This far into the fake jungle, it was easy to forget how close at hand civilization really was. Except for the hot lights overhead, Dahlia could almost convince herself that she was truly adventuring in the wilds of Australia. "The hunt for the great man-eating Spider," she thought, "on 'Mutual of Omaha's Weird Kingdom.'"
The rock ledge on which Calliope had been resting earlier was empty. "At least I know she's real - and alive," Dahlia mused. "Unless, of course, the little fellow came down and put her back in her box after we were gone." She smiled woozily at the thought of Levin passing off a stuffed and painted spider to his guests; they would never have known the difference if he had, she decided.
= = = = =
Her first glimpse of the fabled Australian Tree Spider had been something of a bust. This party marked her first visit to the home of Levin Sellevin, dealer in exotic plants and animals. She had finally wheedled a guided tour of his collection out of him only after an exhaustive round of begging and flirting. Finally the dumpy, balding little man agreed to take her and a few other guests for a walk-through.
He led the little group down a back stairway into a dimly-lit corridor with alternating institutional doors and windows - twelve sets, door-window, door-window. "Each door leads to a self-contained habitat especially suited to its inhabitants," he announced proudly as he led them down the corridor. Dahlia tried peering through few of the windows, but all she could see was her own reflection in the darkened glass.
At the fifth door, Levin stopped, his hand on the knob. "This habitat contains the Australian Dingo-Eating Spider," he said. "Also known as the Tree Spider or Jungle Spider, it is the largest web-weaving spider on dry land.
"There is no need to worry, by the way," he added as he led them in to what seemed a large, high-ceilinged room. Its dimensions were difficult to ascertain, as the entire space was packed with trees, ferns, ground cover, vines, moss and the general flora of a tropical rain forest. The ground was soft under foot. "Calliope is milked daily for her venom, so she can't really harm you," he continued. "One interesting by-product of the milking is that it renders her webs dry."
"'Dry?'" someone asked.
"Yes. Let me show you." Casting about in the close quarters just inside the door, he finally wandered into the forest with a satisfied sound, returning with a wraithlike whisp of material between his hands. "This is a bit of Calliope's web," he said, handing it around.
The web material was actually a hollow tube of extremely soft silk, cool and dry to the touch. Dahlia put it to her cheek - it felt elegant and sensuous. She caught Levin staring at her and passed it to the next person. "Ordinarily - that is, in the wild," he continued, "her web would be coated with a sticky adhesive substance - the better to catch and hold prey, of course. An unforeseen side-effect of the milking process is that she seems no longer to produce 'sticky' webs. All of her webs while in my care have been dry, like this one. They are, still, very lovely constructions."
"Can we see one?" Dahlia asked.
"Of course. Follow me." And so saying, he plunged into the miniature rain forest in his basement.
"What does Calliope eat?" Someone asked as they move slowly through the habitat. "Dingoes?"
"No, I'm afraid she would have a difficult time capturing anything in her current condition - no sticky, no venom. I provide her with a balanced diet, packaged in a simulated 'prey animal' that gives her the tactile sensation of sinking her fangs into a body. Calliope is very well provided-for."
"Do they really eat people, in the wild?"
Sevellin paused, favoring the questioner with a sideways glance. "I suppose it would be physically possible for a large Tree Spider to capture and subdue a small person, given the right circumstances. But I don't believe there are any documented cases of it ever happening. The stories of 'man-eating spiders' are, I'm afraid, as apocryphal as village-eating anacondas in South America."
"A pity; there's not enough real danger left in the world," Dahlia remarked. "What happens to the venom, after you 'milk' her?"
Levin had turned to regard her fully, his gaze level, when she had bemoaned the lack of danger in the world. "I sometimes share your regret at the death of 'natural romance', as I call it, Ms. - ah ?"
"Call."
"Yes; Ms. Call. As for the venom, I sell it to pharmaceutical companies, research labs and the like. Eventually, Calliope will go to live with a collector or natural history museum, and I will refurbish her habitat for some other creature."
"It must be a fascinating way to make a living," Dahlia offered. "What other creatures do you have here?"
"Well, let's see; I have - oh, wait! There she is . . ."
They all craned to follow his extended finger, to a ledge carved into a faux rock wall that marked the limit of Calliope's habitat. Sitting well back from the edge had been a mottled brown and green lump. "She looks like a pile of suet," someone remarked sotto-voce. Dahlia had to stifle a giggle.
Calliope looked like three balls attached together, then painted, badly. Her body was the size of a large beach-ball; Dahlia estimated she could just carry the creature if she extended her arms wide. Attached to this ill-shaped sack was the thorax, about the size of a regulation basketball. Sitting on top of this was the head, only a little smaller. The entire body was covered in short, bristly hairs, except for the very top of the head, on which a cluster of black balls of various sizes comprised the spider's eyes.
The legs were black segmented sticks, jutting out from the body at odd angles. The total effect was of a bad paste-up job; "wouldn't even satisfy a B-movie audience," Dahlia thought.
"She's not very lively in the best of times," Levin had said, as if sensing their disappointment. "And, I just fed her yesterday - she's still very lethargic."
After the anticlimax of the fearsome spider, talk quickly reverted back to the bar and the pool upstairs, and Levin had gratefully them out of the habitat and back up the corridor, pointing out along the way the temporary homes of his anaconda ("Chloe"), the viscous moss and the land-Kragen, an animal he referred to as a "gas-bag with tails."
= = = = =
Calliope watched the small party leave, noting the spot at which they disappeared through the flat rock wall. She had spent a great deal of time observing these bipedal prey-creatures. She had watched the way the moved, their reactions to sudden moves on her part, the workings of their oddly-shaped limbs. She had adapted her hunting methods, placing her webs to entangle their legs - with the unerring instinct of the hunter, she had known the first step in providing for one's self is to remove the prey's ability to maneuver, to escape.
Her first attempt at obtaining fresh prey had been a terrible disappointment. The large biped had brushed against her web and walked free, leaving behind his offering of dead, unmoving meat. Calliope had learned then - the web would not stick to these creatures.
And so she had adjusted.
= = = = =
Back up with the rest of the party, Dahlia found Tandy - still at the bar, she noted, and holding her own.
"How'd you like the tour?" Tandy asked over the rim of her glass. "Everything you'd hoped it would be?"
"Actually, I found the spider disappointing; and we never did get to see a real web. Still, the party is fabulous - and I want to be sure to thank you for bringing me along before we're both too tanked to care."
"De nada."
"Why didn't you come on the tour with us?"
Tandy looked out over the pool, into which fully-dressed people were just beginning to be thrown by the increasingly raucous crowd. "Oh, I've seen Levin's menagerie before; you know, 'been there, done that. . . '"
"' . . . bought the tee-shirt; right'". They both smiled and clinked glasses.
= = = = =
Dahlia gave it the old college try, and finally had to concede; Tandy could still out-drink her any day she wanted. "I'm going in the pool," she announced, grabbing her tote from beneath her bar stool. "Only, I'm changing first."
Tandy smiled, raising her glass again, this time in a victor's salute.
Dahlia found herself weaving as she made her way down a long hallway to on of Levin's many bathrooms. "Had a little more than I thought," she remarked to herself. She caught an alarmed look from a couple making out in a nook, and realized she had spoken aloud. "Make that a lot more than I thought," she amended silently.
She changed quickly into her new bathing suit, fumbling only a little with the straps. It was one piece, cut high in the hips and with a lace bodice that accentuated her breasts. Her figure was just a little too long-waisted to be called "leggy", but Dahlia did what she could to help nature out. She used her ScandiSki machine daily, which gave her firm, sculpted legs, sleek hips and a great ass. As a result, she also had a strong and muscular back, which helped with evening wear and which helped her breasts fight gravity. With good posture, she knew she struck a compelling figure in a swimsuit.
Heading back to the party, she passed the door behind which she knew lay the stairs to Levin's basement habitats. She slowed, then stopped, opposite the door. "Never did see the web," she thought. "And the spider was a big fat 'ole disappointment."
Deciding that Levin owed her a glimpse of the 'lovely construct' to which he had alluded, Dahlia glanced quickly right then left, opened the door and stepped through. "I'm gonna see my web," she vowed.
= = = = =
Calliope worked steadfastly, weaving her newest web. The issue from her spinnerets lacked coating, and so the large creatures could not be snared. They had limbs, though, and so could be entangled. Without conscious thought, Calliope's complex brain, able to think in three dimensions while controlling multiple limbs with input from eight eyes, conceived of a new method of capturing and restraining large animals. As he spun and wove, she kept a wary eye on the wall from which the creatures always appeared, as well as on the forest canopy above and the floor below. A spider weaving was a spider vulnerable, and spiders who survived did so by being aware.
= = = = =
Dahlia counted doors on her way to the spider habitat, passing the gassie-thing's door and the sticky moss. Levin had a strange way of making a living, but it certainly looked to be treating him well. The guy had to be loaded to be able to afford this subterranean private zoo.
Finally she found what she hoped was the right door. With a quick glance in both directions, she opened the door and slipped through.
High up in the ceiling and at strategic places along the walls, security cameras swiveled silently.
Dahlia realized that her heart was pounding, now that she was actually in Levin's habitat. This was exciting - the danger of being caught was a positive turn-on. "Gotta see the web," she thought. "And as long as I'm here, I want to touch that spider; see if she's really for real."
The light was dim, a simulation of sunlight filtered through jungle vegetation, she decided. She set off slowly down the path leading from the door into the heart of the jungle. The soft earth squished slightly between her toes - she had been fully dressed, and in shoes, on her last visit. Now, in only her bathing suit, she felt the warm, most breeze of the habitat caressing her skin. It was only fans and humidifiers, she knew, but it added to the reality of it all. "It's like Dizzyworld, only with consequences," she thought, and shivered with delight. Although it was warm, she found her nipples had responded to her sense of danger and excitement.
Dahlia moved into the wild.
= = = = =
The jungle was strangely quiet, wrapping around her like a warm and muffling blanket. Brilliant greens, reds and yellows crowded the path, touching her bare shoulders with velvety soft tendrils or hard, waxy leaves. No animals skittered underfoot, though; either Levin had decided against them or - "or Calliope got 'em all," she thought with another delicious shiver.
She rounded a bend in the trail, hearing water trickling nearby, out of sight. The path turned again ("how big is this place?" she wondered), and crossed the brook, running fast and shallow, crystal-clear over iridescent rocks. Tiny shapes darted in the water, close to the banks.
Another turn, and then she saw it. The web.
And it was magnificent.
The path led through the center of a small and irregularly-shaped clearing. On the opposite side of the clearing, an ethereal lacework of shimmering white was suspended between two trees, across the path. It extended from the ground to just higher than her head; it was a perfect orb-weaver's spiral, with radial spokes meeting in the center and ladder-like strands connecting them, forming a lacy vortex spinning out from the center to the very perimeter of the opening. It seemed to flutter slightly in the warm breeze, and it glowed with a pearly opalescence in the dim light. It was lovely, delicate, and somehow vulnerable. It seemed the first creature to blunder down the path must tear it loose and rip it apart without stopping.
"But I'm the only creature in these parts," she thought. "And I think it's beautiful."
"Oh, Calliope," she said aloud without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. "Here I came expecting to meet a master engineer, and instead I find the work of an artist."
She scanned the tops of the trees nearest the web - it would be no good to get beaned by a fifty-pound arachnid - and approached the creation reverently.
She stopped, inches from the web, and put her hand out to it, fingers splayed. The threads composing the web were the same hollow tubes of silk which Levin had shown them earlier. At the interstices of the strands, cunning knots gave the meshwork its shape. Carefully, she touched one strand with her finger.
Dry. It was dry and soft, silky smooth, and curiously warm. A gown of this stuff would be too luxurious - "it'd induce orgasm just by walking in it," she thought wistfully. The touch of it against her skin would be . . .
Wonderful. And why not? What could be the harm?
Dahlia pirouetted gracefully, extended her arms out to either side, and allowed herself to fall backward against the web. "Oh, save me," she breathed dramatically. "I have fallen into the dread spider's terrible web."
The web yielded slightly under her weight, and for a moment she feared she had broken it. Then it swayed back, and she realized the anchoring trees were young and green, and the swaying was from her weight against the now-taut surface of the web pulling on them.
The silk was everything she had imagined it could be against her bare back, and more. She shimmied against it, writhing sensuously, wishing she could wrap it around herself. "This is positively erotic," she thought.
The only thing missing from this adventure was the danger. A man-eating spider that wouldn't, or couldn't eat a man ("oh Calliope! Are you too'good of a girl' to do something nasty?" she thought), was a sign of a disappointing failure of the world to provide what Levin had called - what? "The Romance of Danger," she announced aloud, grasping the strands of the web and pulling herself off her feet.
She set herself down again and leaned back against the lovely material, her eyes closed. The romance of danger - what would it feel like, were the world to be good enough to offer the adventure of real menace? She imagined the innocent and intent gaze of a hunter, fixed on her with singular focus. Such desire, all centered on her -- the attention of a predator on its prey, she thought, must surely be more fierce than the sexual desire of a lover. She wondered if the hunter loved her prey.
She pulled her arms in close, then extended them again, straight out from her shoulders, but weaving her hands through the mesh of the spider web. Over one strand, under the next; simulated entanglement. Simulated danger, all she could really hope for. "All I could really handle," she had to admit to herself.
It wasn't enough. She lifted her foot up, setting it down again while weaving it through the warp and weft of the spider's ineffectual trap. Then her other foot - she twisted it against one of the intersections of vertical and horizontal strands, wrapping the silk tightly around her ankle. Then she stood with eyes closed, feeling her helplessness, arms extended, one leg enmeshed, one knee extending out in a fetching pose - "the damsel in dire straits."
"If I do this long enough, I could get off," she thought, opening her eyes. But the story line had no climax, and make-believe would eventually get ridiculous. With a sigh she decided it was time to go back up and join the rest of the grownups in the mundane world.
Then she saw her. Calliope.
The spider was perched in the limb of a tree across the clearing. "I probably walked right by her without noticing", she realized.
"Calliope," she greeted her, executing a slight curtsy in the web, "my compliments on your artistry."
The spider moved, and Dahlia realized with a shock of surprise that she had actually convinced herself that there was no Calliope, that the mis-shapen collection of sacks and balls was just a badly-conceived movie prop. But now Calliope's back legs moved and she edged sideways on her branch, lowering her thorax over the front edge of her perch - "as if to look more closely at me," Dahlia thought.
Then with a visceral thrill she knew, was somehow sure, that all eight of Calliope's bulbous eyes were focused intently on her. "Single-mindedly," she thought. "With ardor."
With desire.
"Calliope," she reproved, "are you looking at me with lust in your beady little eyes? I must say, that's the nicest compliment I've had in a long time."
As if in response, she felt a touch against her knee. She looked down and saw a silken strand, extending from the web at her back, between her feet, and as her eyes now followed it, across the clearing and up to Calliope on her tree branch. This was the movement of the spider's back legs - she was reeling in this single strand over which Dahlia had stood straddled and unaware.
Now she watched in fascination as Calliope pulled in the slack, causing the silken chord to rise up between her legs. She could tell from the slight touch of it against her buttocks that it was secured to the web behind her at about the level of her head. The silken chord brushed against the tender skin of her inner thigh and she shivered - it was as soft, and smooth and luxurious as the rest of the web, and it was delightfully stimulating as it slid smoothly against her skin.
Dahlia stood still as her new acquaintance steadily pulled in her chord, knowing what would happen, and earnestly desiring it to. And she was not disappointed. Finally the chord rose until it touched the soft mound between her thighs; with a low moan, Dahlia dipped down against it, luxuriating in the gentle caress as it slid against the material of her swimsuit.
Calliope continued to pull in, increasing the tension on the now-taut line, and Dahlia undulated slowly as the chord creased the material of her suit, pressing up against her most sensitive and intimate area. She rose slowly as it continued to rise, trying to keep a constant pressure against herself, her eyes closed, alternating waves of heat and pleasure radiating from her womanhood.
She was close - so close to having her fantasy come to fruition, that she realized with a start that she had risen to her toes, and the chord continued to rise up against her. She grasped the web again with her hands, supporting her weight and lifting her feet from the ground, and now, dangling, with the silk line taut-stretched and thrumming between her body and the spider, she climaxed, all her being collapsing in on the central point of her body, her heart stopping, her brain ceasing to function and her mind no longer existing, indeed Dahlia disappearing as she was wracked by wave after wave of fundamental, gravitational pleasure.
The tide of sensation subsided; her heart started beating again; she drew a breath. Dahlia came to herself slowly, her body spent. The constant upward pressure against her womanhood had stopped, but her feet were still dangling, and all her weight rested on the very thin chord between her thighs. And now the sensation was becoming irritating, on its way to painful.
"Calliope, that was wonderful," she said. "And now it's really time to get out of here," she thought, "before I get arrested for having sexual relations with an underage arachnid."
But when she looked across the clearing, the branch was empty. The silken chord on which she now painfully sat was secured to the branch, and Calliope was balanced on the chord, an eight-legged tightrope walker.
A tightrope walker heading slowly in her direction.
Dahlia felt a brief chill of unease. "Time to skedaddle," she said aloud, beginning to un-weave her right leg from the web.
Her foot had become truly entangled in her thrashing, and she pulled it upward in annoyance. All this did was to pull her down more sharply on the taut chord. She grasped the web firmly with her hands, lifted herself up, and
-- and could not. The web had become more taut than it had been before, giving her less play in which to maneuver. Now the entire web thrummed with tension, as had the single strand on which she had just recently been driven to distraction. The chords were starting to cut off circulation in her arms - she looked up and to her right and saw -
New strands. At every intersection in the meshwork of the web, the complex knots binding the web into shape had split, yielding new strands of thin silk which had curled around her arms, wrists and hands; wherever these new strands came into contact with other strands, they fused or knotted together. The effect was that her arms, once merely intertwined in the large mesh squares of the classically-shaped web, were now truly enmeshed in a confusing and chaotic tangle of silk.
She looked down; her right leg was similarly surrounded by new strands of silk, locked into the structure of the web. And her left foot, with which she had unconsciously been supporting her weight by pushing against one of the intersection knots, was cocooned in silk, from her toes to her ankle.
The tightrope chord thrummed against her womanhood, sending a brief but distracting thrill up her spine. Calliope was moving delicately along the line; she had halved the distance between them.
The spider's body was as big around as her own body from crotch to breasts. Dahlia imagined the suddenly competent but hideous creature arriving along its silken causeway and crawling up onto her body, and she unable even to bring her hands down to push it away. She was completely open and vulnerable, splayed out spread-eagle, just like a --
-- just like a --
"-- just like a victim, trapped in a spider's web," she thought, panic mixed with arousal competing in her breast. Caught, entangled, and helpless, watching the spider's slow approach, just like every other prey creature who had fallen into the spider's beautifully engineered deathtrap. Unable to evade the spiders touch . . . unable to escape the spider's embrace. . . Dahlia moaned, and she wasn't sure if it was from fear or desire.
= = = = =
Calliope approached carefully, methodically. Step one in the predator's instinctual guide was completed: the prey creature had been rendered immobile.
Calliope stopped, just out of reach of her victim's longest limb. Without emotion, she considered her prey; without thinking, she considered her next move. Without planning, she moved on to step two:
Render the prey creature harmless.
= = = = =
The spider was only a few feet away from her, perched on the taut chord, and watching. Mandibles like fleshy scimitars extended from the front of the head, moving open and shut rhythmically. When they were open, Dahlia could see hard chitinous fangs, curved daggers fronting a dark maw. Here was the hard, dark side of the fantasy; now was the time to extricate herself. But she could not pull her arms free of the entangling threads, and the web had wrapped itself around her legs from ankle to thigh.
Still, Dahlia struggled. The web trembled and shook with her efforts, and Calliope swayed on her silken bridge. Inches from Dahlia's softness, the spider waited for her prey to exhaust herself.
Every muscle ached with the effort of trying to pull free, but she knew her struggles were only pulling the web more tightly around her. Still, she felt she would start to scream if she did not do something, and she knew if she started to scream, that she would never stop.
"And nobody will hear me scream," she thought; it was too far, and there were too many doors between her and help.
The spider shifted, and the chord rubbed her womanhood, and again she shivered in response to an electric thrill emanating from her loins. "I don't think we're on a date anymore, are we," she murmured to her captor. "This is the real deal."
As if in response, Calliope reached out with one foreleg toward her. It pawed the air delicately, as if tasting the air. Dahlia pulled back as far as she could, which was not far. The mandibles of the beast were inches from her waist, its fangs within each reach of her vulnerable stomach, her now pulsing sex. The thought of the spider's touch was repellent and exciting, and she felt her nipples responding to the thought of its touch, to the cold mastery of its instinctual predatory nature over her.
"I have never belonged so totally to someone before," she realized; "never before have I been so helpless. So vulnerable."
But this wasn't a person, it was not 'Calliope', it was a thing, a process. An appetite and the means to satisfy it. Nature, uncaring and cold. In the moment of realizing that her plans had no place in this drama, that the spider would touch her despite her fears - and uncaring of her desire - Dahlia shuddered again, a deep, upwelling orgasm surprising her as it radiated from her loins throughout her body.
She closed her eyes and wondered if she was the first human to fall prey to a giant spider; and at that moment, the spider struck.
With an audible twang, Calliope launched herself from the chord, landing on the web with her legs splayed around Dahlia's body. The chord thrummed hard against her softness, sending sharp ripples of pain and then pleasure rocketing through her. Then the spider's body, deceptively hard, surprisingly warm, pressed her back into the web. She felt a piercing pain just above her left breast, and the creature pressed her close, circling her body with its legs, forming a living cage around her. Then just as quickly it was gone and she sagged back down into the web's strangling embrace. She looked down to see two round holes, between the soft swell of her breast and her collarbone. Blood oozed out and ran down her suit.
Dahlia closed her eyes and waited for death. Or paralysis.
And waited. But all that came was pain from the circular bite-marks.
And then she remembered Levin telling them how Calliope had lost her ability to spin sticky webs when he had begun milking her venom. Of course - the beast did not know it had no venom with which to render her helpless. Feeling a surge of hope, Dahlia let her head drop.
"I wonder if I'm the first human to play possum for a giant spider," she thought wryly.
She kept her eyes closed when she felt the beast clambering over her body again, opening them to slits and peering out through her lashes only when it paused at her crotch. She tried to see over its bulbous body, waiting fearfully for the first touch of a fang against her ultimate softness, but none came. Instead, it gathered her legs together, cutting her loose from the web; and then, lifting its huge body forward beneath itself, it gushed out a mass of silk which it quickly gathered up and wrapped around her thighs, knees and calves. In seconds her legs were wrapped tightly together, cocooned in a thick layer of the sensuously iridescent stuff.
Still helpless. Dahlia remembered seeing the dry husks of insects hanging in more diminutive spider's webs, their pathetic bodies wrapped in skeins of spider silk.
"Paralyze the victim; then wrap her; then - dinnertime," Dahlia thought. "I get one more chance to get away."
But the chance did not come when the spider climbed through the web and approached her from behind, its hard legs tightening across her breasts and stomach. And she had no chance when it disgorged more silken bindings, wrapping them around her arms from shoulders to wrists. And when it cut her arms loose from the web and she sagged into its embrace and it held her tight against its abdomen, she had no chance for escape as it pulled her arms behind her back and wrapped her body and arms together with more smooth silk.
Her arms were held tight against her back, wide swaths of silk wrapped around her from her hips to her breasts. Dahlia opened her eyes wide as she felt herself being lifted, as she flew through the tree-tops in the spider's brittle, embrace. Then the world turned over once, twice, and when it stopped tumbling she lay on a hammock of spider silk, a platform suspended in the tree-tops, surrounded by green and with the ceiling no more than four feet above her. She could not move; her legs were bound together, her arms were bound against her body.
To her left, a video camera mounted on a girder regarded her.
To her right, the floor of the silk platform rose up, curved around to meet itself, forming a silken tunnel. Dahlia looked into it and saw only darkness, curving down. "It's a throat," she thought, and she knew that if she entered it, she would not come out again.
The spider approached, mandibles wide.
= = = = =
Levin had been transfixed from the moment his security chief had summoned him to the observation booth. "I had no idea she was so resourceful," he murmured, watching on three different screens as his foolish guest walked into Calliope's trap. The rising trigger-line was a true innovation.
"Shall I go retrieve the young lady?" his chief asked.
"No - she broke into my habitat, for all she knows endangering the lives of valuable specimens. I want her to remember this experience."
He was moved as he watched the lovely and very fit young woman writhe in the spider web. His chief discretely absented himself from the booth, standing nonchalantly outside in the hallway. Levin moved close to the screen as the web appeared to explode, the dozens of knots with which Dahlia's body came into contact disgorging grasping, entangling tentacles.
Levin watched Calliope's efficient consolidation of her capture with admiration, and followed Calliope's career through the treetops with her victim clasped to her body and was amazed. "Truly a formidable predator," he whispered.
He only snapped out of his reverie when the sleek, curved form of the intruder tumbled onto the entry to the spider's lair, helpless and at the mercy of this incredible huntress.
"Oh, my," he thought, "I hope I haven't dallied too long."
"Chief," he said, opening the door, "do go find Tandy and ask her to join me in the booth. Oh, and -"
"Yes sir?"
"Tell her to hurry."
= = = = =
Dahlia waited until the beast was almost upon her, then pulled her knees up close to her chest, curling into a ball. The spider paused, as if uncertain at this new turn of events. In that pregnant moment, Dahlia lashed out with her bound feet, catching the spider in the face.
She kicked as hard as she could. With no way to anchor herself, she skittered backward against the rising side of the platform. The entire structure swayed, and she felt momentary nausea. The spider had reared back, mandibles opening and closing, but otherwise didn't show the damage Dahlia had hoped to inflict. "Now it's pissed," she thought, "and I'm dead."
She put her back to the sloping wall of the web platform, her feet out before her, knees bent, ready to kick again. Her breasts heaved with the exertion of her kick, and with fear, and with, strangely, excitement. She was bound, fighting for her life with a giant, apparently woman-eating spider She knew that once the beast dragged her into the close confines of its lair there would be nothing she could do to protect herself; it would hold her close and its fangs would pierce deep inside her, shredding her organs and sucking blood, fluids and flesh out while her heart still struggled to beat.
"End game," she thought; "bring it on, spider."
Never before had she been so focused. Never before had she felt so alive.
= = = = =
Calliope regarded her prey. These creatures were impervious to the subduing bite. The prey creature had assumed the characteristics of a worm, with its limbs denied it, but it was a worm that would strike.
If Calliope had possessed a reflective mind, she would have smiled wryly at this turn of events. Spiders were very good at dealing with reluctant worms.
= = = = =
The spider raised itself up on all its legs, approaching slowly. Dahlia tensed, curling up for another kick. "Go for the eyes," she thought; "all of 'em".
But she never got the chance. The spider leaped suddenly over her, landing next to her head. She tried to roll away, realizing at the last moment that rolling away was a mistake - she couldn't bring her feet to bear in another kick. As soon as she turned her back to the spider, its mandible circled her shoulders, meeting across her breasts. The spider began to back toward the dark throat of its lair, dragging the now desperately writhing girl behind it.
Dahlia began to surrender to despair as she passed over the threshold to the spider's lair. All around her, the smooth grey bore of the tunnel; around her legs and body, the smooth, tight binding of the spider's snare; and around her shoulders, the powerful embrace of the spider's jaws told her that there had never been any hope for an unarmed naked ape against a predator honed by eons.
The tunnel sloped downward, and the spider finally stopped, laying her on the floor with her head pointed down and her feet toward the entry. The spider dropped on top of her, holding her down; with its front legs it caught the silk around her ankles and held them motionless.
Dahlia lay beneath the suffocating weight of the beast. Its body lay on her head and breasts; she could feel its mandibles lightly touching her stomach, her thighs, and the softness of her womanhood, as if seeking the perfect place in which to plunge its fangs.
She tensed every muscle, straining to move the spider's weight, although she knew it was futile. She raged against this death --- bound, helpless, held down, in an agony of anticipation, waiting for the bright, piercing pain of its fangs. And then the slow dissolution. Better to die fighting, taken by death while still swinging, than to go whimpering, deflated by a grotesque, patient but mindless predatory machine.
Finally - the first tentative touch, against her stomach. She couldn't help it - she sucked in, hoping to evade the impaling stroke by inches. But the touch descended with her, twin points pressing against her through the all-too-thin material of her suit. The fangs pressed harder, finally parting the fabric of her suit, and she felt them against the tender skin of her belly; a sob escaped her, and she hated herself for that moment of weakness.
The points pierced her skin, and the fangs slid into her, cautiously, as though the spider was unsure what it would find inside her, or was trying to inject more non-existent venom into her. She closed her eyes, then opened them defiantly; she focused on the smooth grey wall before her eyes, determined to bear witness to her own death. She wondered how long it would take to die as the spider gorged itself on her.
Finally she felt its weight shift forward, as it prepared to impale her. She gasped in anticipation; there was a loud sound, and the pressure on her strangely decreased, and then the world became a blur of grey, brown and black, a whirling of limbs, sharp tearing pain and then light, green, grey and brown light, and she tumbled again, rolling to a stop looking up and seeing the ceiling of the habitat.
She looked up, confused, to see Tandy, arms extended toward the spider's lair, an aerosol can in her hand. Strange arms lifted her up and she looked into the rugged face of a strange man who was intent on what he was doing - which was running. A sickening flying sense, and then a jolt, told her he had leapt from a height, and then her world became a blur again of green, and light, pounding footsteps, and then Tandy's voice: "it's all right now; we can stop."
Then she lay on soft loam and the two, Tandy and the strange man - a man in uniform - were bent over her. She felt a tugging at her legs, and then they were mercifully free. Moments later, her arms were her own again as the officer folded his knife and tucked it away.
She looked down at herself. Her swimsuit was ripped from her left hip to just below her right breast, and there were two small circular holes to the left of her navel, with two long, shallow gashes trailing up toward her breast. "That's what happened when I sprayed the spider," Tandy said, noticing her gaze.
""Sprayed'?"
"Hairspray." Tandy help up the aerosol can with a smile. "I sprayed her in the eyes with it. She jumped back in a hurry."
"How did you come to know hairspray is a good spider repellent?"
"I didn't." Tandy smiled. "But then, I didn't have a lot of time to gear up. Hey -" her friend slapped her on the hip - "you did pretty good under pressure."
"Thanks; so did you. Thank you both for saving my life. What happens to the spider now?"
"Now that Levin knows he's got a resourceful predator - a true man-eater - on his hands, he'll probably find some new ways to make money off of her."
Dahlia shuddered. "I can imagine."
= = = = =
Dahlia sat at the bar, allowing the handsome and solicitous security office to ply her with drinks - juice, no alcohol. This party had turned out okay after all - to learn that there was wild danger still left in the world was nice; to meet a rugged and handsome man of action in the same night was nice too. She smiled at her rescuer, feeling only a little like Calliope must have felt when she had wandered into the spider's web.
Not far away, she could hear Tandy talking to her rich, eccentric friend: "I'm the first, Levin. I want her fully armed - sticky silk, venom and all. No holds barred. I'll go in bare-handed, and come out - or not."
Levin: "I get the video rights".
Tandy: "you get part of the video rights."
Dahlia smiled. Except for poor hungry Calliope, everyone was having a good night.
= = = = =
Calliope waited, deep in her lair, for the burning to cease. It was good to know the capabilities of the bipedal prey-creatures; she would pass this information on through her DNA to the many young she would soon hatch and release into the habitat. And the next time the mysterious opening in the flat rock wall appeared, her young would be ready to slip out into the world of these strange, resourceful prey creatures.
In the meantime, she had webs to spin, traps to set, using what she had learned in this experience. If Calliope could have smiled, she would have; despite the loss of a warm meal, she was still having a good night.
(c) B. Ferrett, 2001