Fear Itself [FICTOID]

“You can’t leave me here!” Arachnophobia said.  “Not after I served you so well!”

“You did not serve us well,” said humanity.

“I kept you from spiders.”

“One:  No, you didn’t; we still faced spiders all the time.

“And two:  There’s a world -- no, a vast universe -- of difference between reasonable, intelligent caution and hysterical fear.

“You have repeatedly proven you are more trouble than you are worth, so sayonara.”

And with that humanity pushed off on its long boat, returning to its schooner, and sailed far, far away over the horizon.

(What?  No, of course it’s not a real island or a real boat or a real schooner.  Arachnophobia and humanity serve here only as archetypes, not real characters.  Settle down and enjoy the story.)

There was nothing left for Arachnophobia to do except explore the island.  Being an archetype, it had no need for food, no need for water, no need for shelter.  Lacking a physical form, it could build no raft to escape its fate.

Not that the island possessed anything that could be used to build a raft.  Humanity selected a very barren, isolated volcanic rock thousands of miles from the nearest human habitation.

No vegetation dotted the island, it offered nothing but jagged black basaltic rock.  A thin beach ran along the leeward side of the island; occasionally dead fish would wash ashore and rot, providing Arachnophobia with its only source of amusement -- if you count watching a dead fish slowly rotting away as amusement.

How long Arachnophobia existed on the island is unknown; it soon lost track of the rising and setting of the sun.

So it couldn’t tell you when the spider arrived.

The spider drifted in on a filament of silk, carried not just by wind but electromagnetic currents in the atmosphere.  Was it the first?  Perhaps not.  Other spiders may have reached the island earlier but finding no food either perished from starvation or set sail again on a new silk filament.

This spider landed close enough to the beach for it to catch a few gnats in its web.

A small colony of gnats existed on the island that feasted off the occasional fish that washed ashore.

The spider spun its web between two rocks just past the shoreline and patiently waited.  Each day four or five gnats would blindly blunder into the web, providing the spider with its daily meal.

When Arachnophobia became aware of the spider, it was delighted.

Now I can infect the colony of gnats, it thought.

Then it stopped and thought some more.

If it succeeded in filling the gnats with arachnophobia, they might successfully avoid the spider.  That meant the spider would either die of starvation or move on, neither of which appealed to Arachnophobia.

I must nurture its survival at all costs.

Arachnophobia set about protecting its new companion, luring gnats to their doom in the spider’s web.

Soon the spider grew sleek and fat, delighting in the bounty it enjoyed.

But as it did, Arachnophobia recognized a problem.  This is but a single spider.  Once it grows old and dies, I will be left alone again.

(Because gnats, as numerous as they are, are essentially brainless and dead, decaying fish are woefully inadequate conversationalists.)

Arachnophobia realized it must scour the island, looking for other airborne arachnid refugees.

How long it searched, it couldn’t tell; time long since became meaningless to Arachnophobia, it existed only in the now-Now-NOW!!!

But finally its diligence paid off.  It found another spider on the far side of the island.

Now, the epic of how Arachnophobia – lac king any physical form – managed to lure the spider over rocky terrain and jagged barren basalt to the tiny spit of beach would fill multiple volumes, a veritable arachnid omnibus edition of The Hobbit / The Lord Of The Rings / The Silmarillion with Moby Dick / Great Expectations / Les Misérables / Huckleberry Finn thrown in.

But this is neither the time not the place for such an epic, so lets boil it down to it took a long time and a helluva lot of effort to get the two spiders together.

And what happened next any human could tell Arachnophobia would happen:  The two spiders mated then the second spider killed and devoured the first.

Arachnophobia felt dismayed, betrayed.  Guilt flooded its mind at the thought it brought death to its equally lonely arachnid companion.

Had Arachnophobia a heel. It would have mercilessly crushed the second spider under it.

But then a transformation occurred in both the spider and Arachnophobia itself.

The second spider laid a sac of eggs, and from those eggs came scores of baby spiders.

Some flew away on silk filaments of their own, but others stayed among the cleft of the rocks, watching and waiting for gnats to fly into their webs.

Second, Arachnophobia realized as much as it hated and loathed and feared spiders, it needed them.  Without spiders Arachnophobia would have no reason to exist, and with no reason to exist, life becomes pointless.

So Arachnophobia stays and nurtures the spider colony as best it can.  It lures gnats to their doom, encourages baby spiders to leaver, settles territorial disputes, mourns the post-coital consumption of male spiders, and generally serves as a benign mini-god on tbis arachnid mini-world.

All in all, a happy life.

© Buzz Dixon