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Wooomp!

The volcano erupted!

Bertha squatted in her web, too anxious to think. Stuffed with lunch, too full to hide from the ash that sprinkled her head. Decorated her like a cupcake. Her abdomen stretched and cramped. Stuffed with gnats. Dozens of gnats that had refused to leave her home. 

The first one showed up just after she finished her web. The poor fellow, buzzing down to the pasture, or the pig pen, took his usual route, and never noticed her new home blocking his way until he stuck to it, wings beating like busted windshield wipers. Bertha, unaware of the accidental nature of this visit, scurried over to him and squawked hospitable gibberish.

    “Hello bub! Welcome to my lunch plate!”

Oops! Terribly excitable, the host jumbled her words. A threat instead of offering him a “lunch plate”. No matter, the gnat wasn’t listening, but playing dead.

“Oh! You must be famished!” she said. Thinking him in a nap. Exhausted and sleeping upside down. Like a mother, Bertha began humming “I’m a little teapot” and set to work on her favorite task: cooking pudding. 

In the back cabinet of her mind, where she kept memories of childhood, her dad whisking morning panflies, the spider thought to wake her new friend with the rich scent of maple syrup, as her father used to do. Unfortunately, it seemed that her smelly pot aroused every gnat less the target. 

Baffled, a web full of unconscious visitors, the pores of her home clogged. A rude flock, they slept through lunch. Then dinner and then lunch again. Rudely abstaining from Bertha’s growing tub of glop. She dumped in all of her syrup. Added ingredients not on the recipe: pungent herbs and dragonfly legs. A disgusting slop, she hoped to gross them away. She sang louder and louder, plucking at her web like a guitar. Body slammed the strings, bouncing as if a trampoline. She fatigued. Calories depleted, meal spoiled, nothing to eat but the bugs. A bit bland, she wished she had some syrup.

Now the volcano grumbled, also hungry and weary of its guests. Stomach empty, upset with gas. An explosive fart. Something more squeezed out. Lava. Bertha’s song over at last.

    by: Dom