by Billy Miner
So he waits and waits. He wants to see the rain end. But it won’t stop.
It’s getting worse!
Big drops are falling out of the sky and destroying his web. He buries his head in his 8 hands and starts complaining.
The rainstorm doesn’t end. It goes on for days. Salem is hiding, but it’s no use. He gets washed away by the rain. Giant streams of rainwater are coming down the hill, sweeping him off his feet and causing him to be dragged down by the current. He falls over and has a difficult time getting up. “Stupid rain,” he thinks.
Chapter 2: Flies
He climbs into the tree, away from his web. He is making that he is high and dry, but for some reason, climbing seems to be more enjoyable than he expected it to be.
He climbs down.
He climbs up.
Climbing has become so much fun! Perhaps he is meant to climb, he thinks
When the rain settles down, when it slowly starts to rain less, he leaves the tree entirely and goes to a nearby building. It consists of a bunch of ruins left by some builder who didn’t finish his project. The ruins are made out of some gravel and stone blocks, but he also notices some bedrock and sandstone blocks. It definitely is a mess, so he doesn’t think there is anyone there, or that there is anyone going to appear soon.
But this is exactly what he is looking for: A place to climb walls
Climbing walls is the best thing in the world! Salem loves it! He climbs up and down the cement rocks and the bricks.
At least… at first. His mind is a little scatterbrained, because after a while, even though he knows he is good at it, he is sick of it. That was fun, but now the fun is over.
But what’s that?
He sees a fly, and another, and another. A whole swarm of flies is flying around the ruined structures.
Looks yummy.
“Let’s get them!” he decides, saying it out loud.
He jumps into the air, trying to snatch one of the flies away from the swarm.
Missed.
Well, this is frustrating.
He lands on the wet soil and looks up. There they are… the flies. He has been feeling hungry for the past hour, so it’s time to get a decent meal. But the flies are quick. They swirl around and don’t follow any patterns. They are so random that it’s hard to predict where they are going next.
He jumps again, and again, with no success. He misses every fly in his sight.
“Oh, come on!” he shouts. “Stay still already. I’ve got to eat something. I am hungry!”
But the flies don’t feel like getting caught. Aimlessly they fly around like he isn’t even there, and after a while, they disappear. Salem is too hard on himself. Why can’t he just catch a fly with jumping up, or with a web? Perhaps he needs to look at a different way to get food; perhaps he isn’t meant to get flies. Why not? Salem loves about everything that walks, flies, or swims. His hunger drives him to the village, where he will devour his next prey, or so he hopes…
Chapter 3: Hunting
He is a hunter; he has decided to become the one chasing his prey. If the prey won’t go into his web, then he has to take some initiative. These are the thoughts that go through Salem’s mind.
He enters the village. It’s quiet, because of the rain that has started again. Nobody wants to be outside for this. It’s terrible.
But hey, what’s that? A villager is walking around in this awful rain. Strange. Salem doesn’t care, however. All he cares about is having lunch ready. And his lunch seems to be walking around in the streets of the little town, all prepared to be eaten.
Salem sneaks up on him and jumps on him. But what he didn’t expect, is that the villager sensed it. He saw it coming.
“Aaah! You filthy spider,” the villager screams while kicking Salem to the wall.
“Ouch!” Salem says. It isn’t as easy as it appeared to be at first. But unlike the flies, this villager is big and cannot fly away.
Another attack. Salem pounces on the villager, but the villager knows how to defend himself. He already grabbed a pickaxe in is now swinging it in front of him, fending off the eight-legged animal. Salem whacks the pickaxe out of his hands after a few hurtful blows.
This is it.
Finally, he gets to eat something.
The villager is holding up his hand in front of his face, begging for the spider to save his life, but Salem wants to eat… he HAS to eat. And to him, that’s just life, no matter how unfortunate and unfair it is to the villager.
Great, let’s take the first bite. No more danger, no more threat. He gets to eat, and not just anything, but a delicious villager.
Right when he is about to take his first bite, though, he gets hit on the head.
“Ooof!” he exclaims.
What just punched him?
He shakes his head and squints his eyes, trying to forget the pain that just hit him like a freight train. Within seconds, he opens his eyes and looks up.
Whoa!
A giant iron golem is standing in front of him, towering over him and looking very angry. Salem is scared as a rabbit. He doesn’t want to take on this guy! No way!
As the villager keeps cheering his protector on, the iron golem moans and roars, getting ready to repeat a similar move to kill Salem. The iron golem swings his long arm at him again, this time hitting him so hard in the opposite direction that he flings the poor spider 100 feet into the air.
Salem flies through the rainy sky, only a little conscious of what just happened to him. When he lands, the unstable roof of a deserted house breaks his fall. He groans. This hurt so much! How is he going to get away from this lethal assailant? He gets up and tries to find the big iron golem that just crushed his bones a little.
Bang!
The iron golem broke the wall of the vacant house. Salem falls off the roof and hits the ground. The iron golem is coming at him with his fists clenched. As soon as Salem gets on his feet, he runs away as fast as his eight legs can carry him. The iron golem isn’t giving up; he chases the terrified spider, knocking down everything standing in his way and stomping heavily on the shaking ground.
What is Salem to do?
He looks around him after exiting the village. “There!” he says.
He runs towards the river. Maybe iron golems won’t be able to swim, since they are so heavy and big. It’s a guess, but it is Salem’s best shot for now.
He runs towards the water and starts swimming, unwilling to look back, hoping for a chance of safety. Faster, faster! He swims and swims until he climbs onto the shore on the other side of the river. Then he looks back. The iron golem is just standing there, not moving a muscle. Obviously, he doesn’t want to pursue the spider through the water. Just as Salem suspected. The iron golem is made of iron, and iron doesn’t go well with water. Besides, he would probably sink immediately if he would try to swim.
“Good,” Salem says.
He continues his way and heads towards the forest, a little disappointed that he couldn’t get his hands on a crunchy, yummy villager.
Maybe he’ll try catching smaller preys with webs again. The rain has stopped anyway.
Chapter 4: Webs
Back in the forest, Salem has decided to start creating webs again. First, he needs to find a better location. He carefully observes the wind, the trees, and the branches. He looks at the open spots and the ones full of trees. He is picky, because this time, he wants to get it right.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” he suddenly hears.
He turns around.
“I’m sorry,” the spider says that just talked to him. “Let me introduce myself first. I am Roger, Roger the Spider. What’s your name?”
“Salem.”
“Sounds like a nice name. So what are you doing all the way out here? I’ve never seen you here before.”
“My web broke because of the rain. And then I tried to eat a villager, but he was protected by an iron golem. It was awful. I nearly died.”
“Oh. Yeah, y
ou don’t want to mess with those,” Roger said. “Iron golems hate spiders. They will crush you if you let them. I never come near them when I see them.”
“I wish I would have known that,” Salem says.
“Well, you probably didn’t see him coming, did you? Some villagers have a big guard like that because they know of the dangerous mobs and monsters in the forest. It makes sense. I would probably do the same if I were a villager.”
“Yes,” Salem says.
It’s silent.
“Uhm… so what are you up to?” Salem asks.
“We are having a web contest,” Roger answers. “You should participate. It would be awesome!”
“Sure,” Salem says. “How many contestants are there?”
“Many,” Rogers says. “Like, seriously, you don’t even want to know. But it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to win. It’s fun enough to compete. You get to show off your web to the ladies and learn a lot about creating webs along the way.”
“Sounds like fun,” Salem says. “Let’s go.”
After a few minutes, they arrive at the location where all the spiders in the forest have gathered to compete against each other. Salem looks with big eyes at the scene in front of him. There are hundreds of spiders in the trees, all of which are diligently creating webs with shapes and patterns Salem has never seen before. Some have triangles or square patterns in their webs, while others made an effort to impress the judges by swirling their webs around branches in certain ways or putting a symbol of some sort in the middle.
“This is amazing,” Salem says.
“Pretty impressive, isn’t it?” Roger says. “Let’s go tell them that you’re here to be in the contest.”
“Okay.”
Chapter 5: The Perfect Web
Roger helps Salem sign in and is assigned a spot in one of the trees.
The judges make sure Salem gets fed, since he hasn’t eaten all day. They feed him some flies they caught with their webs and tell him to start creating his web when he is done.
He says a temporary goodbye and Salem gets to work. He starts designing: difficult patterns and beautiful swirls are part of his web. He adds some twists by attaching certain threads to objects like rocks and flowers, trying to stand out from the rest.
“It has to be perfect,” he tells himself. “It has to be perfect, or else, I won’t win.”
His web is low to the ground, something that gives him the benefit over the other contestants. Still, he isn’t satisfied with what he has made so far.
“Nice job,” Roger says as he walks by.
“Well, I am not proud of it,” Salem admits. “It’s not good enough, but I don’t know what it is missing.”
“I like it; but hey, what do I know? If you want some ideas, why don’t you go check out some of the other webs and see if you can emulate their patterns?”
“That’s a really good idea,” Salem says. “I am glad you mentioned that. I can just copy what they are doing.”
He leaves his web and walks around, looking at what others are doing. He is surprised by their creativity, but none of them are perfect. Some of them are elegant, some are spikey or round, and others are just big, but NONE of them are PERFECT!
Salem knows what to do now. How can these spiders overlook the fact that more is better? None of them have it all, so if he just integrates all the patterns he has seen into one web, then he will definitely beat the competition. With this plan in mind, he continues creating his web.
Chapter 6: Perfectionism Destroyed
“Wow, you are going big, aren’t you?” Roger says as he walks by.
“Yes, it will be perfect,” Salem says.
“There is no such thing,” Roger disagrees. “Designing a web is an art. Everybody has their own style. You can try to perfect your web all you want, but that doesn’t mean it’s better. It also depends on the taste of the judges. If they don’t like it, then you won’t win.”
Salem shakes his head. He doesn’t think Roger is right. Perfection is possible, and he knows it. If he can put all the patterns of the other ones in one, then he is lacking nothing, and his web must be better.
It makes complete sense to him. How could Roger not see it this way? Oh well… he shrugs and keeps working at it as hard as he can.
After a while, the web begins to become a little unstable.
“It’s going to break,” one of the spiders says.
“Oh… no, of course not. It’s perfectly fine,” Salem says, denying what he is actually seeing.
His web contains more than a hundred patterns, which makes it hard for the branches to hold up. It’s too heavy, and the branches that are holding it, are already bending down. Salem is a little annoyed, but he doesn’t want to admit that this was a bad idea. He keeps working at his web; he keeps strengthening it wherever he can.
But then something really frustrating happens, something none of the spiders could have predicted.
It is a chicken.
A chicken is running through the forest as if it lost its head, randomly bumping into trees and jumping over branches.
“Watch out!” one of the spiders yells.
But there is nothing Salem can do about it. Helplessly he watches as the chicken runs right through his delicate web and causes it to fall on the sandy ground.
“Nooooooo!” Salem exclaims.
The chicken gets stuck in one of the sturdier webs and gets captured and eaten by the other spiders. But despite the piece that gets distributed to Salem, this discouraged spider is not happy. He lost his web, the web he worked on for hours and hours and hours! It’s gone. It’s all gone!
Salem feels like crying.
Then his friend Roger approaches him and puts one of his eight legs on his back, trying to comfort him.
“How can I ever get it perfect if things like this happen? What a stupid chicken!” Salem says.
“Well,” Roger says, “I hate to be the one to tell you the bad news, but your web was already breaking anyway. It was too complicated, too elaborate, and most of all, too heavy.”
“But that is the only way I knew how to make it. What am I going to do now?”
Roger stares in the distance. He has to think about that for a minute.
Too big, too complicated, collapses because it’s too heavy, too many patterns
Friend tells him to just give it his own twist.
Chapter 7: Being Himself
Roger thinks a little and says, “Why did you mimic other spiders? Don’t you have your own twist you can give to it?”
“I guess so, but I just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t lose,” Salem answers.
“I think your fear of losing made you become obsessed about getting every pattern in there, but you don’t have to do what others do. And it doesn’t even matter if you lose. There is no prize anyway. It’s just for fun.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. There will be a party buffet afterwards. Some of the spiders have already hunted down some animals to devour. It’s going to be great, but the winner gets nothing extra.”
“That changes it,” Salem says. “You are right. I just have to do my own thing, create something beautiful without worrying that it will beat everybody else’s web. Thanks, Roger.”
With that being said, Salem goes back to work. There are still a few hours left until the judges decide who wins the contest, so Salem focuses hard. When time is up, Salem stands next to his work with a proud smile on his face. The judges walk around and take notes, doing their best to determine which of the hundreds of webs deserves to win. After about an hour and a lot of observations, they choose a winner.
It’s not Salem, which is too bad. But now, after his friend’s little pep-talk, he doesn’t care. It wasn’t all about winning, and he has come to understand that.
“Nice web,” one of the female spiders says when she walks by.
“Thanks,” Salem says happily.
“See?” Roger says. “I told you we were going to
impress the ladies. That’s what it’s all about.”
Salem smiles. He doesn’t think the same way as Roger does, but the compliment does make him realize that he has created something worth looking at. He looks at the patterns in his web and even walks around a little to look at the webs made by the other spiders.
“Yes, this was the best way, just to make something beautiful, just for art’s sake,” he thinks.
After the final decision, there is a great party. All spiders in the forest have come together for the feast. There is dancing and singing and lots and lots of eating.
When the feast is over, Salem goes to sleep. He feels at home in this new colony of spiders. He makes many friends, climbs trees and walls, creates all kinds of different webs, and helps catch all kinds of animals to eat. His tummy is happy, and he is proud of his accomplishments.
THE END
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