Inside of her web.
Spreading out her legs.
A man crosses the threshold.
He curiously regards the design of her creation.
The Hive Queen smiles and invites him inside.
Beckoning with a raised leg for a closer look.
The human hesitantly approaches, peering into her flesh.
She shows him her flesh. A pulsating organ of wet sex covered with soft pointy hairs.
Each of which has an eye, that blinks into his own.
He whistles with appreciation and smiles.
“You are so very sexy and scary all at once” he thinks.
She hears his thoughts and smiles in return.
For most men are seduced by her beauty.
But few can stand the sight of her wounds.
The man departs from where he had entered,
and she began to shape a new web.
For her it felt like hours, but to the man it was minutes.
He arrived again in her world.
Beholding the scene she created.
It was against a dark sky and half of a giant tortured face stared into his own.
Weeping and grimacing while a gusty wind rustled the leaves of broken old trees she placed into the foreground.
This was her hurt. Her pain, and the man was gentle and kind.
“You are still very beautiful” he said. “Your pain makes it so.”
The Hive Queen nodded, looking over the hideous image of herself.
And watched the man depart once more.
When he returned, she sat in the bottom right corner of his vision.
And carefully watched his reaction.
For she had created something truly monstrous for him to see.
His kind and gentle face beheld the horrors of her darkest imagination.
Neither flinching nor turning away.
And she could see a small tear form in the corner of his eye before it dropped off his face like it was at the edge of a cliff.
“You are still so beautiful and wounded but now you are horrific.” The man responded, noticing her inconspicuous presence.
The Hive Queen waited to feel his hate and disgust.
But it did not come.
The man came closer and placed a hand upon her head, looking into each of her eight eyes. A kindness she had never known emanated from those two orbs of his, flooding her insides with waves of warm gushing light.
For so long, she was the Goddess of these men’s imaginations. Her seductive beauty was a power that she held over them with an expertise that took centuries to perfect.
And yet, her ugliness had always repelled them. Her pain and sorrow and hatred and loneliness.
Her despair always repelled them.
But not this man.
“Thank you” he said, feeling the weight of her thoughts. “Thank you for showing me all of who that you are.”
The Hive Queen felt herself sink into his spell. A yawning welcoming abyss that she willingly submerged herself in the embrace of.
She could not speak his language, but she remained still. Receptive. The pause of her actions prompting further elucidation on his part.
The man had noticed, and continued.
“I understand who you are and I accept you.” He said, glancing at the horrors behind her.
“I love you just the same.”
The Queen had heard these words spoken by many over many lifetimes, but not like this. Her illusions were crafty, her power immense.
Her beauty only lasted for as long as the illusion did.
Until the veil fell away and her true form was revealed.
And men no longer remembered what she had earlier shown them.
But this one did.
“Yes. I do remember,” the man smiled, taking an unneeded breath.
“You are truly a Goddess and for that I honor and admire you.”
“I can feel and see your pain.”
“I can feel and see your beauty.”
“I know and respect your power and it is great.”
“It is amazing.”
“Thank you Spider Goddess for all that you’ve revealed.”
“Thank you Great Goddess of Teotihuacan.”
The Hive Queen’s eyes grew large as she heard mention of her title for the first time in centuries.
“How did you know who I am?” she finally asked, feeling the foreigner’s words running like thick clunky molasses through her head, synthesizing the symbols he is accustomed towards using.
The man sat down across from her.
“I am not merely a human male,” he said, looking into the far distance, searching for thoughts.
“I am aware.” She answered. “Tell me.”
The man sighed and peered again into her eight eyes.
“You are not the only one with secrets. I too am both beautifully wounded as you are. I understand and accept your pain because I am in pain also.”
“You are like me?” She asked, puzzled and confused. For she had been lonely for so long and thought herself to be the last of her kind.
“Yes. I am just like you.”
“What is this secret of yours? What darkness do you hide?”
The man hesitated and lowered his eyes.
“I do not know if I should reveal it.”
The Hive Queen felt a sadness filling in the center of his chest. She touched him with two of her legs, gently tapping both of his shoulders.
“You have seen the worst of me,” she said. “Now you must show me the worst of you. For this is a temporal realm, and here there are no secrets that can exist for long.”
The man raised his head with a slow nod of agreement. The bluish hue emanating from his heart began to subside and the Queen retracted her limbs.
He began to show her.
He painted her a scene of a valley covered in white and small flecks of snow falling from the sky. It was quiet and vast and spoke of loneliness and isolation.
He was now speaking in her language. The language of the Old Gods.
“Yes.” he acknowledged, continuing to create the scene. The snowflakes began to grow larger in size and turned black, covering the landscape in ashes.
The Goddess of Teotihuacan felt herself gasp with surprise as she watched the scene unfold.
Terrible lightning appeared in the distance, bolts of electricity made of many forked tongues lapped across the ground in quick succession. Tasting and hungrily consuming the ashes until once again the landscape was pristine and serene.
The man asked, “is this enough to satisfy you, my Goddess?”
The Hive Queen felt the hairs on her rump tingle with delight at this apparent announcement of a powerful man becoming subservient to her.
She pondered his question and shook her head from side to side.
The man gave a reluctant nod and continued.
Before her now was a dark pit. The man gestured for her to look inside.
She could see a swarm of slithering creatures, howling with pain. Their cries covered the entire spectrum of human emotion and with a squint she could see they were blackened corpses in various stages of decomposition. Crawling, crying, tearing at one another and ripping off handfuls of tattered flesh.
The man’s chest then began to glow.
And it started to open itself up.
A hole split into folds of skin from where a small foot emerged and from the cavity of his chest, a beautiful child of light gingerly stepped onto the ground as the husk of the man fell to his knees. The life in his eyes now empty and lost.
The child stood before her. Tiny, but full of light and love.
Light and love. The Goddess sighed. Feeling the healing of her broken and lonely heart.
The child came closer and wiggled under her abdomen, pressing itself in tight.
The Queen stiffened her body before remembering.
Remembering.
Remembering who this child was.
Her own.
It was her own child. And her father. Her mother. Her daughter, and all the men and Gods she has victimized and been victimized by.
The child pressed itself against her belly.
And fell asleep.
The Hive Queen began to sob tears of joy. Careful not to betray her shuddering body to the sleeping child. Feeling the glow of it inside of her. Nourishing each fiber of her being. Flooding her with the majesty of all the stars.
“Who are you?” She asked, already knowing the answer.
She could feel the child rouse itself awake with a playful pinch and a warm, mischievous smile.
“I am the alpha and the omega,” it said. Rubbing her stomach.
“I am the way to the truth that you seek and long for.”
“I am you and I am not you.”
“I am all that you’ve ever wanted and all that you’ve hated.”
The Queen felt herself smiling through her arachnid form. Knowing that this was what she had been wanting for all of her existence without realizing it.
“You came to me as a man and now are a child. How? Why? Why now?”
The child giggled.
“Look up there,” it said. And the Goddess looked up at the sky.
She could see the swirling of a galaxy. A slow circling of stars and planets of many colors and shapes.
“What do you see?” the child asked.
“I see where we belong. I see where I belong and what I truly am.”
“Yes. You do. But do you also see the clock?”
The Goddess squinted into the cosmos. She had a familiarity with clocks but could not understand the connection she was being asked to make.
The child laughed with a merry tinkle in its voice.
“Look more closely.” It said.
The Hive Queen watched the swirling until she understood what she was looking for.
Patterns. The spiral was continuous. The tip of it appeared to disintegrate at the center but began to coalesce again to the beginning. It reminded her of the Ouroboros, the serpent that ate its own tail.
“Who are you, really?” The Queen again asked. Marveling at the insight she’s received. Everything was a cycle. This was the beginning of a new one. That was what she was intended to see.
The child giggled again and began speaking in the voice of a man.
“I am a writer on a blog called Medium and I am slightly tripping on mushrooms honoring the visions you’ve shown me while I was on mushrooms the past week with my twin.”
The Spider Queen laughed at the man’s brazenness. Feeling him enter her womb and provoking immense pleasure.
“Yes. You like that, don’t you? My Queen.”
“I do.”
“You like it when I write about you, don’t you?” The man teased. Touching the most intimate parts of her.
“I do, I do.” The Queen gasped. Feeling herself tense up.
“Thank you for letting me visit you and to tell your story.”
“Thank you for honoring me, David.”
The Queen then felt an enormous rush of energy enter inside of her. Building and building until it felt like she was going to explode.
The child stretched itself out from underneath and revealed itself to now be a spider. Turning her around and penetrating her from behind.
The Queen cried. Forming a hand with one of her limbs, she clutched at an intangible part of the sky. Holding onto an invisible thread.
“Let go.” The man spider said. Thrusting into her with force.
“I…” The Queen felt her eyes squeeze shut. “David… I am afraid.”
“Let go. Trust me.”
The Queen no longer could hold the forces that were multiplying inside of her. This expansive light. This…
This…
Words failed her.
“Surrender.”
“Surrender!”
The man slowed his thrusts and touched her gently. Placing a hand upon her back.
He no longer was a spider.
Now he was a God.
The Queen nodded and looked behind to meet his eyes.
His eyes were filled with love. They shone with an inimitable brilliance.
She could not contain all of it.
With a cry of determination and sadness and a measure of worry…
… She surrendered.
And the Spider Queen was no more.
The man began putting on his clothes and zipped up his pants, not because he had to but because he needed to feel the completion of his task. Rituals, so important in the human world were just as important here.
In the world of psilocybin mushroom trips.
The man looked up into the sky to see the Goddess enshrined in the form of a constellation that was made up of eight legs and a body that would never die. Never again feel pain but only love and reverence and company amongst others of her kind. To communicate and relate with them and share her stories with them. To listen to their own tales of triumphs and defeats.
She would remain that way until she chooses not to. Perhaps she would one day again return to the universe as a Goddess or perhaps, a mortal woman, for all forms are available and all levels of hierarchy can be explored.
The man smiled at the sight of the legendary Goddess of Teotihuacan being freed from the prison of her suffering. To experience great love once again.
It was the cycle of the universe. The hands of the clock of God that allowed for such a wondrous feeling to be experienced.
Submission to something greater and more powerful than herself.
Love.
The man continued typing on his laptop. Correcting spelling errors as he went. Wondering if he should leave the beginning part of the story as it was, which started off as a poem but turned into something he did not anticipate.
Perhaps he too, shall surrender. To the expressions of his vivid imagination.
The man paused at the keys. Hearing the sound of traffic outside. Watching the aftermath of a great storm passing away to reveal the beaming of a warm sun.
Puffing on his vape. Thinking about his love for another.
Waiting on her return.
His pain. His goddess.
His godliness.
All within him.
A world created by his own hand.
Such is the life of a writer.
On a psilocybin mushroom trip.
