A Touch of Silk Decoration

Posted on Sun Mar 17th, 2013 @ 5:04am by Ignatius Reilly

Mission: Breaking New Ground
Location: Far Away

"Burn it!"

Mucus and spittle slid down the third chin of the enormously outsized male as he stared at a blob of white silk adhered to the inside of his newest acquisition's environment. He was livid. For the past three nights, each night, the large arachnid had managed to plaster all the sides of her living accommodations with a thin sheet of silk. Though the stuff was thin, it was also amazingly opaque and strong.

The first two days, he’d had his men scrape the silk off, a process that required lifting the entire 'ceiling' of the enclosure. But then, on the second day, Iggy had slipped out of her new abode, unnoticed. She hadn’t gotten far but the attempt had taught her captor that she was sly and not to be trusted.

So far this day, two of his men had reached in and attempted to remove the sticky stuff, only to find themselves battling to get the stuff off their hands and gloves. One of the fellows had made the mistake of getting his hand near his hair - now he was bald on one section of his head.

The blob of silk the collector was staring at was the result of the second man reaching in, getting a hold of the silk and then being utterly terrorized by a large, venomous tarantula hissing and making a run at him. When he'd screamed like a little boy, his employer's admonishment was: "Don't hurt the spider!"

The poor fellow wondered whether being stalked and nearly killed by an arachnid was worth what the fat man paid him. Quite possibly, it was.

"Damn you, arachnid! And tonight is our dinner party! You are to be the star of the evening. Doesn't that sound lovely to you? I have all sorts of people coming to see you!"

I am not a sideshow attraction, to be displayed like a freak so that others can point and stare at me.

"No! Of course not! They are coming here to... Talk to you."

A section of opaque silk shook and shifted and finally ripped open slightly, revealing four beady eyes. Iggy stared at the man. I do not believe you, came her calm, alien thought-voice. The silk shifted back into place.

"Whoever named you Iggy called you the wrong thing! You should have been named Diva or Brat or something equally vile!"

Again, the silk shifted to reveal four of Iggy's eyes. Diva would be good. I will need to look up what that word truly means. I think, perhaps, it does not mean quite what you think it does. But while we are on the subject of names, my pet needs one. Diva... Avid. Avid is a completely different word.... Not a good name.

The arachnid moved the silk screen back into place and fell silent. She would not admit it to the fat man, but she was tired. Staying up to spin silk and then weave the silk into thin sheets was taxing work. And she’d done it three nights in a row. She needed food, high protein food. Which meant hunting. The fat bastard was making her work for her food. Oralia hadn’t made her work for her food. Iggy shifted and slowly moved through her environment.

The enclosure was comfortable enough: the humidity was nice and high; the temperature warm; the soil was soft and... she froze as she spied something moving in the undergrowth. Dinner. Moving slowly and smoothly, Iggy’s back legs began pulling silk and weaving it together into a thin net. After a moment’s work, each set of legs passed the net forward till her two front legs held it aloft. She crept forward then froze again, waiting patiently. This was a hunt and her huntress instincts were in full force.

The capture of her dinner took less than a second. The small animal foolishly didn’t notice that the large ‘bush’ wasn’t a bush: it was Iggy. Iggy had the net wrapped around the animal in a split second and, in less time than that, had injected venom into it. Now she could feed. After she fed her pet, at least.

From outside her enclosure, the fat man started talking again. Mentally, she sighed but couldn’t help but listen: “Of course I’m not serious! If you burn the stuff off the glass, you risk damaging my precious item!”

She was an ‘item’ to this creature. To Oralia, she was Ignatius J. Reilly Zeferino, someone worthy of giving two last names and an initial to. Her dinner uneaten, she hunkered in the soil and felt abjectly sorry for herself.

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Ignatius J. Reilly Zeferino