On the eve of his seventeenth birthday, Kevin was eaten by spiders. Torn apart and liquefied and slurped up down to the bones.
He had it coming though. There was a perfectly good reason for it.
*
On his tenth birthday, Kevin’s mother gave him a small brown box and inside the box was another box and both of them had airholes because inside them like the world’s hairiest matryoshka doll was a large tarantula.
“Make sure you don’t forget to feed her,” his mother told him.
“Sure!” said Kevin.
He forgot to feed her, then when she became quiescent pulled her legs off, one at a time. A very small orb-weaving spider saw the whole thing from her web in the corner of his room.
Not that she gave a shit, mind you. Being torn apart is just part of a spider’s day, albeit the very last part of the last day.
*
On his twelfth birthday Kevin’s father gave him an egg sac. The last one the pet store had.
“They misplaced the label, no idea what’s in it,” he said. “Think of it as gambling.”
Kevin got bored of waiting two days in and poked the egg sac apart in hopes of seeing what was inside it. He found nothing but tiny little half-formed spiderlings, legs still soft and blurred like bad photography.
The very small orb-weaver in the corner of his room didn’t mind. Less competition.
*
On his fourteenth birthday, Kevin was given a pair of wolf spiders.
“Make sure you don’t keep them in the same place,” his parents told them. “The female might eat the male.”
Kevin immediately put them both in the same tank that night and poked them until the female gave in and ate the male out of crabbiness.
The orb-weaver approved. She’d done the same thing earlier that morning.
*
On his seventeenth birthday, Kevin was given a slightly small and extremely earnest tarantula named Nigel. He spent several hours making friends with it, then went to bed.
As he turned over the covers he noticed a very small orb-weaver in the corner of his room above his head and swatted her flat without thinking about it.
That tore it. Kevin had swatted a member of the pan-arachnid House of Commons with apathy aforethought. He was judged by a jury of his household’s peers, found guilty, and sentenced to death within the hour, and it was a very humane sentence because he didn’t even have time to scream.
As opposed to his mother the next morning. Good lord that woman had lungs.
She quieted down a lot when she found the tiny court documents left on his ribcage though. “Oh,” she said. “I see. Well, this all seems to be in order. I guess there’s no helping it. Honey!” she called down the stairs. “Our son’s been executed by spiders. I guess we can go on that cruise you always wanted now?”
*
They left the skeleton where it lay. As part of the settlement, Kevin’s remains were not to be moved until they had raised at least six generations of spiders, and they were decent, law-abiding people who respected authority.
Nigel lived in Kevin’s skull and grew fat and happy off a diet of spiderlings until he died peacefully in his sleep.
******
The first thing the Great God Plonk created was himself, croak-first. He wriggled his fat-bellied way into existence until the tips of his long, long legs were finished and then he looked around himself and made a chuggarumph of displeasure.
“This is very dry,” he said, and uttered a vast croak. And lo, there was moisture. Enough of it to create the world and all its ponds, which the Great God Plonk immediately hopped into.
“This is very gray,” he said, and uttered another vast croak. And lo, there was greenery. Enough scum and moss and ferns and trees to ring every pool and puddle, and the Great God Plonk luxuriated in their rich shade.
“This is very hungry work,” he said at last, and went cree-cree-cree-cree-cree-cree. And lo, out of the thin air came one trillion things that crawled and swam and flew, and almost all of them could fit in the Great God Plonk’s mouth.
That is precisely where he began to fit them.
“This is ALSO very hungry work,” he said when he was done. And he went cree-cree-cree-cree-cree-cree again, and an endless tide of life was made anew and sent spiralling into the Great God Plonk’s gullet over and over and over and over, because the more he made the hungrier he grew.
“Psst,” said something to the Great God Plonk. And it wasn’t himself, which startled him.
It was a tiny little crawling thing with eight legs. “Want to know a secret?”
“I have made the world and everything in it,” said the Great God Plonk. “There are no secrets.”
“I’ve got one,” said the thing. “I’m a spider. We’re made of secrets. I made one myself.”
“It can’t be that big a secret,” said the Great God Plonk, “because you are very tiny. I think I’ll just eat you now.”
“What, you don’t want to know the secret of how to have a bigger meal?”
This interested the Great God Plonk, and so he recoiled his tongue before it had left his mouth. “Tell me.”
“I can do better – I’ll SHOW you. It involves traps and tricks. See, watch.”
And the spider began to make a web. It was very slow work – it was just a very little spider – but it toodled along as best it could.
Which wasn’t enough for the Great God Plonk. “I’m bored,” he said. “Maybe I should just eat you now.”
“Ah, but then you’ll never learn how to have a bigger meal,” said the spider. “Maybe if I had more sisters to help this would go fast.”
This made sense to the Great God Plonk, so he went cree-cree-cree-cree-cree-cree again and made many many other spiders, who all helped. The web grew bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until it was big enough to cover the whole pond.
“Is this the bigger meal?” asked the Great God Plonk.
“Taste it!” said the spider.
The Great God Plonk tasted it. It was tough and bitter and it stuck his tongue fast, and the harder he tried to yank it free the more tangled it grew.
So he used his arms.
Then his legs.
Finally all the Great God Plonk could do was bobbled and gurgle.
“THAT’s a bigger meal for all of us,” said the spider happily. And she and her many many many other sisters descended, fangs-first.
*
The Great God Plonk’s descendants never did learn the trick of having a bigger meal. But they are still very, very good at eating anything that fits in their mouths.
******
Once upon a princess castle wicked stepmother yadda yadda yadda YADDA locked in a tower.
One day, as the princess sat in her room, her one remaining loyal servant came knocking at her door. “Princess!” he whispered. “The queen wants you to weave the most beautiful tapestry ever made for your father’s birthday – by tomorrow!”
“What?” cried the princess. “But she gave me no warning, and I’m a middling weaver at best. If my father’s present isn’t ready by tomorrow he will surely execute me!”
“That’s the idea,” said the one remaining loyal servant.
“Please, please, give me some advice,” begged the princess.
“My mother told me of an old old story: the finest weaver in the world is the great spider, Aroch. She can weave anything out of anything into anything. Sneak out of your tower through the window, and seek her out. She dwells in the far away and dusty hills, where the sunlight never stirs or sleeps.”
So the princess snuck out of her tower through the window – it was a very short tower, she barely needed one bedsheet, torn in two – and crept through the slumbering castle town and into the wide wilds of the woods, where she became lost for hours and hours.
“Oh no,” she sobbed. “How will I ever find the far away and dusty hills by morning?”
“Why do you want to go there?” asked a tiny voice. It was a very small spider on the treetrunk above her head. “It’s dangerous. Aroch lives there.”
“I need her to do something for me,” said the princess.
“Your funeral,” said the spider. “But if you really want to find her, head for where the light is faintest. It will turn red. It is always sunset in the far away and dusty hills.” And the spider tucked itself into the bark of the tree again and hid.
The princess was not accustomed to following advice from spiders, but nor was she accustomed to seeking favours from them either, and so she swallowed her pride and her fear and sought out the faintest light and followed it through hill and dale and twist and turn and up into the very heart of the glowing red sunset that lurked eternally at the rim of the far away and dusty hills.
“Hello?” she called.
“Hello,” whispered Aroch.
She was right above the princess, straddled between two hilltops. She was very fast and very quiet for something so big.
“I need you to weave the most beautiful tapestry ever made by tomorrow, or my father will execute me,” she said.
“Sorry,” whispered Aroch. “I do not weave.”
“But you’re a spider!”
“I’m a hunter, not a weaver. See my large eyes and powerful legs and massive mandibles? I hunt down my prey and bite it to death. I don’t really weave things with my silk. You’re thinking of my sister, Arach.”
“Oh,” said the princess, feeling very foolish. “Drat. My one remaining loyal servant’s mother must’ve been a little senile.”
“All part of life,” whispered Aroch. “Speaking of which, I am going to eat you now. Anything you need to do first?”
The princess’s body froze, but her mind raced, and her mouth opened just as Aroch’s did. “Actually…yes. I would like to do you a favour.”
“How?”
*
“I already have an ale mug,” said the king. “Decapitate him.”
The executioner sighed inside his mask, but quietly. His arm was starting to cramp up, and they were only halfway through the court’s gift supply.
“Where is my daughter?” shouted the king. “I demand to see my tapestry!”
“No doubt lollygagging,” said the queen. “I knew she would never finish it, the lazy gadabout. She’s had all year to make clean on her boast. No doubt that’s her screaming in the distance right now, wailing at her bad choices.”
“She’s screaming awful loud,” said the king. “Will someone go and fetch her, so we can execute her and silence that racket?”
The ceiling came off the throne room, lifted between two furry legs.
“Hello,” whispered Aroch.
“He’s the one in the hat,” said the princess, from her perch between the largest and fiercest of Aroch’s eyes. “And she’s the one with the best marbling.”
“Fabulous,” whispered Aroch.
“Aieee!” shrieked the king.
“Guards!” shouted the queen.
Snap went the spider.
*
The princess wasn’t interested in ruling, and Aroch was a solitary being.
But on the whole the former kingdom only improved for neglect, and enjoyed many prosperous years from then on out.
If a little less trade than before, mind you. Word of the giant spider living in the ruins of the castle got around.