“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly, 'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy…
“–Say it, like a woman, that's what you were going to say.
–Yes.
–And what's so bad about being soft like a woman? Why is it men or whoever, some poor bastard, some queen, can't be sensitive, too, if he's got a mind to?
–I don't know, but sometimes that kind of behavior can get in a man's way.
–When? When it comes to torturing?
–No, when it comes to being finished with the torturers.
–But if men acted like women there wouldn't be any more torturers.”
Puig, Manuel. (1976). Kiss of the Spider Woman. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
__________
“I will return to my home,” the new 'Jacob' intoned with a dull, sluggish monotone. “You will adjust to being me. I will adjust to being you.”
“Like hell, you will!” screamed the coleopterous Jacob. “I won't let you steal my–”
But before he could finish his angry little insect tirade, the former bug now inhabiting Jacob's human body filliped a finger and with that tiny gesture knocked the wind out of Jacob and sent his minute, ladybug body hurdling, antennae-over-tarsal claws, tumbling topsy-turvily through the air.
“Help me!” he screeched with a frenzied, panicked jittering of his tiny mandibles.
Unable to arrest his thrusting motion forward, Jacob found himself crash landing into a springy netting that miraculously seemed to immediately absorb all his momentum with nothing more but a couple of rubbery bounces, like a massive, invisible trampoline. But Jacob couldn't seem to make out what, precisely, he had landed on. It was an elastic, pliable netting that seemed … invisible?
“Oh, shit!” he squeaked, suddenly realizing the enormity of his situation.
Trapped in the body of a ladybug, Jacob had just been flicked into the web of a garden spider.
“Help!” he squealed, struggling in vain with all six of his legs. None could tug free of the adhesive glue of the spider's web.
The vibrations caused by his exertions attracted attention though, and from the corner of a compound eye, Jacob caught sight of a massive, furry black arachnid with venomous looking, metallic green chelicerae.
“Help! Oh, god, help! Can anyone hear me? Help, help, help, help, help me!” Jacob screamed frantically, tugging and pulling with all his might to free his insect body from the death trap he was caught in.
“Ho there!” cried out a voice from far above. “I say – I'm talking to you, you surly grump. You hear me?”
The advancing spider paused for a moment and flickered its eight eyes about skyward, seeking the source of the intrusion.
“Yeah, look up here, you cross crab!” came the voice again. “You miserable, surly, peevish, ill-tempered, crusty old grouch.
The spider took a hesitant step forward on its silky network of tightropes.
Jacob gasped with fear.
Then he noticed the source of the spider's indecision: another ladybug was flitting about in the air, making occasional low-altitude, high-speed passes above the spider's web.
“M'lady: you must chew yourself free while he's distracted,” said the other ladybug, with a series of odd clicks and clacks of his mandibles.
Jacob immediately turned his own mandibles over to the job of gnawing through the gummy strands of silk that held him firmly fixed in place.
The spider, it seems, had overheard the plan as well and began once again closing in on Jacob.
“Okay, change of plan then!” came the ladybug from above. “Let's see if Old Jackdaw's at home. This will be dangerous, but it seems we've no choice.”
He disappeared from sight, flying off high into a cluster of nearby trees, then suddenly reappeared zig-zagging in a dazzling display of flamboyant, aerial acrobatics, sometimes dipping low to buzz the spider, then suddenly swooping skyward again.
But, reflected Jacob, the truly odd thing about it all (as if the entire ludicrous situation weren't already surreal enough) was that the little, red beetle soaring about drunkenly in the air was now singing:
“Old fat spider, couldn't catch a flea!
Old fat spider won't snatch me!
Attercop! Attercop!
I won't drop,
Drop from the sky in your web, you see!
Old Tomnoddy, web so spotty,
Old Tomnoddy can't catch me!
Attercop! Attercop!
I won't hop,
Down from the sky in your web, you see!”
It seemed to be working. The spider was again paused, dangerously close to Jacob's still struggling body, but the arachnid was now quivering with rage, sorely vexed by the obnoxious taunting of the flying insect above.
“Crazy Cob, old Lazy Lob,
You're weaving webs so low.
The prize you seek flies high and sweet,
Above the skein you sew.
Here I am: naughty little bug.
And you're as dull as lead.
You won't trap me, you lazy slug,
In that frayed cobweb!”
Again the irate spider glowered menacingly at the ladybug in flight, seeming to forget completely about the almost free ladybug in the web.
Then, out of nowhere, came the crash of a rush of wings – black feathers a quivering, a whooshing sound, and the ear-splitting shriek of a spider snatched up in a beak and carried away.
“Old Jackdaw's a dangerous ally,” said the ladybug flying above Jacob. “But we got lucky this time. He wanted me, but changed his mind at the last moment, after spotting big old juicy Attercop.”
“Wh-Wh-Who's Attercop? Who's Old Jackdaw? Who are you?” sputtered Jacob.
“Chew yourself free, m'lady!” laughed the ladybug. “We've plenty of time for questions and answers now. Attercop is … was … that chuffy, old crank who just tried to eat you for supper! Old Jackdaw's the crafty crow living in the tree over yonder. He's eaten many of our kind in the past – Vedalia, Bóín Dé, Godyscow, Mariquita, and Wodechou, just to name a few recent victims – so I knew I could ruffle his feathers into action and lure the upstart crow down here to help us out in a bind. And as for me: I am Rede Fleye, the cleverest bug of the garden – scourge of aphids and outwitter of arachnids, swifter than a speeding raven, and forever and always at the service of lovely ladies of the garden such as yourself, my sweet scarlet one.”
“I … um … thank you, I think,” answered Jacob, finally managing to extricate himself from the web.
He immediately fell from its netting to the sound, dark undergrowth of the leaf litter far below. A moment later, Rede Fleye gallantly landed beside him softly. The other beetle seemed to 'sniff' the air around Jacob with his antennae. Reflexively, Jacob found himself returning the favor and, with twitching feelers, 'smelled' Rede Fleye.
Hmm, he smells very good. He's strong, young, vigorous – almost charismatic, in an insect kind of way. And … his name is Rede Fleye. Somehow his very name itself was being communicated to Jacob via body scent.
“And you are … the lovely lady Coccinelle, I see!” chirped Rede Fleye.
My name is Coccinelle? thought Jacob in alarm. Damn, he must have weird bug pheromones that are communicating with other insects now. The real Coccinelle is in Jacob's body, but her old body is still screaming out to all the invertebrates of the garden: “Hello! I'm a female ladybug and my name is Coccinelle.”
“You smell so very delicious,” said Rede Fleye.
“Uh … thanks … I think,” Jacob said again. “And … uh … I sure do thank you for helping save me from that spider fellow …”
“We make a good team, don't we?” said Rede Fleye, with what Jacob could have sworn was the insect equivalent of a lascivious wink.
This is not happening, thought Jacob. Talk about, 'out of the frying pan, into the fire!'