User:MathPoet/Spider on the Web

Spider on the Web

Or, The Gospel According To Martin, As Was Revealed To Sally, Under Heavy Sedation.

The spider went to hit shift+reload, leaving the center of the web. And when he was done, there he sat, a sleek, black spider, about one inch long. His name was Martin.

The other person there, the token human, named Sally, hated spiders, but was so blind that it never had caused her a problem before. She surfed the web with her thick glasses and her face right up near the screen, and never noticed the spider in the upper corner of the room, near her desk.

Now, there was a piano involved. One night, Sally was jammin' on her piano so that the neighbors had to call the police. Martin had slipped something into her lemonade and she started seeing spiders everywhere. They took her away in an ambulance. Martin dropped on a silk-thread to the gurney as it passed under his web. He climbed up onto Sally, who kept babbling, "Spiders, spiders, burning bright. In the shadows of the night." (Where the hell did that come from?)

When they had her strapped down and sedated in the emergency room, Martin climbed up to her ear and whispered dramatically, "I am God. And you've been a bad, bad girl. I have placed you in this room, surrounded by spiders so that you may learn about Jesus, who also hated spiders. But Jesus was the Word, and the Word was The Web. I created The Web in the image of heaven. That is why there are so many bugs in it. The spiders must be fed. Do you understand?"

Sally screamed a long, howling scream.

"Be calm," he said.

She screamed again, even louder. Then they came in and gave her more sedative. She passed out, whispering, "The Web, The Web."

In the night, she rolled over and smooshed Martin. So when she awoke, the spiders had all disappeared and the voice of God was gone. "Are you there, God?" And when he didn't answer, she thought, "What shall I do without God to talk to me and tell me what to do?" She laid there quietly, since she was tied down and couldn't move anyway.

She never surfed the web again. And she never needed medication or therapy, either. She just prayed morning and night to land in The Web after death and not fall straight through into the abyss of quantum mechanics, where according to the Uncertainty Principle you either knew where you were or what you were doing, but never both at the same time.

Everyone finds a home in the web. Isn't that a happy thought? You must keep your happy thought, or else you won't be able to fly. And you won't be able to play the piano.

Thus ends the gospel of Martin the Martyr.