

The man passed out or, perhaps, woke up.

“Oh I wish I were not I”, said the bee, “I must remember. I am not I, I am they, the hive.  I do not die a failure; my life is not meaningless because I am the hive and the hive lives on”.

“But I want to be myself”, said the fly, “Although right now I wish I were someone else”.

 “Perhaps that is the key to all our miseries”, said the butterfly, “Our feeling of separateness. We do not love each other. We fight against each other; we use each other. We make each other feel small and useless so that we can feel more important ourselves.  Why do we do it? We are all just tiny specks of dust; equally unimportant or important in the scheme of things. Why do we step on each other? What do we gain? We all die just the same. The importance of a rich man or a king is merely an illusion; he compares himself to a beggar and so feels rich”.

“Hush little children, tucked up in bed”, said the Spider, hearing the insects talk, “You will all be asleep soon. Look up at the stars and listen to the story I used to tell my own spider children when they were young. The stars, you see, are a gigantic web that glistens in the light of an invisible sun and we are all threads in that great web. Some threads upon the web may snap because the silk is not strong enough but the beautiful web will go on”.

But, looking up, the Butterfly did not see the stars as a glistening web. Instead, she saw a hundred million white butterflies with their wings spread out and the spider threads that bound her; they were just a kind of cocoon from which she would soon burst free.

“Soon”, she said, “I will be flying with the stars”.