Fate/Choice

Swarmed by the crazed horde, Murphy and I were both taken prisoner before we had the chance to blink. I tried to fight, but my arms were being held down with so much force I feared they would break if I strained them. It was useless. They were too strong, too mean, and too many.

I could hear Murphy struggling just as hard as I was to fend off his own group of insects. I hoped that his sheer size would have given him a slight advantage, but when I heard his grunts and cheers blend into screams and cries, the hope I had built up quickly spilled everywhere.

During the chaos of being captured for a second time, I was able to catch a few glimpses of the pen cap. It was strung up with silk webbing and it was being dragged across the jagged ground by a slew of spiders.

I was then wrestled to the ground and spun too many times and far too fast for me to count. All I remember is when the spinning finally ceased, and my focus readjusted, I found myself tightly cocooned up to my neck. Murphy was suffering a similar fate, but the spiders attempting to cocoon him were trying to completely consume his body. Murphy’s biting eventually failed and the big sock was rendered entirely useless as his wrapped frame squirmed between a pair of stalagmites.

“Your devotion to your so-called friends is admirable,” Arly said as her dark shadow emerged from one of the camouflaged doors. “But it is also your greatest weakness. You were wrong for ignoring Percy’s warning about rescuing that little, chewed cap. As foolishly oblivious as he is, he was right for fearing that you would not return.”

The perplexed look scattered across my face must have told her exactly what I was thinking.

“We’ve always been right behind you. Every step of the way. Waiting for the opportune moment to present itself. Which it did. After luring the pen cap into the tunnel, I knew your morality would prevent you from walking away. Your ideology of thinking friendship is some kind of unbreakable bond which must always be protected creates a direct path for your enemies to tear you down from within. If I can break your heart, I can break you.”

“At least I have a heart to break,” I said. “It’s a far better fate than not having a heart at all.”

“I have no need for a heart. After it was ripped away from me my evolution into who I was meant to be had begun.”

“Not who,” I laughed. “It’s a question of what. You have no soul. You have no heart. You are a monster.”

Arly stroked the cocoon constricting me, then smiled a smile I wish I had never seen. “Exactly.”

Arly snapped her cotton fingers and I was rolled across the chamber room into a shallow pit in the ground. Murphy was rolled in beside me, but he was blind to what was going on and to what was about to happen. I however had a front row seat to the horror show.

“Knowing you would surely come after the poor little pen cap,” Arly began. “I decided to postpone the feeding until you were able to join us. Now that we’re all here, we can proceed. You see, Lucky, the longer it goes without eating, the angrier it becomes. Do you feel the heat? That’s an indication that it’s been quite some time since its last meal. Now I have to admit, pen caps are far from comfort food. Lucky for us, socks just happen to be its most coveted cuisine.”

She fell silent for a moment as she made her way over to a large chunk of protruding rock. Before climbing on top of it, she turned around and spoke quietly just to me. “It’s an interesting name. Yours. Quite ironically tragic. Don’t you think?” She snapped her fingers again. “Open the gate.”

Upon her command, Hnid scurried over to the red gate. It was only then when I noticed the small white lever angling out of the ground. Using its thick skull, the wolf spider pushed the lever backwards until it popped into a locked position. A camouflaged set of interior slats simultaneously shifted down, exposing the red fangs and tongues of the fiery beast below.

A few of the smaller adolescent spiders could no longer withstand the temperature so they fled back into the secret passageways from whence they came. The larger spiders and her trio of dark sock bodyguards did no such thing. Desensitized to the intensity, they seemed to bask in the haze.

Murphy’s muffled moaning tickled up my spine, and I was forced to turn around. The spiders guarding his cocoon were gnawing and stabbing at him with their fangs and claws. With his senses compromised, it was a cruel form of torture. Again I had to witness a friend suffer as a repercussion of my decisions. And there was nothing I could do.

“As a reward for your heroism,” Arly announced, briefly putting an end to Murphy’s abuse, “You have earned the luxury of not being the first one served. You are a formidable force, it’s true. So it’s only right that I give you the proper respect you so proudly command. Yet, such admirable respect is only shared by those who are responsible. So no, you will be served last so you can bear witness to the consequences of your responsibility.”

Arly sat down onto a pulsing bench of linked ants, then raised her sizzling blue staff high into the air. “Begin.”

The chamber erupted with commotion. Ants crawled up and down the arched walls in single file waves, and the spiders used their silk webs to dangle themselves from the stalactites to get a bird’s eye view of the feeding. Murphy’s wrappings were cut, but only around his eyes. Arly clearly wanted him to bear witness as well.

Hnid and Arac both remained on the ground and shared the responsibility of dragging the pen cap to the red gate. Each spider tied a knot of webbing around the cap’s mid-section, then proceeded to escort it to its doom. When they were in position, the two spiders joined their fellow arachnids on the ceiling, dangling the pen cap over the flickering tongues of heat slithering through the metal slats. I shut my eyes to avoid witnessing such a horrific act of evil, but the spiders guarding me used their long pedipalps to keep my eyes propped open.

“You will watch,” Arly said. “You mustn’t allow your friends to see you cower during their final moments. Afterall, you are responsible for this. Be strong. But not for yourself. That would be selfish. Be strong for them.”

The moment became so tense, it felt as if my ears were bleeding internally. As horrific as that sounds, it was actually a small blessing because the clogged sensation was able to mute the pen cap’s screams as it was slowly lowered into the fire. One of the spider guards must have noticed my stillness and slapped me across the back until life began to flow through me.

The clog in my ears had faded and I was able to clearly hear the pen cap’s fatal screams as they harmonized with the roars of the starved monster below. Crunching, snapping, slurping and gurgling surged up from the fiery depths as it fed on the hard plastic. It was the worst moment of my life.

A muffled bang suddenly rumbled throughout the chamber. Looking around to see what made the sound, I realized that I was the only one who noticed it. The insects, as well as Arly, were so caught up in the feeding, none of them made any indication that they heard the bang. I was also the only one who seemed to hear the series of high pitched howls cutting through the orchestra of chaos.

As disoriented as I was, my initial thoughts were that the howling was actually the wolf spiders harmoniously woofing in synchronicity, and the banging was coming from the ants ritualistically drumming their feet. But as the alien sounds continued and they became more clear, I realized that the noises were not being made by the insects.

“You must be strong now,” Arly said. “Strong for your friends. For you are the creator of their new reality. Your foolish actions fabricated every single stitch woven together to create this very moment. You are no longer just a sock, you have become something more.”

She stood from her flexible ant-bench, eyes blacker than all of the darkness in the Dark Space, and slammed her staff into the ground between her flowing feet. Lint ants were careened through the air and crashed all around us. Some of the dangling spiders took advantage of the opportunity and used their webs to catch a few of the ants. All of this feeding was making them hungry.

“Bring the big one,” The Queen Mother said.

Murphy was hauled up by a pair of arachnids and roughly rolled towards the red gate. We briefly made eye-contact, and without using words, I communicated the only message I could. I’m sorry.

As warm tears fell down both of our cheeks, the hive of insects grew to a boiling point causing multiple fights amongst one another. Spiders were catching ants while ants used their numbers to suffocate the spiders. Arly was so enthralled in the moment she began cheering, encouraging the fighting as an added bonus of entertainment.

Deaf from adrenaline, none of them, Arly included, seemed to hear or care about the barking which was now echoing incessantly from beyond the light veil. Murphy was now only inches away from the steaming bars, and because of being rolled across the jagged chamber floor, his cocoon had been torn and his entire face was exposed.

Looking at me with hopeful eyes, I could tell that he could hear the barking as well. But I didn't look back. What could Ellie really do? She was far too large and we were well beyond the reach of her golden paws. That’s the nature of the Dark Space. The key to our escape was realistically in reach, yet at the same time impossible to grab. All I could do was cry.

Obeying the Queen Mother, Murphy was delivered to Arly’s two executioners who were dangling upside down from silk lines glued to a couple of stalactites. Arac and Hnid shot two fresh webs from their abdominal spinnerets, then lifted Murphy above the molten bars of the fiery beast’s cage.

Out of patience, Arly screamed at the top of her cotton lungs. “Feed him!”

Hnid severed her line first, causing Murphy’s feet to fall towards the fire. Arac severed his line second, and I watched as Murphy free fell between the bars. Preparing myself to hear the screams of my friend being eaten alive, I was shocked to hear the dissatisfied hissing of Hnid. Arly was equally confused.

“What is happening?” The Queen hollered. “Why am I not hearing the beautiful sound of that sock being chewed and consumed.”

“The clever sock broke through the cocoon and used its loose strands to brace itself from falling in,” Hnid hissed as she descended down her silk line. “I will fix this

“No,” Arly demanded. “Leave him be. Let the beast play with its food.”

To this day, I still haven’t been able to logically make sense of what happened next.