Stories, Fiction Bradley K. Quigley Stories, Fiction Bradley K. Quigley

The Lowly Spider

It all begins with an idea.

The Lowly Spider

One day a man happened to spy a tiny creature meandering its way across his lands. But not an inch in diameter, the slowly skittering creature proudly walked on the stilts of its eight legs across the plained pineboard floors, warming its many legs before the hearth of the man’s fire.

At first frightened by the sight of its form, the man soon collected himself and knelt down to look at the thing closely, to see if it be friend or foe. The small, lowly spider, suddenly sensing the presence of something much greater than itself, froze apprehensively in its tracks. 

With its markings clear as day, the man spoke to the lowly wolf spider and asked why it had trespassed into the man’s lands.

“These be your lands?” The lowly spider innocently asked. “If I had but known, I would have announced my presence sooner.”

“Be that as it may, I will now kindly ask you to quickly quit yourself of the premises,” the man replied calmly.

“Do we not but share these lands; Could not the vast wealth of which easily provide for the both of us?” the spider implored.

“While your point holds a certain measure of merit, the sharing of my lands, I am sorry to say, is not an agreement to which I can abide,” the man firmly responded.

“Have a heart kind sir, I am but a lowly spider that wishes you no harm, one who does not but serve to keep these lands free of the pests and vermin that mottle it so,” the lowly spider proudly announced, standing as tall as its stilts could stretch.

“While I may hold a certain respect and place of honor for your contributions, it is the very heart of me that keeps my hand from doing you harm. No, no, you must leave,” the man mournfully added.

“But why do you seek to cast me outside of these lands?” The lowly spider asked, pleadingly.

“Because the aspect of your being frightens me so, and I tremble at the thought of what I should do, should I happen to meet with your intrusion upon my person once again,” the man said, looking down at his hands as he slowly balled them into fists.

“Though be the lowly form in which you discover me, am I not but a child of creation just the same as you? Does that not afford me the same decencies to life?” The lowly spider resentfully asked, defensively curling in the pads of its feet in bald, rising frustration.

“Sure it does, just not on my lands,” the man said matter-of-factly, deflating the defense and measure of the lowly spider’s sense of self-worth as he slowly relaxed his posture.

“Tell me sir, is there a one above you, and above all whom stands?” The lowly spider humbly asked.

The man took a measure of time to ponder over this question before shaking his head and replying. “Yes, there is…of a nature,” he added offhandedly.

“Does this One covet things as do you?” the lowly spider cleverly asked.

“Your case does not fare well with these name-callings and recriminations of my character,” the man, in an angry huff, spluttered out.

“I merely asked but a humble question, one that should have been easy enough for you to answer,” the spider coyly replied. 

“And I merely wish to rid you of my lands and the premises of my person,” the irritated man said, suddenly shooing the lowly spider away with the snap of his wrist.

The lowly spider, startled by the sudden movement, ran for the soft comfort and security of the thick, high-piled rug upon which the man stood, only to be sent backpedaling as a great unseen gust of wind pushed it back out onto the pineboard flooring.

The lowly spider, taking up a defensive posture against the sudden encroachment of this invisible adversary, was blown off of its feet once again — not but a leaf in the great gale. As soon as it had righted itself, it took to its heels in haste towards the gently ajar door, putting distance between itself and the man, the one from whom, the lowly spider realized, the tempests had issued forth.

But try as he might to move forward from his position, the lowly spider could do nothing to stand against the man’s great spells of wind as it continued to be pushed ever closer to the boundary portal that hedged in the man’s lands.

The lowly spider, turning now to directly face the man, stoping him short with its audacious show of defiance, asked, “if the great One under whom we both serve covets nothing unto itself, but merely allots to each their needs, how is it that you have come into possession of such a great and vast wealth?” The lowly spider asked querulously. 

“These and all of these things have been rendered unto my need and care by the force of my will,” the man’s voice rumbled forth ominously.

The lowly spider looked around at the great unused wealth that lay at the man’s disposal, piled up like lifeless bars of unspent gold in the eyes of the lowly spider.

“Is your need then not but an extension of your want?” the lowly spider asked incredulously. “I feel we do not share the same relation to the One under whom we both serve, the very thought of which fills me with despair,” the lowly spider, downcast muttered mournfully low.

“Come now, these arguments of yours are really too much.” The man, tiring of the discussion and wanting to put a final end to it, said, with finality, “It’s time for you to go,” as he pulled into his lungs a great breath of wind and expelled it out at the lowly spider, flipping it onto its back, and finally shoving it rudely a tumble into the lands beyond — the great gate to the man’s lands squealing ponderously to a close behind the upturned form of the lowly spider.

The lowly spider, finally pulling itself upright and dusting itself off, bleakly looked around itself as the hoary frost of the wintery air nipped cruelly at the pads of its legs. In the cold loneliness of winter, in great sadness and weeping all the while at the unjustness of the man — though nonetheless commending him unto the One above just the same — the lowly spider crept itself into a dark, unseen crevice, where it patiently nursed the small kernel of faith it held in the One for the bringing of better times. 

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