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WARNING: The following chapters have descriptions of giant, talking, magical spiders and scorpions. Arachnophobes look away.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE FISSURE
It was a giant crack, just floating in the air.
It seemed to be leaking out some sort of glowing reddish-brownish-bluish material.
It flickered and shuddered, like it was a picture on the screen of a glitchy computer.
It seemed… out of place, like it wasn’t meant to be there, like vegetables on a birthday cake.
Almost otherworldly, like a big fissure in between dimensions.
It called to Wilbur, like a song.
As he crept closer, he noticed that on the other side of the fissure, there was another land.
It was disoriented by the weird glowing stuff leaking out of it, but Wilbur could make out that it was a largely flat world.
He reached out and touched the stuff leaking out of it.
He couldn’t feel anything, apart from a slight numbing in his hand.
Odd, thought Wilbur as he took a step closer, and stuck his whole arm through the hole.
This would prove to be a big mistake.
Within about half a second, the glowy stuff leapt out of the fissure and engulfed Wilbur completely, and then pulled him into the crack.
Everything was red.
And then blue.
And then green.
And then a colour that has never been seen by human eyes.
The world was a mishmash of disoriented images and disembodied sounds.
His body rippled and twisted and stretched.
He watched as his arm grow, his hand kilometres away, before it retracted and drilled him in the face like a rogue soccer ball.
Everything whizzled and dappled and quanted all around him, until everything froze.
Wilbur looked down.
His heart was sitting directly below him.
It beat faster and faster and faster and faster, growing with each beat, until everything stopped.
CHAPTER SIX: ANOTHER LAND
Wilbur awoke yelling his head off.
He jumped up and looked down.
His body was back to normal.
Gone was the infinite kaleidoscope of weirdness, but the place Wilbur found himself in was possibly even more disturbing than that.
He was in a barren land with a completely grey sky.
The landscape was almost completely flat, with only a few small hills.
The ground was carpeted in some sort of wiry grass that swayed in the wind like seaweed underwater.
The occasional tree dotted the sparse landscape, and Wilbur swore that he could see them moving out of the corner of his eye.
The wind rasped like a dehydrated snake.
It seemed like the definition of an unsettling music sting.
Not a big fan of unsettling music stings, Wilbur began to panic.
Where was he?
How had he gotten here?
Is this another horrible trick played by Miss Mann?
Eventually, Wilbur mustered up enough bravery to speak.
He was big for his age. He was strong.
He wrestled with Miss Mann once, and nearly won.
He liked squashing things smaller than him.
Things bigger than him were afraid of him.
“Show yourself!” He squeaked, highly disappointing himself.
He drew in a deep breath and yelled,
“I said, show yourself!!”
His voice echoed around the surrounding emptiness.
“Show yourself now! I know you’re there!!”
Still nothing but the reply of his echo.
“Arrrghh!” He seethed in frustration.
He pulled huge clumps of grass out with his hands, and hurled it as far away as he could.
His outburst went on for quite a while, until he pulled up a clump of grass that had a creature attacked to it.
The creature’s skin was like raw ginger, and in was shaped like a crab.
It hung there, staring at Wilbur, who was also staring in absolute shock.
The crab-root-plant thing hissed, and tried to pinch Wilbur with its claws.
Wilbur dropped it and and crumpled to the floor, out for the count.
CHAPTER SEVEN: TSK, TSK, TSK
Wilbur awoke to a rapid little clicking noise, like a mix of somebody rubbing their dry hands together and clicking their tongue.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Wilbur sat up and looked around.
It was evening, or whatever you would call it in this strange world, and the clouds were turning purple.
The crab-root-plant thing was gone too.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Wilbur looked down to the source of the sound.
An enormous huntsman spider, its legs about the length of a good-sized pencil, was sitting on his chest.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Wilbur wasn’t alarmed. He had seen spiders almost as big as this in the orphanage, and often chased them around, trying to squash them with whatever he had in his hands.
But this spider was different.
It wore four monocles that looked like they were rimmed with gold, a navy blue plaid coat, and a bowler hat.
It had 6 legs that were firmly on the ground, and two others which were clutching some sort of staff or walking stick.
It also had a very glittery spark in its eyes.
Tsk, tsk, tsk, It said.
“What. Were. You. Doing. Ripping. Up. The. Grasses. Like. That?”
It had a very deep, manly voice, and paused between words like it was a full sentence.
“Well? Hmmm?”
Wilbur stared at it for a few seconds and then shook his head in disgust. He was imagining things.
He stood up, brushed the spider off, and took a big rock and held it high above his head.
The spider did not panic, try to scuttle away, or show any fear whatsoever.
It just stared at him with an exasperated look.
Wilbur slammed the rock down on the spider.
Within a split second, the spider raised one of its legs, and the moment the rock touched it, it flashed and disappeared.
“Tsk tsk tsk. Bad child. Bad. Do not. Squash. Me.”
It jumped up and scuttled towards a tiny hole in the ground.
It paused and looked back up at Wilbur.
“Are. You. Coming. Or. What?”
Wilbur reared back.
“What?! Nuh-uh. I am not following a spider wearing clothes into a tiny hole in the ground. How am I even supposed to fit in there?”
He tried to step on the spider, but he found himself being push back again and again by some unseen force.
He growled in frustration.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” The spider sighed, as if Wilbur hadn’t reached his expectations, and disappeared into the hole.
“W-wait!” Cried Wilbur.
He looked around at his surroundings again.
It was almost completely dark, and the wind whistled softly through the grasses, creating a long, wheezy moan.
Something rustled in the grasses.
Wilbur spun around, expecting something to leap out onto him, but nothing happened.
A purring sound rang out. But not the sort of purring you would get from a domestic cat when you scratch its tummy in just the right way, but the sort of purring from a tiger that had just seen its prey walk over to the exact place that the tiger wanted it to.
The grass rustled again.
“H-help!” Yelped Wilbur.
Suddenly, his body jerked and his neck whiplashed as if he had been electrocuted, and then froze.
He watched in horror as the world around him got bigger and bigger and bigger.
No, it wasn’t getting bigger. He was getting smaller!
This continued until he was about the size of a tennis ball.
“Come. Tsk tsk tsk.” Whispered a voice as something grabbed him and yanked him down the hole.
CHAPTER EIGHT: MARGO
Wilbur looked around and found himself in a hollowed-out underground room.
The walls (if there were any walls) were mostly obscured by bookshelves that were brimming with hardcovers, paperbacks and a few journals.
There was also the door to the outside world, and another door that presumably led to another room.
In the middle of the room, there were two long sofas that looked almost completely new.
In fact, everything looked freshly dusted and polished.
“Tsk tsk. Come. Sitsk. Sorry, sit.” Said the spider.
Wilbur cautiously checked under the couch cushions for something like a spring or something else that Miss Mann would put under there, but was surprised to find nothing.
“Tsk. My. Name. Is. Margo. Spyder.” Said the spider somewhat warmly.
“Your name is mango spider? What a dumb name.” Snorted Wilbur.
Margo frowned. In one move, he leapt off the sofa he was on and scuttled over at alarming speed to Wilbur.
“Name. Is. Margo. Ma-R-go. Spyder. With. A. Y.”
Wilbur shrugged, trying to pretend he wasn’t intimidated by the giant spider scowling at him.
“Suit yourself.”
Margo crawled back over to the sofa and buried his head in a book.
“Name’s Wilbur.” He added somewhat meekly.
Margo acknowledged this with a glance.
“Um…Hey. What was with the shrinking thing? I mean, how can I suddenly fit in here?”
Margo, without looking up from his book, grabbed his staff and tapped it on the ground twice.
Wilbur shot up a good 10 centimetres and hit his head on the ceiling.
“Woah! What? What just happened?!” Panicked Wilbur.
Margo tapped his stick another time, and Wilbur shrunk back to his original height.
“Woah.” He breathed, staring at Margo in amazement.
“Hmmmm.” Droned Margo as he crawled into a tunnel to a seperate room.
Wilbur followed him, expecting another old fashioned room, but was instead completely blown away.
The room had white, concrete walls, and there were these strange moving paintings and gadgets and even a few test tubes and bubbling mixtures.
Wilbur, who was living in the victorian era, had no idea that they were computers.
Margo dashed over to one of the computers, typed a few commands in and frowned.
“Hmmm.” He muttered.
“Arachnid. Collective. Meeting. In. Ten. Minutes.”
“You what?” Asked Wilbur.
Margo turned around and studied Wilbur for a while.
“An. Arachnid. You. Are. Not. Attend. The. Meeting. You. Can. Not.
Wait. You. Must. Wait. Outside.”
Wilbur was confused.
“Where am I going? Why can’t I attend the meeting? Stupid Spider! Answer me!”
Margo tapped a button on the computer keyboard, and suddenly a bright flash lit up the entire room, and then subsided as quickly as it came.
CHAPTER NINE: ARACHNID COLLECTIVE
“What was that?!” Screamed Wilbur.
“Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk.” Clicked Margo, as if giggling.
“Are you laughing at me, spider?!”
Wilbur followed Margo out of the room and looked around in shock.
Instead of the cosy living room that he came from, Wilbur was in a massive cavern, with theatrical chandeliers hanging from a bunch of stalactites.
In there middle there was a large round table with a number of spiders and some other odd looking creatures with pincers and a long tail sitting around it.
They all started hissing in some language that was incomprehensible to any eavesdropping human child, much to the frustration of Wilbur, who was leaning against the door and still fuming that he couldn’t attend the meeting. It was just like back at the orphanage. Miss Mann never let him be in any of the meetings where she kissed butts and pretended that she loved the orphans she treated so terribly.
But then again, she didn’t let any of the other kids be there either, but Wilbur didn’t care. They could stay in the orphanage for all he cared.
But at least Miss Mann spoke English, so Wilbur could eavesdrop and get all the information he needed.
But these bloody spiders and whatever the heck those things were (Wilbur had never heard of scorpions, let alone seen one)
were talking in their own language.
At least, that’s what he thought initially. He realised that the arachnid language was sort of like a hissy, mangled version of English.
He could barely understand it, but what Wilbur picked up chilled him to the bone.
“Margo…the…child…”
“Tsk tsk tsk…”
“Tasty yum-yum…”
“Must…eat…”
“…………”
Wilbur almost screamed in both rage and fear. That ruthless trickster! That damn spider was so kind to him at first…but he was actually trying to eat him!
Desperately, he rushed over to the computer.
On the screen it said, Teleport ready. Press flashing button to activate.
Having grown up an orphan, Wilbur had no idea how to read, but luckily there was a picture of a spider pressing a button and being teleported back to Margo’s place, so Wilbur knew more or less what to do.
He pressed the button and was whisked away, unknowingly running away from his destiny, his redemption and him being the saviour of an entire universe, for alas, the Arachnid Collective did not plan to eat Wilbur.
“Margo…Certain, you are, about the child?”
“Tsk tsk tsk. Yes. I am.”
“Ohhh, ifff heeee wassss tooooo beeee lostttt, doomeddd ourrr universeee wouldddd beeee.”
“I would never be able to taste a tasty yum yum fly ever again if I died!”
“Tsk tsk. Calm. Down. Scorpios.”
“Worried I still am though, about the child. Our only hope, he is.”
“We must eat now. Bring out the banquet of roasted flies!”
WARNING: The following chapters have descriptions of giant, talking, magical spiders and scorpions. Arachnophobes look away.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE FISSURE
It was a giant crack, just floating in the air.
It seemed to be leaking out some sort of glowing reddish-brownish-bluish material.
It flickered and shuddered, like it was a picture on the screen of a glitchy computer.
It seemed… out of place, like it wasn’t meant to be there, like vegetables on a birthday cake.
Almost otherworldly, like a big fissure in between dimensions.
It called to Wilbur, like a song.
As he crept closer, he noticed that on the other side of the fissure, there was another land.
It was disoriented by the weird glowing stuff leaking out of it, but Wilbur could make out that it was a largely flat world.
He reached out and touched the stuff leaking out of it.
He couldn’t feel anything, apart from a slight numbing in his hand.
Odd, thought Wilbur as he took a step closer, and stuck his whole arm through the hole.
This would prove to be a big mistake.
Within about half a second, the glowy stuff leapt out of the fissure and engulfed Wilbur completely, and then pulled him into the crack.
Everything was red.
And then blue.
And then green.
And then a colour that has never been seen by human eyes.
The world was a mishmash of disoriented images and disembodied sounds.
His body rippled and twisted and stretched.
He watched as his arm grow, his hand kilometres away, before it retracted and drilled him in the face like a rogue soccer ball.
Everything whizzled and dappled and quanted all around him, until everything froze.
Wilbur looked down.
His heart was sitting directly below him.
It beat faster and faster and faster and faster, growing with each beat, until everything stopped.
CHAPTER SIX: ANOTHER LAND
Wilbur awoke yelling his head off.
He jumped up and looked down.
His body was back to normal.
Gone was the infinite kaleidoscope of weirdness, but the place Wilbur found himself in was possibly even more disturbing than that.
He was in a barren land with a completely grey sky.
The landscape was almost completely flat, with only a few small hills.
The ground was carpeted in some sort of wiry grass that swayed in the wind like seaweed underwater.
The occasional tree dotted the sparse landscape, and Wilbur swore that he could see them moving out of the corner of his eye.
The wind rasped like a dehydrated snake.
It seemed like the definition of an unsettling music sting.
Not a big fan of unsettling music stings, Wilbur began to panic.
Where was he?
How had he gotten here?
Is this another horrible trick played by Miss Mann?
Eventually, Wilbur mustered up enough bravery to speak.
He was big for his age. He was strong.
He wrestled with Miss Mann once, and nearly won.
He liked squashing things smaller than him.
Things bigger than him were afraid of him.
“Show yourself!” He squeaked, highly disappointing himself.
He drew in a deep breath and yelled,
“I said, show yourself!!”
His voice echoed around the surrounding emptiness.
“Show yourself now! I know you’re there!!”
Still nothing but the reply of his echo.
“Arrrghh!” He seethed in frustration.
He pulled huge clumps of grass out with his hands, and hurled it as far away as he could.
His outburst went on for quite a while, until he pulled up a clump of grass that had a creature attacked to it.
The creature’s skin was like raw ginger, and in was shaped like a crab.
It hung there, staring at Wilbur, who was also staring in absolute shock.
The crab-root-plant thing hissed, and tried to pinch Wilbur with its claws.
Wilbur dropped it and and crumpled to the floor, out for the count.
CHAPTER SEVEN: TSK, TSK, TSK
Wilbur awoke to a rapid little clicking noise, like a mix of somebody rubbing their dry hands together and clicking their tongue.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Wilbur sat up and looked around.
It was evening, or whatever you would call it in this strange world, and the clouds were turning purple.
The crab-root-plant thing was gone too.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Wilbur looked down to the source of the sound.
An enormous huntsman spider, its legs about the length of a good-sized pencil, was sitting on his chest.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Wilbur wasn’t alarmed. He had seen spiders almost as big as this in the orphanage, and often chased them around, trying to squash them with whatever he had in his hands.
But this spider was different.
It wore four monocles that looked like they were rimmed with gold, a navy blue plaid coat, and a bowler hat.
It had 6 legs that were firmly on the ground, and two others which were clutching some sort of staff or walking stick.
It also had a very glittery spark in its eyes.
Tsk, tsk, tsk, It said.
“What. Were. You. Doing. Ripping. Up. The. Grasses. Like. That?”
It had a very deep, manly voice, and paused between words like it was a full sentence.
“Well? Hmmm?”
Wilbur stared at it for a few seconds and then shook his head in disgust. He was imagining things.
He stood up, brushed the spider off, and took a big rock and held it high above his head.
The spider did not panic, try to scuttle away, or show any fear whatsoever.
It just stared at him with an exasperated look.
Wilbur slammed the rock down on the spider.
Within a split second, the spider raised one of its legs, and the moment the rock touched it, it flashed and disappeared.
“Tsk tsk tsk. Bad child. Bad. Do not. Squash. Me.”
It jumped up and scuttled towards a tiny hole in the ground.
It paused and looked back up at Wilbur.
“Are. You. Coming. Or. What?”
Wilbur reared back.
“What?! Nuh-uh. I am not following a spider wearing clothes into a tiny hole in the ground. How am I even supposed to fit in there?”
He tried to step on the spider, but he found himself being push back again and again by some unseen force.
He growled in frustration.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” The spider sighed, as if Wilbur hadn’t reached his expectations, and disappeared into the hole.
“W-wait!” Cried Wilbur.
He looked around at his surroundings again.
It was almost completely dark, and the wind whistled softly through the grasses, creating a long, wheezy moan.
Something rustled in the grasses.
Wilbur spun around, expecting something to leap out onto him, but nothing happened.
A purring sound rang out. But not the sort of purring you would get from a domestic cat when you scratch its tummy in just the right way, but the sort of purring from a tiger that had just seen its prey walk over to the exact place that the tiger wanted it to.
The grass rustled again.
“H-help!” Yelped Wilbur.
Suddenly, his body jerked and his neck whiplashed as if he had been electrocuted, and then froze.
He watched in horror as the world around him got bigger and bigger and bigger.
No, it wasn’t getting bigger. He was getting smaller!
This continued until he was about the size of a tennis ball.
“Come. Tsk tsk tsk.” Whispered a voice as something grabbed him and yanked him down the hole.
CHAPTER EIGHT: MARGO
Wilbur looked around and found himself in a hollowed-out underground room.
The walls (if there were any walls) were mostly obscured by bookshelves that were brimming with hardcovers, paperbacks and a few journals.
There was also the door to the outside world, and another door that presumably led to another room.
In the middle of the room, there were two long sofas that looked almost completely new.
In fact, everything looked freshly dusted and polished.
“Tsk tsk. Come. Sitsk. Sorry, sit.” Said the spider.
Wilbur cautiously checked under the couch cushions for something like a spring or something else that Miss Mann would put under there, but was surprised to find nothing.
“Tsk. My. Name. Is. Margo. Spyder.” Said the spider somewhat warmly.
“Your name is mango spider? What a dumb name.” Snorted Wilbur.
Margo frowned. In one move, he leapt off the sofa he was on and scuttled over at alarming speed to Wilbur.
“Name. Is. Margo. Ma-R-go. Spyder. With. A. Y.”
Wilbur shrugged, trying to pretend he wasn’t intimidated by the giant spider scowling at him.
“Suit yourself.”
Margo crawled back over to the sofa and buried his head in a book.
“Name’s Wilbur.” He added somewhat meekly.
Margo acknowledged this with a glance.
“Um…Hey. What was with the shrinking thing? I mean, how can I suddenly fit in here?”
Margo, without looking up from his book, grabbed his staff and tapped it on the ground twice.
Wilbur shot up a good 10 centimetres and hit his head on the ceiling.
“Woah! What? What just happened?!” Panicked Wilbur.
Margo tapped his stick another time, and Wilbur shrunk back to his original height.
“Woah.” He breathed, staring at Margo in amazement.
“Hmmmm.” Droned Margo as he crawled into a tunnel to a seperate room.
Wilbur followed him, expecting another old fashioned room, but was instead completely blown away.
The room had white, concrete walls, and there were these strange moving paintings and gadgets and even a few test tubes and bubbling mixtures.
Wilbur, who was living in the victorian era, had no idea that they were computers.
Margo dashed over to one of the computers, typed a few commands in and frowned.
“Hmmm.” He muttered.
“Arachnid. Collective. Meeting. In. Ten. Minutes.”
“You what?” Asked Wilbur.
Margo turned around and studied Wilbur for a while.
“An. Arachnid. You. Are. Not. Attend. The. Meeting. You. Can. Not.
Wait. You. Must. Wait. Outside.”
Wilbur was confused.
“Where am I going? Why can’t I attend the meeting? Stupid Spider! Answer me!”
Margo tapped a button on the computer keyboard, and suddenly a bright flash lit up the entire room, and then subsided as quickly as it came.
CHAPTER NINE: ARACHNID COLLECTIVE
“What was that?!” Screamed Wilbur.
“Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk.” Clicked Margo, as if giggling.
“Are you laughing at me, spider?!”
Wilbur followed Margo out of the room and looked around in shock.
Instead of the cosy living room that he came from, Wilbur was in a massive cavern, with theatrical chandeliers hanging from a bunch of stalactites.
In there middle there was a large round table with a number of spiders and some other odd looking creatures with pincers and a long tail sitting around it.
They all started hissing in some language that was incomprehensible to any eavesdropping human child, much to the frustration of Wilbur, who was leaning against the door and still fuming that he couldn’t attend the meeting. It was just like back at the orphanage. Miss Mann never let him be in any of the meetings where she kissed butts and pretended that she loved the orphans she treated so terribly.
But then again, she didn’t let any of the other kids be there either, but Wilbur didn’t care. They could stay in the orphanage for all he cared.
But at least Miss Mann spoke English, so Wilbur could eavesdrop and get all the information he needed.
But these bloody spiders and whatever the heck those things were (Wilbur had never heard of scorpions, let alone seen one)
were talking in their own language.
At least, that’s what he thought initially. He realised that the arachnid language was sort of like a hissy, mangled version of English.
He could barely understand it, but what Wilbur picked up chilled him to the bone.
“Margo…the…child…”
“Tsk tsk tsk…”
“Tasty yum-yum…”
“Must…eat…”
“…………”
Wilbur almost screamed in both rage and fear. That ruthless trickster! That damn spider was so kind to him at first…but he was actually trying to eat him!
Desperately, he rushed over to the computer.
On the screen it said, Teleport ready. Press flashing button to activate.
Having grown up an orphan, Wilbur had no idea how to read, but luckily there was a picture of a spider pressing a button and being teleported back to Margo’s place, so Wilbur knew more or less what to do.
He pressed the button and was whisked away, unknowingly running away from his destiny, his redemption and him being the saviour of an entire universe, for alas, the Arachnid Collective did not plan to eat Wilbur.
“Margo…Certain, you are, about the child?”
“Tsk tsk tsk. Yes. I am.”
“Ohhh, ifff heeee wassss tooooo beeee lostttt, doomeddd ourrr universeee wouldddd beeee.”
“I would never be able to taste a tasty yum yum fly ever again if I died!”
“Tsk tsk. Calm. Down. Scorpios.”
“Worried I still am though, about the child. Our only hope, he is.”
“We must eat now. Bring out the banquet of roasted flies!”