1 Setting the Scene

Daddy Longlegs (An Snáthaid Mhór)

PART ONE:
Setting the Scene - the Spider and the Fly.
Incorporating an Invitation to High Tea and a Modicum of Philosophical and Linguistic Trivia.

-You might pause to consider, said the Spider smiling a toothy smile –that there has been considerable disinformation put about in the locality by idle and malicious gossip regarding myself.

It was one of those breathless summer days on the high bog, and the Spider and the Fly faced each other under an awning provided by the feathery reeds that grew along the edges of a small pool. The sky above them was as blue as a blackbird’s egg but as the hours passed it was starting to fade to grassy yellow in the distance where the marsh gave way to the russet scraw of turf cuttings and the afternoon to the approach of tea-time.

-I may be black and hairy and perhaps ugly in the eyes of some, continued the Spider. –and without question I am endowed with a superfluity of legs compared to a fly. But please, do not deny me my good points. Many of them are close to the prerequisites of genius. I am skilful. I am industrious. I am possessed of cunning and mental acuity. Above all I am a thinker. And look, my teeth are as beautifully enamelled and white as the tusks of the great trumpeting walrus. On top of this, he added, -there is the question of charm.

-You don’t say, said the Fly, without any.

She sat on a leaf high above the pool, sunning her hairy rumpkin in the late afternoon sun and trying to scratch off a sticky and unpleasant something that had attached itself to her back legs.

Far below a rusty carp broke for a moment the surface of the pool and gulping down a mouthful of air, flopped back disappointed under the green water. The Fly winced and ceased scratching her leg as she inched a little higher up the reed stem.

-I would say then, said the Spider, -that there is no reason in the world to refuse my invitation. The kettle is always on, and I have biscuits. And should you wish a proper meal, he added with a chuckle, -I am utterly bad in the kitchen.

At the mention of food the Fly shifted her position once again and stole a quick look behind her. The flicker of a shadow, caused no doubt by this sudden movement upon the leaf on which she balanced, darkened for a moment the Spider’s shining web and caused a tiny shudder to run through its hair trigger cordage.

-Come up for tea, said the Spider. –I crave conversation and crumpets. A thinker’s task is a lonely one. Without the support of company and the input of a second mind it is sometimes unbearable. It is no fun to be a philosopher, you know, hanging all day on one’s ownsome between the seen and the unseen and never being quite sure which is which.

The Fly rolled her eyes round her head like a chameleon. She noticed that this Spider was impeccably tailored for an older gentleman. It made her very suspicious. She looked down and spat a gobbet of yellow phlegm into the water beneath and smirked as the red carp rose and snapped and swallowed and sank out of sight with a sick look.

-Rubber face, she muttered, and, turning to the Spider, said rudely -You think I’m some kind of oik? My mother told me never to trust a gentleman in a tuxedo at teatime. She said it was almost as inauspicious as a velvet smoking jacket at dinner and worse than a dressing gown closed with a tasselled cord of silk instead of buttons at the hour of milk and biscuits. It reeks of good breeding and bad intentions, both of them inevitably pathways to ruination.

-Ruination, chuckled the Spider, –how quaint!

But the Fly went on with a frown. -Besides I can see without you telling me that you have eight legs. There are six legged bugs in this bog I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, and they think they are family. Do you imagine I’d have anything to do with you, with your a horrid hairy speckled extras?

-You may not know it, said the Spider patiently, but eight is a magic number. Written sideways it is the sign for Infinity. Have you heard of infinity, Fly?

-Every fly has heard of infinity, she retorted with a grunt. –It is a way of counting our race. We are described in the better almanacs as an infinity of flies. We are many in number, you know. Like the sand on the seashore or the stars in the sky or whatever.

-An infinity of flies, said the Spider, -I suppose you mean like a cacophony of frogs or a murder of crows.

- A murder of spiders, more likely, said the Fly, who, like many of the non-philosophising classes believed religiously in gossip and vaguely remembered something off-colour about arachnids. Unfortunately she could never remember the details and invariable repeated any story she heard back to front which was often the cause of great resentment both to the gossiped about and the gossips themselves.

-Apart from that, she went on with a sneer -I have heard the expression a clutter of spiders. I suppose it means you spiders are like rats: if I can see one of you in front of me there must be twenty or thirty out of sight cluttering up the undergrowth.

-Tut tut, said the Spider, -but I notice you are misinformed about your good race. It was never spoken of as an infinity of flies. The correct usage is a business of flies.

- A business? sniffed the Fly.

-Libellously so, said the Spider,–a business.

He continued. –There must have been a prejudiced few in the past who imagined that flies had vile and unhygienic habits and did their unsanitary business anywhere they pleased. -Slanderous, he added, ingratiatingly, -but the dirt seems to have stuck. Together with such gems as a puke-fest of bluebottles and a piss-party of midges and a chunder of…

-Enough! interrupted the Fly.

-Well, to set the matter straight about myself at least, said the Spider, - allow me to inform you that here there is no clutter but only a solitude of spiders. For spiders are solitary animals. You may talk about a turbulence of starlings or an exaltation of larks but the truth of the matter is that at the heart of this beautiful handcrafted web there is only a solitude of spiders. That solitude, he added, -is me.

-Of course, he murmured, as if by afterthought, -if we were to dine together we could rectify that. -And I have kippers, he went on,-with gorgonzola sauce. He smiled now with the focussed unction of a professional ringmaster and beckoned. –If not dinner, high tea at least?

-Gawgonzola sauce! The Fly spat again, this time carefully into the palm of her hand and for a moment seemed greatly engrossed in an analysis of the results. The augury apparently clear, she turned back to the Spider and said

-Hey ho! Time flies. And so must I! Nice gear! Nice try! Nice talking to you. Nice…

Abruptly niceties ceased, for at that moment an orange and purple dragonfly rose from the surface of a water lily leaf in the green pool below and hovered for a moment on the wings of appetite, all jaws and teeth and expectancy as if daring the Fly to take flight and enter its airy killing zone.

The Fly began to wonder if it might not be worthwhile taking a little walk somewhere else on foot, but before she could make a decision the Dragonfly’s wings flashed like a Samurai sword in the sun and he was gone.

-Shall we dine then, smiled the Spider, -you and I, together?

2 Grub and Spirits

PART TWO:
Grub and Spirits. Introduction to a Cloud of Midges and a Cloud of Unknowing. In the University of Hard Knocks is there Room for Questions? Are there ever any Answers?


Peering into the space vacated by the glittering Dragonfly the Spider cleared his throat and said -It appears to my mind, tempered as it is to razor sharp perspicuity by the refining fires of philosophical enquiry…

-Come again, interrupted the Fly, less stridently than usual, for the Dragonfly’s attention had left her somewhat in a state of shock.

-It appears to me that my web is a much safer place to pass a few hours than your flimsy and exposed little reed.

-What do you mean? The Fly gave a bleat, trying to compose herself. She looked behind her and bending her head blew her nose noisily into the hairs of her armpit.

-I mean, said the Spider, that the world is a dangerous place.

There was a pause and for a moment nothing could be heard but the rustling of the reeds and the quiet lapping of ripples in the shallows of the pool below. Then the Spider spoke.

-Solitude is the hallmark of the philosopher as I have explained, he said smoothly, -but let me reiterate. I have been thinking that perhaps two heads might be better than one, not only for the light hearted ping-pong that is a frivolous dinner party debate among genteel sophisticates, but also when it comes to solving the Great Questions.

-Questions? the Fly said, -what questions?

-The Questions of the Universe, said the Spider.

- University things is beyond me, said the Fly. –for when it comes to questions, I have rarely never had any of that kind of thing and it seems to me I rarely never have any now.

-No, said the Spider sadly, -most people rarely never do. He was thinking: -in the University of Hard Knocks there are no Questions and no Answers. There is just grub.

Out loud he said -although a quick ferreting around under the cobwebs of your rarely never little brain might surprise even you.

At the mention of cobwebs the Fly sneezed violently. An annoyance of midges rose in a brown cloud from the foliage about her and then, realising there was nothing in it for them, faded away like a puff of brown smoke.

The Spider gave a deep sigh and his web throbbed around him in sympathy like the strings of a harp. He looked first to the right and then to the left and said -Two short glances around this vicinity have led me to the conclusion that eating alone without the encouragement of a guest and thus deprived of the witty repartee of a properly constituted dinner party is an ugly and depressing thing, but it is nothing compared with the hunger for the Unknowing.

-Food feeds the body, said the Fly unknowingly, and as you are so full of knowing let me now be silent.

-A good choice, said the Spider, for it is well known that silence feeds the soul and in transcendental circumstances even leads it to where it doesn’t know it wants to go.

Had the Fly wished to meditate on this cryptic utterance, which was unlikely, since she already didn’t know where she wanted to go and a few minutes before had been utterly convinced she knew where she didn’t want to go, it was now too late. The opportunity had departed, for at that very moment there was a small commotion in an adjoining clump of reeds and a gaudy personage poked his head into sight.

3 First Appearance of the Gadfly

PART THREE:
First Appearance of the Gadfly. The Spider’s Warning: The Junker is Junk. An Unsuitable Suitor?

The Fly giggled. It was uncharacteristic of her. Suddenly she spun around and began a hurried preening of her bedraggled extremities.

The newcomer clearly had eyes in his head. He took in the lie of the land in a flash and looked sharply at the Spider hanging in his web.

-Nice threads, he nodded with a touch of ambiguity, and immediately and not without a hint of gallantry addressed himself to the Fly.

-Gnädige Frau, he said, inclining his head in a teutonicly snappy gesture, - how delighted I am to discover you!

He raised his gaze and turning his eyes like a heliotrope in her direction, winked salaciously through a thousand polished monocles.

-Well, thought the Fly, -who is this then?

-I, said the newcomer, with the riposte of a sabre wielding Captain of the Hussars, -am the Gadfly.

He emerged now completely from the rush stalks and bowed again, this time a full and aristocratic bending from the waist accompanied by some elegant and sophisticatedly incomprehensible hand ballet. It was as if flattery enough to enchant a whole hareem was being lavishly fanned towards a single individual.

The Fly was aware of a crushing beauty. The Gadfly smiled out from a stern and muscular visage, moustachioed to the hilt. He wore a gleaming black neckerchief studded with what appeared to be diamond pins. Below this his wrestler’s chest bulged beneath a turquoise breastplate from which dangled an extraordinary array of brightly coloured ribbons and important looking medals. Fine veined wings of opal hue, antennae of iridescent gauze and a blue flashing cloak which winked and shimmered like a lighthouse against the shadows of the rush bed completed this first, and in the Fly’s opinion, very favourable impression.

It seemed to the Fly that the sun was suddenly brighter, the air sweeter and the musty woodland smells more enticing than they had ever been before.

The Spider, however, hanging grumpily in his glossy web, grimaced.

-There is not much to this one, he muttered, under his breath.

-He’s all blab and no pig meat. There is not even a bite here to feed the body, and as for feeding the soul, well, this flyboy is nothing but armour and certificates. No juice in his flesh. No broth in his bones. I think he’d be better off as fish food.

A heavy plop resounded from the pool below. It appeared the ruby carp agreed.

-Take care, Fly, said the Spider with gravity. –Be cautious and keep your wits close! Mother Nature is a singular mother. On Monday if she wants porridge for breakfast she’ll suck out her own children’s brains!

–Brains, said the Fly looking round at him in alarm. -Ugh! And what do this single mother do Tuesdays?

-If you are not coming to dinner, said the Fly irritably, go and read the scandal sheets yourself.

-What for? said the Fly.

-They will tell you, said the Spider impatiently, -that Nature is red in tooth and claw.

-Well read, he repeated, -in both tooth and in claw! And if you can’t read, he added patronisingly, -forget the paper. Just open those bug-eyes of yours and look about you!

For a moment the Fly abandoned her appraisal of the Gadfly and looked about her doubtfully. However she was finding it increasingly hard to keep her attention from creeping back to the newcomer.

The Spider paused and added testily -and please, do stop ogling that loathsome warble fly! Didn’t your interfering mother tell you to beware of a suitor who wears his heart on his sleeve? Everyone knows it is a totally inappropriate location for a heart.

He went on. – I despair! This place is no a place for a Thinker. Civilisation has passed it by. Look! The uncultivated natives of the vicinity all have mouths in perfect working order. Yet do they ever think about the amazing capabilities inherent in that breathtaking piece of divine engineering?

-They don’t, I’m sure, said the Fly, taking a deep breath, and trying to fathom what on earth he was talking about. All this talk of claws and teeth made her wonder if the Dragonfly really had gone for good.

The Spider twanged angrily on a strand of his cobweb.

-The sinuous and explosive delights of language when put to the task of prising open the secrets of creation! Of unlocking the mysteries of the gods! Let alone all the rhetoric and the poetry!

-The hat trick and the pottery, echoed the Fly vaguely, trying to catch up. But she was now beginning to fidget. It was unlike her to bother her head with etiquette, but it did seem that the Gadfly was now being rudely neglected.

-They don’t, she repeated, hoping that that might be the end of it.

-No, Fly, you are right, barked the Spider, -they DON’T. These gross and wriggling slime-pit peasants all around us use their pitiful apologies for a mouth only for one thing! For EATING!

The Fly jumped, and looked across at the Gadfly impatiently. But her impatience was nothing compared with that of her newfound suitor. His mouth, far from gasping for food, was quivering with the need to get a word in edgeways.

4 The Gadfly’s Speech

PART FOUR:
The Gadfly’s Speech, and how his Soliloquy Gives the Lie to the Spider’s Opinion on the Common People’s Use of the Mouth Organ. The Tormentor Displays.

The Gadfly took a deep lungful of air. He had no time for the pettiness of organs, mouth or otherwise. He himself had a trumpet to blow. It was his own.

After the outburst the Spider had paused for a moment to allow his breath to return and the Gadfly, seizing the opportunity to squeeze a word in edgeways, squeezed it in, and finding no opposition to its passage, grasped it firmly in both his lungs and shoved it in all the way. Then he followed it with a whole dictionary.

-Madam Butterfly, if I may be so bold in my description, he began, -allow me to introduce myself. As you can see, he smirked -I am no lowborn dung heap botfly. Back in the real world they call me the Tormenter.

He paused, gauging the effect of this grandiose title upon his listener. His eyes glittered with the sharpness of a handful of broken glass.

-As for ‘loathsome warble fly’, he added turning to the Spider and squeezing his lips into a thin and deadly line until they resembled the quivering blade of a razor in the hands of Sweeney Todd the Barber, -well, there soon may be a score to settle on that score!

-Tusk tusk, said the Spider, sucking air between his teeth and slapping his gums together in imitation of an aphid learning to blow bubbles.

The Gadfly withdrew his attention from the Spider as a murderer might withdraw his dagger from his victim’s gut, and turned it skilfully towards the Fly, who was sitting open-mouthed in amazement. By now she was drooling a little.

-Understand, fair Demoiselle, he continued, -that just as you also clearly appear to be, I am of Noble and Ancient Race.

-My ancestors caused dinosaurs in the rampant fern forests of aeons past to trumpet despairingly and lash their tails with brute fury against fly-bitten flank until they dripped red with their own blood.

-Mee oh my, gasped the Fly, wiping the back of her forearm across her mouth.

The Gadfly continued.

-I myself, as infant, stampeded herds of the choicest of thoroughbred Arabians, driving them wild with my goad, poisoning them with my barbed tongue until they brayed like the untutored onager of the desert bellowing strange monosyllables stolen from the crass vocabulary of the common ass.

-I have caused turf cutters to go mad and leap to their doom in bottomless bog holes and yea, they even praised God for granting them release.

-I have upturned the extravagant picnic parties of the nouveau-riche and driven even the most well-appointed noblewoman to tear off her serf-stitched knickers and disgrace herself and her lineage in the full and undeniable light of day with frenetic screams and Tarantella writhings and the strange and corybantic lewdness of a pagan sorceress.

By now the Gadfly had risen from his reed stalk and was hovering in the air before them bathed in the magnetic assurance of an operatic tenor who is delivering his seventh encore of the evening and expects the imminent accolade of an eighth. He was clearly enjoying immensely the wrapt attention of the whole Universe and perhaps even that of other and parallel universes far beyond the one we know.

-I have caused proud generals on the reviewing stand to slap their own faces and swear with unimaginably alliterative foulness in the presence of their loyal troops and even of their own mothers.

-Wherever I go I panic the elephant and stampede the rhinoceros and torment the crocodile until they jump through the bamboo forests like young frightened gazelles and soar into the air in their torment as do the flying fish of the far and incomprehensible continents of the East.

-Even the pike sheathes its razor teeth and hides its stern eye beneath the safe skin of the water when I come visiting its pool to drink!

During all this performance the Fly remained spellbound. All trace of Thought and the Great Questions had evaporated from the surface of her mind.

-I wouldn’t mind having his maggots, she thought. –he looks mighty enough to father a plague of locusts!

She was by now was so captivated by the display being enacted for her benefit that she failed to notice what was happening behind her in the silver web.

5 A Good Feed or a Good Snog?

PART FIVE:
In which the Fly cannot decide which Instant Gratification is more instant: A Good Feed or a Good Snog?

Patiently the spider had begun to spread out a large silken table cloth in the centre of the sticky surface of his web. On it he was placing an array of succulent treats, each one of them dear to a fly’s heart and extravagant to a fly’s taste buds.

-Life, he said a little under his breath as he did so, -is short for us all. And as for you, sweet flibberty-gibbet, you may not know it, but in the best of circumstances you have only the briefest of spans in which to fulfil the promise of yours.

-Promise?

Although fascinated by He Himself, the Fly was beginning to find the Gadfly’s soliloquy a bit long.

-Less words and a little action, crossed her mind and as her thoughts wandered she became aware of a number of delightful odours wafting in her direction from the Spider’s web.

Up to this point her appetite had been roused by attractions far from culinary. All of a sudden she remembered hunger. That is the problem with instant gratifications. If there is a choice of two only one can be instant.

The Spider continued to fiddle with his display. He spoke in a low tone, which attracted the Fly’s attention but at the same time concealed the content of his words.

-The briefest of spans. Hardly worth it really, don’t you think? I on the other hand do have a contribution to make to the world. Logic commands that I go on for a while longer. We must know who we are. We must ask where we come from. We must find out where we are going. We must answer the Big Question. We must ask WHY? We are Thinkers after all.

He was aware that the Fly was listening. He raised his voice.

-Who are you, for example, he said to her, -Where did
you come from?

-I know the answer to that, said the Fly.

Behind her the Gadfly’s voice was becoming less and less distinct. His words were fading imperceptibly into the rhythmic rhubarb of rustling and rattling and rubbing that was the reed bed’s teatime conversation.

For the Fly the odour of food rose now and filled her horizon like a sudden summer thundercloud. With satisfaction the Spider noticed that she was becoming a little wet around the chops.

-A good dribbler shows a keen appetite, he muttered, his eyes flickering softly in the shadows. And hunger silences doubt.

The Fly interrupted his train of thought.

-I know the answer to your question, she said.

–Who am I? -I am a fly!

The smell of the banquet was drawing her irresistibly towards him.

-I am defined by my occupation.

She stopped suddenly, for the unfamiliar exertion of thinking this thought had left her quite out of breath. She wondered for a second if she might not choke on the volume of vocabulary required by her mouth to express it. Her mouth however had its own agenda. It hadn’t even missed a dribble. With relief she continued.

-I fly, Spider, she said, -therefore I am.

-Am what? Said the Spider.

-Am a fly! Amn’t I? If I crept I would be a creep.

The Spider smiled.

-Would you indeed? he muttered, and crept closer to the edge of the web.

-I suppose if you hopped you would be a hop. We could make beer out of you.

But this time the Fly’s appetite, in the food department at least, was rising on wings of delightful gluttony. Conversation, she now understood was a dinner invitation.

-And as for where I come from, Mr Spider, -I know that too. I come from Death.

-Death, indeed, said the Spider. –Now at least we are getting somewhere, for Death is always a good starting point when we wish to consider the Whats and the Wherefores and the Whys and the Whatevers!

6 Gluttony and Libido: A Difficult Choice!

PART SIX:
In which the Fly must decide between gluttony and libido or whether it is possible to integrate them. In which the Spider must decide if he is to eat or educate the Fly. And what might be in it for him? In which the plot (in Part Seven) leads up to the terrible and unexpected re-appearance of the Dragonfly, which scuppers all plans and contracts hitherto agreed on and decided about. In which I introduce a poem.

All might have been as it should have been from this point on. But the best plans of mice and men......well, this is equally true in the case of the smallest of bugs and the largest of flying Hefferlumpiae and other Mammaloptera and extends even to the winged Mytholopopolatls. It goes equally for Spiders, Flies, Gadflies and Carp and all species and every genus of terrestrial, aerial and aquatic creature whether Nemotodinous, Diptherial or Helicopterous.

Let me digress now for a moment as I gather my thoughts and reel in my memory and re-arrange the thread of my composition preparatory to spinning the further chapters of my story. And while I do, an apposite piece of verse from the ancient annals of Professor Absalom the Younger to break the tension and allow you to go and refill your coffee cup.

Daddy Longlegs

Don’t be frightened! I’m not scary, although I’m black and hairy,
And I run about on lots and lots of legs!
If you hang about and wait, you’ll find there’s only eight,
And they make me very nimble on me pegs!
So I take it very poorly to be called a Creepy Crawly!
I am anything but that, as you can see!
I’m not a creepy sort of blighter,
So don’t say: Ooooer! A Spider!
I’m Daddy Longlegs! Come on up! We’ll have some tea!

I’m afraid my web, (as if it mattered!) is a little torn and tattered.
My last guest, um, seemed to struggle quite a bunch!
I’d invited him for dinner, but he said there must have been a
Big mistake! So I invited him instead for lunch!
But don’t let this put you off! I may sound a little gruff!
But there’s no one kinder or more gentle here than me!
(There’s no one here but me!)
And if you think my web might hide a
Great Big Hairy Hungry Spider,
Well, come on up to Daddy Longlegs and we’ll see!

If I seem to sit and grin as I now invite you in,
It’s that I want us to be friends, the very best!
Oh! My head is in a spin! How very long it’s been
Since such a plump, er, I mean, since such a guest!
Come! Come! Please do not pause. Let these gently smiling jaws
Welcome you into this humble web of mine!
And if my grin gets slowly wider like a Great Big Hungry Spider,
Well, Daddy Longlegs says: It must be time to dine!

7 Second Appearance of the Dragonfly

PART SEVEN
Second Appearance of the Dragonfly. Lucifer ex Machina.

And then, with the disquieting truth of a dream dissolving into wakefulness, the Dragonfly emerged stealthily from behind an innocent looking marsh marigold. He rose and hovered inches from the Gadfly’s nose, staring coldly into his face. There was an icy malevolence about him now and he seemed to brim with cruelty.

A silence descended abruptly upon the woodland. All that could be heard, and barely, was the rustle of six wings treading air. The moment seemed balanced on a leaf slowly bending under its own weight.

Beside the reed fringed edges of the pool, penetrated still by a few slanting beams of afternoon sunlight, the water, translucent, brown and succulent as clear onion soup, began to disgorge life in all the multitudinous and strangely sculpted manifestations that it nourished.

Ticks and water boatmen, amoebic glop with brains usually switched only to reproduction, mouths without bodies and bodies without mouths, a universe of sliding wriggling creeping floating piggybacking backbiting slurping things and thinglets began to range themselves slowly around the arena drawn to carnage like spectators at an accident. Simply, they smelled blood.

Those without teeth in mouths that hitherto could do little more than suck marvelled at the two gladiators’ huge and glittering fangs. Those as yet without wings shuddered in expectation of the coming aerodynamic fireworks and slime larvae with nothing more than buds on their shoulders, peered nervously rearwards, wondering if the excitement and example might suddenly cause their own wings to sprout, and whether or not it would hurt.

The Gadfly turned his eyes towards the Fly, and they sparkled with arrogant confidence.

-After I have won, he murmured, -I myself will kill and carry to your feet a whole colony of rats to suffice as the nursery for our progeny.

-Furthermore, he added, but before he could add anything either further or even more to this addendum a terrible rattling sound arose from the Dragonfly’s tessellated wings like a drum roll before an execution and cut him off abruptly.

The latter was indeed of monstrous proportions. The Gadfly hovered before it like a tiny buzzing moon held in place within the gravity of a massive celestial orb. Slowly the Dragonfly spread its wings out before it in the manner of an orator enfolding the attention of a vast public. They glistened with martial colours, with challenge and with threat. They seemed to embrace the whole battlefield.

Its body curved back and up and away like some great aerial scorpion, segmented, and moving jerkily in yellow and purple and black. Rays of sunlight seemed to stick to the poisonous looking plates, unable to continue on their way to the earth. The eyes were huge, cold and opaque, reflecting nothing, giving nothing away. They seemed to have no colour of their own and to be focussed on somewhere else. The massive jaws looked as if they could have crushed a tortoise. They slid backwards and forward and from side to side, as if, before the terrible coup de grace, there was still more sharpening to be done. They brought to mind the blades of a threshing machine.

The six legs, hairy and tapered, were armoured and half curled beneath a heavy thorax and each was tipped with a sharp black hook. They hung indolently, however, almost relaxed, as if utterly sure that this second deadly arsenal would never be needed.

The two began to circle each other.

The spectators stared upwards, watching and waiting, hoping for the utmost dental ferocity.

8 The Fight

PART EIGHT: The Fight. Disappearance and Evasion. Sticky Wickets.

One moment the Gadfly was very much in evidence, up there, nose to nose with the Dragonfly, and trembling, clearly with battle anticipation and the intoxicating adrenalin of the hero born to battle. The next, in a flash of iridescent blue and with the utter invisibility of a column of empty air, he was gone. The spectators gasped. The speed of the manoeuvre defied the ability of the eye to see and the mind to grasp. It was as if the Gadfly had dissolved under their very gaze. Vanished or banished? A discussion broke out far below and beside the pool bets were already being taken by the racier punters.

Would he reappear as a lightening strike from above in the heroic and brilliant manner of an avenging angel? Or swoop up from the dark and foetid under-deeps, attacking with an assassin’s thrust, deadly and poisonous, to pierce the Dragonfly’s unprotected flank? Among many a slight mood of uneasiness prevailed.

The light was beginning to fade a little by now, and the shadows among the reeds were slowly taking on a chocolate tinge. Behind the yellow stems where the sun still lingered there was a murky unprotected zone out of which the day already seemed to have been sucked.

The Fly held her breath, looking around anxiously. The Gadfly was nowhere to be seen. From behind a nearby bulrush stem she thought she heard for a brief second what sounded like the clank of armour being unbuckled and the briefest of clinks as if somebody were removing a medal. A base thought crossed her mind. Instantly it was blown to smithereens as the status quo collapsed beneath her. It went tumbling in all directions like a faulty scaffold, leaving not the slightest moment for the smallest smidgeon of suspicion, or any other thought at all for that matter. Horror of horrors! A rush of air lifted her from her reed-bound perch and with a harsh clattering of his leathery ailerons the Dragonfly was upon her. His eyes chewed into her as he scanned her with the ferocity of a diner whose plat du jour has been cancelled and who has been fobbed off with the à la carte.

The Fly shrieked, slamming her own wings into gear. They squealed as if about to wrench themselves from her shoulder sockets and to a rattling whine like an air conditioning fan coming loose from its moorings she was propelled instantly and vertically upwards.

Up, up, up she rocketed, but the rattling and clattering of the Dragonfly’s heavy propulsion rocketed with her. She could hear the rasp of his grunting inhalations as he drew closer and closer and smell the tart odour of his unflossed mandibles each time he exhaled. The stink rose inexorably with him, reaching out its long fingers towards her throat until it outpaced even her own velocity. -I thought it was only tigers who had such aggressive halitosis she thought, -but I suppose it goes with the aggressive teeth. I wonder how the mighty trumpeting walrus of the white and shaven ivories….

She had reached the apex of her trajectory and further speculation died along with her upward progress as the personal nature of the toothy ferocity about to be visited upon her sank in with a crunch. At once she felt herself beginning to drop helplessly, tumbling limp like a lead shot after it has missed its duck.

-This won’t do, she gasped. -Where is the Knight in Blue and Iridescent armour? Where is Mister Muscleman of the Mighty Gallantry and the Scion of the Dinosaur-Scourges? Where is the Tormentor and why isn’t he here doing some tormenting? Where on earth is the Gadfly, for goodness sake? But the hopes and fears of all those years was nowhere to be seen. Her heart sank, and she with it, and she found herself falling and falling and falling.

Down, down, down she tumbled and as she fell she was aware of a dark shadow gaping wide above her. It was the mouth of the Dragonfly, black and bottomless as a railway tunnel. She thought of the Black Holes in space from which nothing escapes, not even hope. She shuddered with horror at the thought and suddenly a strange and new determination came over her.

With a flutter and a rasp she folded her wings as tightly as she could against her body, spun her head around so that it faced the ground, retracted her legs until they were scarcely more than painted shadows against her flanks and having put herself into the plummet position, plummeted with the heavy determination of an anvil heading home to the iron core at the centre of the Earth.

Down, down, down she plunged. Faster and faster and faster, until the wind beat about her thorax and bellowed and flapped from the one leg which had not fully retracted, owing to the unfortunate circumstance that something unpleasant and sticky was still attached to it. Whatever it was it now billowed out behind her like an unopened parachute throwing up a great unstable turbulence in its wake.

The Fly was unaware of this handicap for by now her heart was in her mouth and the screeching wind was whistling through the space where it once had been. The far reaches of empty space were opening around her and she plummeted on down sliding like a hovercraft on her own terrified momentum.

Perhaps it was the unaccustomed substance now bubbling in her wake. Perhaps it was the unpleasantness of the substance clinging to her leg. Perhaps this trailing ectoplasm made her look huge to the Dragonfly. Whatever it was, it seemed briefly to unnerve him.

The distance between them grew, by a length at first and then by two and then by yet another.

Below her a flash of water showed the pond among the reeds. Beyond it the bog spread to the hills and the red horizon and the mustardy fringes of the sky. It all looked so far away.

She looked behind her. Though the Dragonfly was no longer close he was still there. He seemed a little smaller now, as if hovering as she fell. But her own descent was becoming erratic. She began to turn and tumble, like an arrow that has lost one of its feathers.

The horizon started spinning. Reed beds turned to sky, to heather hills, to scraw and back again to gleaming pond. One moment all was yellow rushes, the next all chocolate shadow. And hidden within ten thousand eyes were watching and waiting, bug-eyed, bog-eyed, pop-eyed and fat with anticipation.

She felt weak and lost, falling through silence.

All of a sudden the noise returned and with it panic. As the silence broke behind her she heard again the rattling and the roaring and the helicopterous clattering of the Dragonfly’s quadruple wings. He was back and attacking. Now she could hear the noisy acceleration of his wings, the clatter of his pursuit, the swishing of his jaws.

But impeded as she was, she fell slowly now, and it seemed no time at all before he had regained the lost distance.

And now he was there, mouth open wide, rushing towards her, rushing to crush her in his mighty jaws, rushing to swallow her. She felt like turtle-bait. She closed her eyes and braced herself. If this was the end, she wondered vaguely, what might be next? She should have spent more time with the Spider. He would have had a few ideas about that. A slight curiosity began to enter her mind. What if…?-I suppose, she thought, it’s too late now.

9 Bungee Jumping. The Descent into the Spider’s Web

PART NINE: Bungee Jumping. The Descent into the Spider’s Web.

When it happened it did not happen at all. It was a terrible anti-climax. She heard it happen, of course. A great chomp as the black jaws came together; a sharp exhalation as teeth clamped tightly down on something. But whatever it clamped down on it was not on her. She had heard that in cases of serious injury no pain is felt until afterwards. She waited, expecting the shock to dissipate and the agony to begin. Nothing happened. There had been not the slightest hint of a horrible splintering crunch as her back was broken. Indeed, her back did not seem to be broken at all. More than anything it was the noise of it all that had frightened her. The pain, agonising in its anticipation, simply failed to arrive. A surplus of preparatory adrenalin left her feeling quite disappointed. He had made his move but she felt nothing. Nothing at all.

This was not surprising. The Dragonfly’s jaws, far from sinking themselves into the Fly’s unprotected midriff had taken a mouth-sized bite of the trailing ectoplasm attached to her leg. I say of, but a more accurate description would be into. For there they stuck and he now found it impossible to open them again, or detach in himself in any way from the falling Fly. 210

The Dragonfly spread his four mighty wings and, with all the force available in their girder like structure, hovered. He hovered with might and with main. He hovered as if he wished to lift the World and transport it by main force to another location. If you have seen industrial helicopters transporting large slabs of prefabricated concrete across the skyline of a growing city you will know what I mean. And hovering thus, he remained fixed to the one spot in the sky where he happened to be, as if fastened to the air with superglue.

The Fly however continued her fluttering and rather passive tumble with the whatever-the-something-was still attached to her leg, linking her with the Dragonfly like a spacewalker in a safety harness.

And now she felt herself slowing down. But that was nothing new. Then with surprise she noticed that she continued to slow. She had entered into a gentle rallentando. She felt herself slowing, slowing, slowing almost to the point of stop. And then to a definite stop. She was not moving at all. She was balanced. She was weightless. She floated. She was astronautical. After the rush of falling it was a very strange sensation indeed. She began to bob up and down. She rather enjoyed the feeling. It was a kind of aerial pogo-stickery.

This new phenomenon did not last long. Now she felt herself going into reverse. It was the bungee effect. Before she had had time to adjust to the new rocking-chair movement there came a violent shoulder wrenching snap and quite unexpectedly the indefinable something let go its grip on her leg. The bungee had disintegrated and her attachment to the Dragonfly ended abruptly. From the corner of an eye she saw him jerk upwards as suddenly as a parachutist who has just pulled his ripcord. Spinning like a leaf he was sucked into the sky, all four wings and six legs going round and round in circles as he tumbled and turned and flailed off into the distance. The Fly thought he looked like a windmill whose sails, after years of fruitless trying, have miraculously achieved lift-off, and who now really had no idea what to do next.

Released from the elastic pull of the sticky unmentionable she was fired like a bullet towards the ground. Brambles and bulrushes and a forest of reeds flew up to meet her and in the centre of everything the sticky threads of the Spider’s web loomed, shimmering like a silver wreath across the yellow stems, and beckoned her in.

10 The Reappearance and Hasty Disappearance of the Gadfly

PART TEN: Reappearance of the Gadfly. His hasty Disappearance. Last Encore of the Dragonfly.


The Gadfly realised he had made a mistake. Although, he began to think, it was more of a kind of miscalculation really. He paused, poking his head out from the thick brown bulrush crown into which, in an entirely uncharacteristic moment of terror, he had burrowed, and cautiously peered about him. There seemed to be nothing alarming about. Perhaps, when he thought about it with a cool, calm and collected mind, it had been rather a clever thing to do. It dawned on him now that he had brilliantly rediscovered the art of trench warfare. The manoeuvre, he recalled, from the Warrior’s Self-Help Manual, was known as a strategic retreat. That was the term. That is what his heroic ancestors would have done: a pre-planned calmly-considered strategic withdrawal at speed. They would have made sure that they lived to fight another day. It warmed his heart to think that he was the living proof that they had. Discretion is the better part of valour is a very sound rule, he thought, for aficionados of self-preservation such as gadflies, of which I am the perfect embodiment.

Well, there was no denying that he had been discrete. He had been unnoticeable for some considerable time, so genteel was his discretion. He had been, if the truth were to be told, utterly self-effacing and quite invisible, almost to the point of tactlessness. He might just as well have been somewhere else entirely. Which, it occurred to him, recalling the grinding horror of the Dragonfly’s jaws, would have been a good place for him to have been from the start.

Perhaps, after all, it was not a blunder, but a brilliantly executed textbook victory. He began to swell with pride. History, he thought, would judge him. There would probably be statues. And medals struck in his honour. Maybe even an annual parade.
Confronted with insurmountable odds he had done the only sensible thing, and emerged a victor.

Circling the trunk of the bulrush in which he had taken refuge, he stepped out, adjusted his medals, brushed off his breastplate, flapped out his cloak and inhaled.

There was a strange sweetness in the air, rather unpleasant really, he thought, for a warrior whose preference was for blood. Looking all ways at once, a survival technique of his race, he was stopped short suddenly by the realisation that a most horrible apparition was raising itself in slow-motion from the centre of the Spider’s web no small distance from his nose.

It was white, glutinous, horribly jellified like a rotten fungus, palpitating and heaving and it glared at him with a pulsating maraschino tinged eye that, mounted in a face that could only be described as toad like, and it turned his blood to water.

The Gadfly would have well been able to describe it in other richly hyperbolic terms which are far too numerous and disgusting to mention here, but which without doubt would have turned the blood of any of the greatest warriors in history to water had their eyes been set at that moment in the Gadfly’s skull, and had they been able to view the source of his terror and disgust. Discombobulating, supra-normal, demonic, vile, terrifying, the living embodiment of a gangrenous suppurating warble dripping and drooling like the Great Wen of Constantinople, a noisy screaming pus-ridden open sore with bells on it spring to mind, and might have crossed his were it not for the unfortunate circumstance that he was struck dumb with terror. There was indeed no time for idle descriptive dilly-dallying.

With a shriek more like that of a stuck pig than that of the noble and articulate scion of an aristocratic clan of escutcheoned tormentors, the Gadfly fled.

It is said that he was last seen unbuckling his armour behind the modestly concealing trunk of a bulrush and flinging his medals into the pool.

But there may be more to come on that story.

11 Last Encore of the Dragonfly.

PART ELEVEN: Last Encore of the Dragonfly.

If insects can snarl the Dragonfly snarled. If insects can roar, the Dragonfly roared. If insects can scream the Dragonfly screamed.
These boisterous acts of self-cleansing completed, the Dragonfly turned his attention to the business at hand. The noisy purge had honed his appetite to a razor edge. His was an age-old ritual, and as ever, it had successfully flushed away any personal bias and petty character blemishes that the events of the past little while had encouraged. He was now rid of hurt pride and the need for revenge. He was himself again, a shining carnivore, sharp of mind and sharp of claw. It was time to hunt, to kill, to devour.

He had long since ceased his impersonation of a windmill. The frantic tumblings and turnings were behind him. Now he rested, quiet and threatening, hovering far above the high bog, and meticulously cleaned himself and his yellow and purple accoutrements of the remains of an unpleasant and glutinously elastic something that had wrapped itself around his body.

His hooked claws and cut-throat mandible soon made quick work of a task that the Fly had found laborious and slow and in the end impossible to complete.

He smiled and with the lofty grimace of a cathedral gargoyle peered down with griffin eye into the gathering gloom.

The sun was bending low now, sinking ever closer towards the horizon. The last of its light smote his armour turning the purple to brown and the yellow to burnt orange. He glittered proudly like an abominable war satellite beneath a firmament sucked of its friendly blue.

Far, far below, encircled by the disappearing hills of heather and the murk-laden bog he watched the rush pool gleaming through the approaching dusk like an open eye in the darkness. In the impending twilight it seemed to wink at him in complicity.

Through the cold visor of his professional eye he picked out movement below him. He saw the Fly emerge unsteadily and in slow motion from the cream cake. His calculating hunter’s brain took in her inability to move properly. But then he saw the figure rise, toad-headed and wobbly. He was not programmed for interest in toads. Instantly he dismissed her, as he would have dismissed a pile of dead leaves or a blackberry bush.

His keen hearing picked up a horrified shriek. It rose in a tumbling wail, echoing over the water and a second later the Dragonfly saw the Gadfly leap from behind a clump of yellow reeds and begin a terrified scramble up the trunk of the nearest bulrush. For a long moment he was clearly visible outlined against the pale stem, a black and fragile silhouette, unbuckling his armour and flinging it medals and all into the pool. He was now naked and unprotected. In the fight or flight scale of things, he was clearly at the flight end of the equation, stumbling blindly and panic-stricken and in utter terror towards the Spider’s web which, still unnoticed by the Gadfly, gleamed and shimmered like a great neon advertisement between the reed he was climbing and its neighbour.

The Dragonfly did not see the Spider, lurking silently on the fringes of his cobweb. The Spider’s eyes glittered with excitement, measuring the coordinates of his theories as the scene unfolded before his eyes. He was poised in the discovery mode, close to a Eureka moment.

12 False Teeth

PART TWELVE: False Teeth: We are not all what we seem to be. Fangtasia in Blue. How the Spider Lost His False Teeth and …(Later: how the carp got fangs).

The Dragonfly had arrived like a bolt from the blue bellowing his war cry. Now he stopped short in mid air burning rubber and leaving marks in the atmosphere as he skidded on the oxygen molecules and screeched to a halt with a shudder and a clack of his wings, pausing awkwardly in hover mode.

The Gadfly had been screaming. Now suddenly he seemed to capitulate. He threw up his arms and went limp, releasing his grip on the reed stem and began to fall.

-I have you, thought the Dragonfly. He ended his hover and lunged. It was a fatal miscalculation. As he did so the tip of one wing sliced through the outer strand of the Spider’s web and he lost his balance.

The diaphanous edge of the wing had scarcely touched the sticky thread but it was enough to bring half of the Dragonfly to an abrupt stop. The other half maintained its velocity with the result that his moving parts continued to arc through the air in a breathtaking semi-circle until he pancaked flat across the full width of the Spider’s web. There he remained stuck fast in a visual cacophony of trampled banquet and shredded silk ribbons.

For a moment the Dragonfly simply reclined, shocked, spread-eagled, winded and in disbelief, not quite sure what had happened. He rested awkwardly rather like an inept practitioner of the quadruple trampoline somersault who, in front of an invited audience, has managed to execute nothing more than a breathtaking belly flop. He was lost for words. Then he began to struggle.

The Spider however was upon him before you could say ‘jam donut or venomous injection?’ He flung all eight legs about him and opened his jaws as wide as a German coal scuttle to reveal a ferocious armoury of fangs all as beautifully enamelled and white as the tusks of the great trumpeting walrus.

With a cry of triumph the Spider snapped his jaws shut and bit deep into the Dragonfly’s soft underbelly. At this point it must be pointed out that, learned and well-read as the Spider appeared to be, and excelling at this moment as an impersonator of a drunken cowboy on a mechanical bucking bronco, there must have been certain gaps relating to structure in his appreciation of the physiognomy of members of the odonate clan. The Dragonfly did not have a soft underbelly. In the fraternity of the softly underbellied he was definitely a non-member. The Dragonfly was a hard man all over.

It is quite possible that he might have had an Achilles heel somewhere else, but it was certainly not in his abdominal area, and at this point there was no time for the Spider to investigate feet or for that matter any other part of his victim's anatomy.

As the Spider bit down there was a loud metallic click that sounded like a pair of nail clippers working on the outside of a tank. Or it could have been the sound of the beautifully enamelled and white tusks of the great trumpeting walrus coming into contact either with the side of a bus, a reinforced concrete wall or one of the Great Imponderables of the Universe.

This unusual tone was followed a moment or two later by a deep and reverberating plop.

Far below in the green pool the forgotten carp had not forgotten himself. There was a swirl of water and a snap and a strange gulping rattling sound, followed by what might even have been described as a loud burp. And then there was silence.

13 The Fly is Assailed with Self Doubt

PART THIRTEEN: The Fly is Assailed with Self Doubt. Jiggery-pokery and Self-examination.

(With a shriek more like that of a stuck pig than that of the noble and articulate scion of an aristocratic clan of escutcheoned tormentors, the Gadfly fled.

It is said that he was last seen unbuckling his armour behind the modestly concealing trunk of a bulrush and flinging his medals into the pool.

But there may be more to come on that story.)

Half way up a bulrush stem, covered from head to foot in cream cake and with a dead toad’s head rising from where her eyebrows began, the Fly was in no mood to indulge tom-foolery.

–What, she thought, -is this silly boy playing at? After all his blathering jiggery-pokery he absents himself from the action at the crucial moment and now returns to give me the cold shoulder. One moment he is down on his bended knees and the next he is showing me his heels. I have had enough of irrelevant body-parts. I deserve substance.

It must be admitted that she had no idea of her present appearance. She would have been mortified had this been brought to her attention, but at the moment nobody was pointing fingers. The Gadfly was pointing his toes, certainly, but they were pointed in quite the opposite direction, as he scrambled to leave the here and now and find a safer hiding place somewhere in an imagined and distant future. He was looking for a time and a place where there were no Toad-Things, Spiders or Blitzkrieg Dragonflies.

As for the Fly, she was unaware of the imminent confluence of all three of these in the space which for the present was occupied by one of them alone, that is to say, herself.

-Hey, she called in a gravely and comehitherish tone of voice, spraying mouthfuls of cake in all directions. –hey, you, the Honourable Gadfly! Come back!

In spite of the nonchalance she strove to project the Fly was actually beginning to feel rather alarmed, not to say confused, sad, lost and abandoned. Perhaps jilted and left waiting at the altar would be to put words into her mouth prematurely, but it seemed to her that things were moving in that sort of generally depressing direction. Worse was to come.

She tried to form a picture in her mind of her present situation, thinking in logical steps, as if working on one of those numbered puzzles where dots are joined up to produce an image; but no picture emerged. Many of the dots were missing. Somewhere along the line she had lost the plot. She came to the conclusion that she had no idea at all what was happening to her. She wondered if her fall into the Spider’s banquet had caused a slight concussion or perhaps even a violent case of indigestion with some hallucinogenic side-effects.

Rather like a person who has been involved in a catastrophe and is reading about it in the newspaper, she was beginning to wonder if she had really been present at all.

In her case though, the catastrophe was not in the past, it was ongoing. Was she dreaming? Was it herself she inhabited just now or had her mind had been placed by sorcery in someone else’s body? Or was she dead? She recalled her answer to the Spider: -I came from Death. The spirit of the dead rat on whom she had lived when only a little maggot seemed to whisper to her: -We all go home in the end you know. She wondered if this was the end.

-Stop it! She said, steadying herself. This won’t do at all! She paused, clinging hard to the reed stem, and looked about her, gathering her thoughts.

Everything seemed normal. The scene around her was as she remembered it: the yellow rushes to the left and to the right; the pool shimmering in the dusk below; the sticky strands of the Spider’s web, perfect in their silver geometry apart from a bulls-eye of tumbled cream in the centre. Even the Gadfly’s retreating legs were recognisably ordinary. And yet something was out of whack. There was a displacement somehow in the order of things. Nothing was quite right.

-Dreams have the same effect, she thought. Perhaps this was a dream. But the environs were too real, too well-remembered, too solid for that. She could feel the rough bark of the reed under her hands and feet, and the time of day was as it had been and should be, with the evening light shining on the stems of the reeds and the shadows lengthening and turning slowly to a deeper chocolate colour It was all as she would have expected for that hour.

A slight breeze, announcing the approaching evening, swayed the reed. The leaves began to rustle. And then there was another sound, half heard, but still far away in the distance, faint, and coming closer.

Preoccupied with her own thoughts she paid it no attention.

14 Further Self-examination

PART FOURTEEN: Further Self-examination. A Matter of Family Pride. A Plunge to the Depths.

The flattery had worked. That was clear. And at last the Fly was about to be reunited with the gallant Gadfly. Or so she had imagined.

But she could not understand his odd behaviour. At this moment he appeared to be running away from her as fast as his legs could carry him.

It had been her hope that his previous antics were just the outward and visible signs of an inward and invisible cardio-vascular problem often referred to as a hot crush. But suddenly all his hyperbolic smooth-talk, his coy references to matrimony and dead rats, his ogling cupidity, every one of his mooning amorous confabulations had been reduced at the mere sight of her to the penetrating eloquence of a scream.

Where was his swaggering bravado now? Had the chivalry shrivelled? Had the mask of masculinity dropped?

-Is this what men are? she thought. It was not, however, an idea she wished to entertain.

Like many a young female newly emerged into the outside world the Fly was possessed of the scarcely idiosyncratic tendency to doubt herself. It was not surprising then that her first reading of the situation was that she had done something wrong, that the fault was with her and that in the behavioural or in the beauty or fashion departments she had failed in some gauche and unacceptable way.

Had she used the wrong toothpaste? Should she be wearing red boots with high heels? Was she pheromonally challenged?

She cast her mind back to see if there was anything in the recent past which might have provoked the Gadfly’s sudden volte face and which perhaps it was not too late for her to rectify.

She remembered her tumble into the big cream cake in what seemed now to be almost a previous life, so much had happened since her first meeting with the Spider.

And the dead toad that topped the confectionary! At the time she had appreciated the Spider’s unerring sense of what might appeal to a lady Fly’s appetite. Cake and dead toad! What a delightful sweet and sour combination! It was certain to appeal to any member of her travelling race of scavengers. And the Maraschino cherry!

She remembered her struggle to emerge from that cake. She remembered looking up and seeing the Gadfly creep from behind the stem of a bulrush scarcely any distance at all from where she found herself in the centre of the Spider’s web.

She remembered heaving herself up out of the sticky layers. No time to preen and no point anyway this time. She had had little enough success earlier with the sticky unmentionable on her leg and now there was not a moment to lose. She remembered calling his name and realising that he had not heard her. She had begun to climb the bulrush.

As far as she could see there was nothing here to account for the Gadfly’s hasty departure.

And then with amazement she watched as his armour and his medals went tumbling through the air and vanished downwards rattling through the leaves.

That he would run away from her was one thing. That he would throw his family heirlooms to the wind was quite another.

-What terrible thing could have happened to the poor dear to make him lose his wits entirely, gasped the Fly, whose own sense of clan loyalty and ancestral pride was not at all to be sniffed at, and who knew what was the done thing when it came to heirlooms and what was absolutely not even to be thought of.

In a split second she had made her decision.

-I am already almost one of the family, she thought, and although this might have been wishful thinking on her part, she had no sooner thought the thought than it went down with a thunk like a penny in a slot machine and was acted upon.

-I shall retrieve our precious objects forthwith!

Quickly spitting out a mouthful of cake she took a deep breath, spread her wings and launched herself into space.

During all this the Gadfly was struggling with his cloak and the tangle of leaves around it, and at the same time doing his best to have already left the scene. He heard his name called but he was now much too pre-occupied with his immediate difficulties to do more than give a brief shudder. He did not therefore see the Toad-Thing unfurl its wings and prepare for flight.

The Toad-Thing for its part did not hear the Dragonfly’s noisy attack nor see the Gadfly faint and drop out of sight behind the bulrush stem, for the simple reason that the moment she opened her wings and stepped out into the air to fly she dropped like a rock towards the pool.

The Fly had failed to take into consideration that like the rest of her body, her wings were completely coated with cake and clotted cream and sticky icing. At the moment of wing-ignition there was no warm buzz as they revved into action. There was not even a weak flutter. There was instead a nasty wet flopping smack. The wings had failed to open and she was already tumbling downwards.

15 Fire in the Theatre

PART FIFTEEN: Fire in the Theatre

The Fly landed with a wet thud and found herself inches from the edge of the green pond, half submerged in mud and with the breath knocked out of her. She tried to cry out but nothing but a feeble croak issued from her empty lungs. Thrashing about in a panic she lifted herself from the clinging muck, gasped for air and took a long deep breath. As she did so the croak swelled until it shrieked out with the piercing shrillness of Mr Punch’s swazzle and raked the still surface of the pool with menacing reverberations.

Precisely then, looking about her, she became aware of a thousand small eyes. Up to this moment they had been fixed upon her with the innocent curiosity of spectators at a gladiatorial contest. At the sound of her croak they became pop-eyed with terror.

A terrible moan went up from the ticks and water boatmen, the bugs and beetles, the cooties and the keerogs, the grubs and the caterpillars and the maggots and mayflies and the whole pondular universe of sliding wriggling creeping floating piggybacking backbiting slurping voyeuristic inhabitants of the rush pool.

-Toad! shouted a lone voice. It was as if a maniac had shouted FIRE in a crowded theatre.

-Toad! shrieked the water boatmen in unison and began to row in all directions at once as if the continuation of the Boat Race, the British Empire and the Irish Republic itself depended on their muscle power alone.

-Toad! chirruped the bugs –Toad! chorused the beetles. –Run for your lives! screamed the keerogs. –scratch the match! yelled the cooties. And everyone began a commotion that made the surface of the pool look like a dodgems arena at the fairground as they collided one with another and with everyone else as well in their eagerness to be gone.

-Toad! Toad! Toad! beeped the water hoppers and jumped out of the pool pretending to be grasshoppers, falling flat on their faces when they discovered that land legs were a habit that took days to acquire.

Toad! Toad! Toad! You would have thought that an invasion of Long-tongued Chameleons from outer space was underway. The exodus was inclusive and immediate. Fleas fled, bugs bolted, slime slithered, glop galloped, worms wiggled away and even the amoeba divided at breakneck speed murmuring furiously –time to split! Time to split!

As suddenly as it had all started the Fly was alone.

16 A Small Brown Pile with a Toad’s Head and a Narcissus Moment

PART SIXTEEN: A Small Brown Pile with a Toad’s Head and a Narcissus Moment.

((Extract from a speech made by the Spider to the Fly earlier in the Narrative, and not yet fully reported, which will be introduced somewhere so that this next passage can be fully understood:)
“The uncultivated natives of the vicinity all have mouths in perfect working order. Yet do they ever think about the amazing capabilities inherent in that breathtaking piece of divine engineering? …..These gross and wriggling slime-pit peasants all around us use their pitiful apologies for a mouth only for one thing! For EATING!

“They stuff this marvel of divine engineering with undigested lumps of gook and lick their greasy lips in gross and gob-smacked self-satisfaction for having lived to eat another day!

-And what is the final objective? asked the Fly indifferently, scratching at her leg again.

-The final objective sadly is the same for all, whether fleshy, furry or feathered, said the Spider in disgust.

-It is to drag God’s beauty of creation through a thousand feet of noisome, bacteria-ridden intestinal stink-pits so that every twenty-four hours by the side of the Great Highway of Life they may leave a signed brown offering to Him, as proof and token of their whining happiness that He has let them live another day.

-And of course, he added sadly, -we too are no different in the end from them. And I greatly fear it will soon be too late for dinner”.))
***

-What can it be? thought the Fly. They have never even noticed this little fly before. Now they too are all running away from me. She turned and looked behind her, wondering if there was something she had missed. She herself was not at all inclined to remain in the firing line of a living toad’s tongue, if that was really what had frightened the audience away.

But there was nothing there. Nothing but the same reedy stems around her and chocolate darkness between them. She herself was the only figure crouching by the edge of the pool.

-I am no hungry predator, she thought. But it certainly seemed to be her own appearance at the scene that was the cause of the Great Panic, and not the arrival of some predatory amphibious monster.

Even so, she did not feel at ease. She recalled the Spider’s opinion of the creatures that lived out their lives in this dog-eat-dog-jungle down in the dark deeps beside the pond.

The details were a little vague in her memory but the gist of it was clear. If there were no dogs to eat, the eater moved on down the food chain until it reached an alternative menu with the object of transmogrifying it into a messy brown pile on the surface of the Sidewalk of Life. For the greater part of the afternoon the Fly had heroically avoided becoming either an edible link or a messy pile of something brown and for the whole part of what was left she wished to remain avoided. After that she would take things one day at a time.

Darkness and the proximity of ponds inspire dark and ponderous thoughts. The night is after all an unhealthy experience. If you are small and defenceless it is often your last. For a small fly whose stated aim in life was to dance in the sunlight until she threw up it was a very dark moment indeed.

- The Spider was right, she mused, this territory must be full of teeth of an unpoetic bent and questions of an un-rhetorical nature. She began to imagine she was surrounded by the kind of open mouths that have no appetite for metre but an abiding taste for meat.

But the Fly, although she did not know it yet, was neither small nor defenceless.

17 A Narcissus Moment and the Arrival of a Newfangled Fish

PART SEVENTEEN: A Narcissus Moment and the Arrival of a Newfangled Fish.

The Fly stood still in the reedy shadows and looked out over the pool.

–I must get a grip on myself, she said. There is no use getting frightened by little thoughts, especially when they are in my head and not in the bushes. As the Spider said, I need to keep my wits about me. That seems very good advice if I am to get out of this place in safety and not in some creepy-crawly.

She had recovered her breath a little and thinking of the Spider reminded her of the Gadfly. She smiled. All of a sudden she remembered the reason she was here.

She looked about her. There was no sign of the Gadfly’s armour and not a trace of his silly medals.

She moved to the edge of the water and sat down. A scene of frantic action only moments before, it was now motionless. The ripples of the fleeing audience had quite died away. The pool was as a looking glass. Across this placid surface the last rays of the setting sun spread a reddish tinge.

Above her head a tangled awning of leaves and ferns shielded her from anything that might still be going on up in the canopy. The breeze, fickle this close to sundown, had moved elsewhere. At the edge of the reeds the pond held its breath.

All of a sudden a movement caught her eye.

A flashing winking scattering of tiny stars shimmering blue like the phosphorescence on an ocean wave appeared in the dusk above her and spreading out gently like a net cast by some celestial fisherman drifted down and draped itself over her shoulders. It was the Gadfly’s cloak. Seconds later his star spangled neckerchief floated into view.

Quickly the Fly stood up and pulled the garment from the air. She held it close to her and sniffed.

-It smells of strength, she thought. It also smelled very strongly of sweat. Perhaps when it comes to heroes the two are the same. Still it was a very aristocratic piece of clothing, a fashion accessory for the extremely gentrified. She twisted it this way and that. The diamond pins sparkled in the dusk. She arranged it round her neck, and stood there in the mud blinking and shimmering like a lighthouse.

-This is nice, she thought. She felt a warm glow inside her.-I wonder if it suits me. She leaned forward and peered into the mirror surface of the pool.

A most horrible and disgusting Thing leered back at her. The Fly gave a scream and fell backwards. Instead of her own reflection in the water there was a shapeless brown pile grinning like a crocodile.

Summoning her courage she sat up and leaned forward. The Thing was still there and was now leaning up towards her. She screamed again. It had the head of a Giant Toad with a crimson palpitating bulging tongue coiled in its mouth and it seemed about to attack her. The Beast wobbled beneath the skin of the pond, bright and threatening. The Fly gasped. No wonder the bugs had fled in terror.

A flashing winking scattering of tiny stars shimmered blue like the phosphorescence on an ocean wave. She looked back into the water and noticed the glitter and the sparkle of a myriad diamonds. To her surprise she noticed that the Toad-Thing was wearing a star-spangled neckerchief. And then in a flash with a mixture of both horror and relief she realised she was looking at herself.

She sat down abruptly and continued to stare at the reflection for a long time. No Narcissus sprang up where she had been sitting. This reflection was not one to inspire admiration and certainly not self-love.

Her reverie was interrupted by a loud plop in the middle of the pool. It was followed immediately by a swirling of the water and a strange hollow snapping gurgling convulsive commotion beneath the surface.

The disturbance made her look up but nothing was to be seen. There was a lapping at the edge of the pool as ripples reached the shore. After that, silence. The Fly returned to what she had been thinking about. She could not remain where she was, and did not wish to anyway. Something had to be done.

-The only way I am to get out of here, she thought, is to fly out. If I remain I shall either be eaten by something nasty or starve to death. -Although, she considered, I still have the toad’s head and quite a lot of cream cake if they haven’t been spoiled by my fall into the mud.

She stood up, raised her arms and began to wiggle the toad’s head. She wiggled and wriggled and pulled and pushed and struggled and squirmed with all her strength but the head seemed to be glued into a cement of dried cream and mud just to the North of her eyebrows. She was on the point of giving up when suddenly the toad’s head parted company with hers, coming loose with a loud pop. It fell back into the mud at the edge of the pool and lay there looking up at her with a horrible grin on its dead features.

It seemed now somewhat less appetizing than it had been earlier when proudly displayed as the centre piece of the Spider’s banquet.

-Now, said the Fly, with commendable practicality, if I want my wings ever to work again I shall have to have a wash.

She stepped into the pool and waded out until the water was up to her neck and set to, briskly rubbing and scrubbing and splashing and scraping until she no longer looked like someone who has just lost a mud-pie throwing contest and could certainly no longer be mistaken for the Creature from the Black Lagoon in the horrible incarnation of a Toad.

She was making admirable progress when there was suddenly a great plunging rushing gurgling splurge of water in front, under and around her. The surface of the pond spun like the Icelandic Maelstrom, rose up like the tides of the Hellespont and parted rather like the waters of the Red Sea and she found herself face to face with a huge and glistering fishy personage clad in a turquoise breastplate from which jangled an array of strangely beribboned and loudly clanking medals.

The Carp rose resplendent before her with the aplomb of a killer whale taking the air and opened his mouth in a terrible smile. For a long moment the Fly found herself looking straight into a ferocious armoury of fangs all as beautifully enamelled and white as the tusks of the great trumpeting walrus.

18 Fangs For Nothing

PART EIGHTEEN: Fangs For Nothing. Arachnid Arraigned by Self Doubt. Further Pensées. A Weeping and a Wailing and a Gnashing of Teeth. Re-enter the Gadfly Re-invented.

The Spider surveyed the Dragonfly lying athwart the dismal ruins of what was once his elegantly crafted web with a strange mixture of frustration and equanimity. No use crying over spilt silk, he thought. There is a lot more where that came from.

-Although, why bother either way, after all?

He pursed his lips. The purse seemed unaccustomedly empty. It occurred to him that when it came to fangs, there would never be any more where these had come from. He sucked in his gums and made a noise like an aphid blowing bubbles. He found that in his new circumstances he could do it quite ferociously. He did it again, loudly, twice.

At the unusual sound the Dragonfly began to struggle violently. The more he struggled the more he became entangled in the web. Very shortly he had taken on the appearance of a silkworm about to hibernate. From within this cocoon he continued to make strange and desperate noises. There was the muffled clatter of teeth being gnashed followed by what appeared to be a police siren in full pursuit of a gang of armed robbers. Pieces of silk flew about in all directions and floated away gently on the evening breeze, which had returned now like a charlady who feels she must clean up after a raucous Saturday night party.

-Be quiet you, growled the Spider, this is not a burping competition. He looked down at the Dragonfly.

-One moment you come here as a dastardly murdering marauder. The next you are all trussed up like a parcel of sausages. So weep and gnash your teeth. Certainly be aware that after the frying pan there is the fire, but please spare me the wailing or I might be tempted to take you to the pond right now and let you feed the fishes.

But the Spider said this in a sad and dispirited tone of voice, as if his heart were not really in it. The glitter seemed gone from his eye.

-It must be admitted that I feel closer to Socrates than to Napoleon at the moment, he said under his breath. Not that I have ever felt really close to Napoleon. As a spider after all, I am a professional sedentenarian with an armchair generality to my complexion. Power is an excellent fortifier, a real tonic, as long as it is not given to the people. But I prefer it when it is nicely concentrated. Within an eight inch circumference is best. I suppose that makes me a monarchist. The overthrow of nations and dynasties has never really tickled my fancy.

He gave a sad socio-political sigh.

-I might be better off seeking a chair of comparative blarnology in some flea-bitten university no one has ever heard of in a town that nobody has ever thought important enough to put on a map Somewhere in Canada perhaps?

He paused. Reeds rustled around him. It was getting quite dark, although there was some light left at the end of the leafy tunnel that marked the horizon.

-Yes, he thought, perhaps a teaching post might be the best place for me. Better than a whipping post, anyway, Dragonfly. Yes?

-As a feisty action hero, he thought, my days are numbered. And the number can be counted on the fingers of one fist. He felt also a little sad for the Dragonfly. They both seemed in a way to have arrived at the same point in their lives. -I wonder, mused the Spider, if there is somewhere a home for spent heroes?

At that moment there was a crashing and smashing in the leaves above him and without a word of warning, (although it could be argued that the screams of terror that issued from the falling bundle provided more than a modicum of the latter) a strange silken personage wearing a transparent veil that appeared to have been cobbled together in haste out of web-tatters fell into view, bounced once twice and then three times and came to an awkward stop on a leaf protruding from the closest other rush stem. Apart from this skimpy and somewhat inadequate veil he appeared to be quite naked.

-Toad! Toad! Toad! cried the personage, throwing itself to its knees in the pose of a religious penitent or someone who has just purchased a pair of second hand artificial legs which on testing did not stand up to scrutiny, let alone to being stood on.

-Well, said the Spider, recognising the Gadfly immediately in spite of his disguise, perhaps I’m not ready for the hemlock yet.
His eyes were once again aglitter.

19 After the Blackout: Post-Swooning Adventures. Mother Nature on a Bad Hair Day.

PART NINETEEN: After the Blackout:
Post-Swooning Adventures. Mother Nature on a Bad Hair Day.

If we were to wind back the clock a modicum to see the terrified Gadfly, bereft of his breastplate and medals and perhaps even of his sanity, throw up his arms in surrender and drop into a dramatic facsimile of a swoon, we might have thought that this was a rather spineless way for the Tormentor to cover up what must have been for him a serious loss of face. But since gadflies technically have neither spine nor face it seems irrelevant to quibble about the epithet best suited to his cowardice. We would have seen him evaporate into the chocolate darkness behind the stem of a bulrush, after which our ignorance of his fate would have been complete until he reappeared dressed in cobwebs to re-unite himself with the Carp, the Fly and the plot.

After this vanishing act, if we had wondered with understandable curiosity what further trials and tribulations the dictates of his particular dysfunction had in store for him and what other misadventures actually befell him during this missing interlude we would have been at a loss. For all we knew nothing worth noting had happened to him at all.

However honest curiosity deserves to be satisfied, except in the case of cats where, it is said, it is dangerously fatal. But if curiosity killed the cat we have nothing to worry about, for we are not cats and there are no cats at all in this story. Which is a pity for those who hate cats. Still, you cannot satisfy everybody.

After his spectacular swoon the Gadfly had fallen in a rapid tumble no less spectacular than his unexpected loss of consciousness and had passed speedily through the outermost rings of the Spider’s lair. So hurried had been his fall and so fortunate was it in the avoidance of any unpleasant stickiness, that he had passed through the whole insidious construction without adhering to any part of its geometry and had continued on his way down trailing clouds of glory in the form of the more breakable pieces of the cobweb.

He continued to fall until his progress was stopped short by something rubbery and smooth which gave easily under his velocity and on top of which he bounced and bounced and bounced for a while and then stopped. Now that he had put some distance between himself and immediate danger his terror subsided and his senses returned. He opened his eyes, which had remained clamped tight shut since the recent encounter with the Triple Alliance of Doom, and looked about him.

He saw that he was lying motionless on his back, stretched out on a rather leathery but exotically pungent surface. The smell was unfamiliar, but deliciously appealing, and the thing, whatever it might have been, had an odd hood-like shape similar to the awning often observed over the entrances to expensive restaurants. He had, if truth be told, landed on the pointed outer canopy of the Cuckoo Pint.

As he lay in the dent produced by his arrival he noticed that the whole plant seemed to be vibrating beneath his body in an inexplicable but strangely attractive way.

It did not occur to him immediately that this strange and aromatic plant was a very very dangerous place to be. That indeed the sole purpose of its existence, apart from the lesser sideline of reproduction, was to devour flies like himself for breakfast. In the Cuckoo Pint’s favour it could be said that she was happy to make them drunk first. This might well be applauded by those who had never taken the Pledge. However the downside was that after making them drunk and incapable the Cuckoo Pint then cooked her victims alive in a bubbling bath of acid for an unpleasantly extended period of time, before eating them, which would be by anyone’s account a cruelly sobering experience. The Gadfly did not know that the pleasant smell was a cunningly baited trap of pheremonal deception and guile. And that the vibrations he could feel were more than likely the smooth and well oiled functioning of a superbly tuned carnivorous digestive system.

The Tormentor’s mind, blustering and heroic in its set and prejudices, was not tuned to the subtler refinements of doom thought up in the dark by Mother Nature during those black and bilious nights when her aging digestion troubled her and she was quite unable to fall asleep. Having just escaped the jaws of a perfectly comprehensible kind of Armageddon he was completely unprepared for the snares and arrows that might be devised on a bad hair day when Ms Green Machiavelli starts to ponder the question of amino acidic recyclables. We might say that for the first time in many moons the Gadfly was an innocent abroad.

20 Carpal Syndrome. A Transplantation of Heads.

PART TWENTY: Carpal Syndrome. A Transplantation of Heads.


There are moments when time screeches to a stop and stands utterly and unbelievably still; when the grinding mandibles of the Universe pause in their inexorable activity of entropy and the present moment is frozen in its tracks, mouth agape, motionless, poised between what is and what might be.

This was not one of those moments.

An urgent dilemma presented itself to the Fly. She had come to this place specifically to retrieve the Gadfly’s accoutrements and perhaps even to save his face. But at once it was clear that these noble heirlooms had already become the jetsam of war. Indeed they were now rattling before her eyes on the gloating chest of a vile and toothy impostor. They were beyond retrieving. Probably her intended's face was also beyond saving. As the Carp bore down on her what seemed suddenly pressing was this question: was she herself beyond saving?

-I refuse, she thought, turning sharply in the water, -to be swallowed up by a carnivorous instinct twice in one day!

That anyway is what she might have thought had there been time to think during the nanosecond's gap between appraisal and deed that flickered among her multi-tasking female synapses as they bypassed both mentalese and logic and slipped like well-oiled lightning so quickly into action one might have thought she was executing a standard well practiced military drill.

With two leaps and a bound she seized the Maraschino cherry from the water where it was bobbing about like a lost salmon egg and throwing it high into the air in front of the Carp pulled herself from the pond and flung herself far up onto the shore.

What might have gone through the Carp's fishy mind to trigger the reflex that it did any fisherman can tell you. With a fierce flip of his fins and a slap of his tail he rose from the water in brute pavlovian reaction, curving upwards with the muscular elegance of a flying fish. There was a flash of blue breastplate and a clanking of medals and a snap of jaws, white and gleaming as the ivory tusks of the mighty trumpeting walrus and the crimson bolus was gone. So too was all control the Carp might have had over his tumbling body. He fell, and fell headlong and headfirst. With a smack and a splat he made landfall, wallowing through the mud like a runaway pile-driver and propelling his head up to the gills into the neck of the putrefying toad.

It is amazing how defeat can be rationalised in a moment and turned into glorious victory. With unconscious subterfuge and three mighty slaps on the mud that rang out as loud as a beaver's tail, the Carp, in a majestic and triumphal somersault arched his back and executing a magnificent strategic withdrawal through the gathering dusk, landed a moment later with a loud splash in the middle of the pond.

The Carp too had his pride. Failure in the hierarchy of the bog, just as in the hierarchy of all competitive societies was not a concept permitted to darken the pages of his military log book. The penalty for this crime is generally promotion.

He pushed up the Toad Mask with the tip of his snout and wriggled it onto the top of his head. Three fast laps round the pond, his size now increased by a head, he moved like Napoleon or Wellington in a grotesque cocked hat and cocked the snook now at any former setback he might have suffered. He was become a military edifice of impressive stature, a monument of the pond. His face had been transformed into a grinning battle mask. He was a thing of ugliness and a joy for ever and a terrible warning to those who might mock him. He had moved from decorated hero to General and now to veritable Field Marshall. It seemed to him he ruled the Pool and by extention the whole world beyond its borders was his empire. All trace of failure obliterated by this magnificent war trophy, it was clear that it was the Head of the Toad he was after from the start. It perched now like a busby, a severed head, a captured enemy standard atop his pride as he cruised in his military regalia of glittering breastplate and clanking medals close to the shore. Haughtily and in ever widening circles he cruised with pomp, circumstance and for good measure making a noise like a brass band, which somehow failed to emulate the glory of tone produced by the actual trumpeting of a walrus but was sufficient to impress the denizens of the pool at any rate. A final tour of the pond and the Carp sank slowly and ponderously beneath the surface. Echoes of underwater music of a military nature reached the Fly from the weed-green depths. They seemed to pop like exhausted bubbles of marsh gas on the surface.

The Moonlight glittered, a thousand little bayonets among the ripples. The rumbling of guns seemed to echo from the muddy bottom of the pool. Slowly in the darkness lights came on. The lights of a thousand curious and well hidden and camouflaged eyes. The audience was returning to the spectacle. The murmurings began, softly at first, and then swelling to a sibilant roar that rattled the reeds and ran rustling through the grasses. -Hurrah for the Great Warrior! Long Live the Toad Killer! Three Cheers for His Excellency the Carp! Hip Hip Hip Hurray!

The Fly had watched the Carp circle the pool in his triumphal swim, breasting the water proudly until he looked like a whole flotilla of himself, grinning the grin of the great sabre-toothed walrus.

-These boys do think a lot of themselves, she thought. Let us see now what has become of the Gadfly. Her wings were now clean and dry again. She rose into the air, and hovering for a moment, looked out over the pool. The moon smote its surface and moon dust hung in the air flickering. Mayflies were dancing there. Their first fling and also, she supposed, their last. What a short life. The last go round of maidens and spinsters before the garret. A short life but a merry one. Tush! All that gossamer and flimsy flim-flammery . She began to circle slowly upwards to the Spider’s domain.

21 The Cuckoo Pint and the Three Rhinestone Maidens

(Under Construction)PART TWENTY ONE: The Cuckoo Pint. The Gadfly is Accosted and Asked to Join the Dance. The Three Rhinestone Maidens.

The Gadfly was not in a thinking frame of mind. His main concern at this perilous hour was to crawl in somewhere safe and inconspicuous and lie low for a while. He was a being who was used to living by his wits but since only moments had passed since he had been frightened out of them entirely it seemed unwise to venture witless into the world of the quick-witted. It would clearly be premature just now to chance his luck at anything at all. He needed time to collect himself. And his wits.

The usual complicated machinations of self-interest that were prone to occupy the wide open spaces of his reason had been dulled by the shock of his recent terror. He wanted only peace and quiet and perhaps something thick and protective over his head. A pyramid would have been ideal.

Slowly he pulled himself together and picking himself up began to inch his way downwards, clinging carefully to the rubbery texture of the surface on which he had landed. It was a smooth but rather slippery slope and it led down at an uncomfortable angle. Soon he found himself at what appeared to be a lip of some sort, rather like a gutter at the edge of a roof. Clinging on with his rear legs he eased himself over this edge and peered down. There was not much to be seen. A light evening mist had risen from the pond and swirled in front of him and beneath him and all around the gently vibrating platform to which he clung the view was obscured as if in a dream. He reached down and groped around under the gutter and discovered what might have been the top of an arch or a narrow window opening. Balancing carefully on the edge he leaned over, bent down and swung himself inside. Immediately a heavenly smell of rotting meat filled his nostrils, so strong and delightful that it took away his breath. His head began to spin. Before he knew what was happening he had lost his balance and felt himself falling, brushed in flight it seemed to him by unseen hands, and guided here and there by countless gentle pushes.

The Gadfly lay draped and semi-conscious across an Ottoman which seemed to be composed of strange hexagonal red fruits arranged in patterns of delightful geometry. His feet were now tangled up in a thick net of green spikes and feathery hairs and it must have been these which had blocked his further tumble through what appeared to be from the present vantage point a huge living cathedral that spread out in all directions and towered above him until its space disappeared into an infinity of green flickering darkness.

Silk clad shapes seemed to gather about him and move off into thin air and then return, brushing his face as they peered down at him and then vanishing again.

The place was pulsating with tinkling music that rode lightly over a deeper bass rhythm and the air itself seemed to be involved in a process of dancing.

The smell of food flowed round him like a river and a ravenous hunger now came upon him. He opened his eyes. All around the red fruit filled the air with irresistible fragrance and before knowing what he was doing he had reached out and pulled one of the clump free and sunk his teeth deep into the perfumed flesh.

It is inadvisable to eat parts of strange plants found in the forest until you are absolutely sure what it is you are eating and what are the effects you wish to experience after you have eaten them. It is always better to read the label first. And if there is no label, well, need I say more?

Although a womaniser of epic repute, the Gadfly knew nothing of most of the facts of life and certainly nothing of botany. He had actually quite a simplified if practical vision of the nature of the Universe as a whole. All considerations of procreation put tactfully to one side, his vision consisted mainly of ‘Can I eat it?’ or ‘Will it eat me?’ When it came to plants and the vegetable kingdom his knowledge scarcely stretched to the basic three dimensions, let alone to any more esoteric measurements which might have existed. A leaf for him was a place to sit down on or hide under. It might have been better for him if had restricted himself to what he understood and left it at that.

However we will have to give him that he had had an extremely stressful day.
He had confronted and been routed by any number of disgusting and life-threatening monsters, had utterly lost face in public in front of a lady, had been dropped from a great height and bounced from any number of sharp and prickly and slimy and stinking plants, and chased without his trousers on through crowded and public places to everybody’s mortification, not least his own. He was alone and naked in the world, and that was just for starters.

We can allow him that perhaps his wits were not at their usual razor sharp level of competence.

Otherwise he would not have bitten into the Cuckoo Pint’s enchanted apple.

For a while nothing seemed unusual. The heavenly smell of rotting meat filled his nostrils. He lay neither conscious nor unconscious in a dreamy world shaded even from the enchantment of the gathering twilight within the bell. He could smell the damp proximity of the pond. He realised he had not arrived there. That he was somehow suspended betwixt heaven and earth. He did not care. He wanted to sleep. At the same time he felt brightly awake inside. He opened his eyes and looked around lazily. He seemed to be sitting propped up against a tall pillar which vanished into the gloomy heights above him like a cathedral buttress. It was ringed around with purple flowers and a little higher up large red fruits he did not recognise hung ripely above his head. Suddenly he felt drunk with fear and for a moment remembered the terror that had propelled his swift passage through the air to these nether regions. He remembered falling, massaged and touched by unseen hands, perfumed, dusted with pollen and strange spices. He breathed in the perfume of the flowers. Slowly he felt purple through and through. He breathed purple out and sucked purple in. He was Mr Purple. He reached up and pulled down another of the red and yellow fruits, and crushed it into his face. He dreamed of Lords and Ladies dancing. A Voice spoke.It was tinged with purple and soft as velvet drawn across his face.
-Allow us to introduce ourselves.We are the Rheinstone Maidens.