Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Charlene's Web of Lies (Entry two)



While I was wandering around the woods this week, I noticed a spider.  Spiders freak me out a little,  so i kept walking rather than staying to observe the spider for too long.  As i was walking I started day dreaming and came up with this story, inspired by the spider:

Charlene crawled down her web, lifting her long legs with an elegance that flew in the face of most people's opinions of spiders.  She waited in the middle of her web, hoping an insect would come along soon.  She liked crickets the best, but she'd settle for a fly if one came her way; she was starving.  Her famous ancestor grandmother, Charlotte, probably would have already caught an insect by now.  Charlene thought bitterly of the story her sister had told her earlier that morning, and every morning for the past twelve days in a row.

"Our great-great-great..." the list of greats went on for quite some time, "grandmother Charlotte was an amazing spider." Charlene rolled all four of her eyes while her sister droned on.  "The deer who wonder through the forest at night told me all about her."  Charlene resented the annoying deer her sister was speaking of.  Each night, a herd of loud deer came galloping through the woods.  They stirred up such a racket that all the insects in the forest stood still for quite a long while.  If Charlene hadn't caught and insect before the deer came through, she'd often have to wait until the moon moved far across the sky before an insect would stumble into her web.

"The deer say," her sister continued, "Charlotte did great things in her life.  She saved a young pig from certain slaughter."  Her sister went into great detail, gushing over Charlotte's cunning bravery.  "She spent her nights weaving different words into her web.  She wrote, 'Some pig,' and the farmer decided to keep little Wilbur around.  She saved that pig's life.  Later, a man learned Charlotte's story and wrote a book about her.  She's famous!  A true hero, that's what Charlotte was."

I should weave some words of my own into a web
, Charlene thought.  I could show them all what I really think.  And why shouldn't she? She had all night, and her sister would no doubt be preoccupied talking with those hoofed friends of hers.  Nobody would have to know that Charlene was the one who weaved the worded web.

Her bitterness building, Charlene set to work at once.  As the night carried on, her energy faltered.  Weaving words into a web was much more exhausting than Charlene could have imagined.  She stopped for a while to snack on a small fly that had gotten stuck in her first web before finishing her new project.  As the sun appeared over the horizon, Charlene admired her work.  Charlotte was NOT great, her web said.  She smiled, satisfied, crawled onto the bark of a nearby tree, and drifted off to sleep.

*****
Charlene woke with a start.
"Charlotte was great," she heard a voice cry.
Charlene looked up to see a young child standing over her, holding a book with a crew of farm animals on the cover.  Oh no, thought Charlene.  She scrambled away from the child as fast as she could, but she simply wasn't fast enough.  A huge, heavy shoe came down on Charlene, and in an instant her whole world went black.

1 comment:

  1. Awh, what an amusing twist at the end! I did not see the child coming. I enjoyed the play off of Charlotte from E.B. White's book; I don't believe I have seen any creative sequels of his work before. :) Did it craft a little more camaraderie between you and the spider who inspired the story?

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