It Was Just One Day by Clark Mahoney (paper ebook reader txt) 📕

Chapter 1

On the inside, she felt so sad, so lonely.

Sure, she had lots of friends in her hive. Everyone had lots of friends. If you were hungry, well, just watch your friend dance, to the left, wiggle, to the right giggle, all around twice, now jiggle your hiney. Oh, it’s over there. Fly away, and drink up the nectar on a honeysuckle, or Queen Anne’s Lace, or orchid, or rose, or cowslip. Mmmmmmm. They taste so good.

But, she was tired of all the congestion, the crowded hive, with bees bumping into bees, and walking on bees, bump, bump, oops, sorry. Just way too much contact, meaningless, accidental, unintentional contact. No hugs for a close friend, oh I missed you, glad to see you, are you okay? No deep commitment between friends. It was all just “Hi. How are you? Can’t talk. Gotta go. Bye.”

She wanted a true friend, someone that she could sit next to at a park, and talk about her feelings. She wanted one close friend that would listen to her cry, and pat her on the back, and say, “That’s okay, my friend.”

But, nope, everything was busy, busy, busy. Go here. Do this. Do that. Don’t stop. Keep going. She was tired of being a busy bee, and wanted to spend some time thinking, alone, about what she really wanted to do in life.

You see, she was a teacher, at her hive. She really liked to help the little bees, cute lil’ things, so new to the world of buzzing and flying. And, she was a good teacher, showing them how to dry their wings when they got rained on, and how to fly into the wind by leaning the head downward, and how to escape from hungry praying mantises, and lots more practical things that every little bee should know. But, she never had time for herself, to sit, and think, or read, and relax.

It was all going so fast around her that she felt that her brain was about to explode. She couldn’t take the cacophony, the noise. She couldn’t take the constant motion. She couldn’t stand not having a best friend. So, she ran away from home, her hive, flying off into the distance, without telling anyone where she was going.

 

Chapter 2

On and on she flew, not certain where she was going, or what she would find. She flew for hours, until the sun disappeared over the distant mountains. On most nights, she knew to be in by dark, at the hive, for the night was a dangerous time for bees, and bugs, and all small critters. That’s when bats roamed the skies, and other insectivores looked for something to eat.

In her sadness and despair, she wasn’t watching where she was going, focused only on the thought of another day with no true friend, when SPLAT!

She hit something that stopped her movement. It wasn’t a wall, because there was enough light to see that. It wasn’t a glass window, as she’d run into them before, and they hurt quite badly. No, it was soft, and springy, and…sticky.

OMG! I’ve flown into a spider’s web! What will I do? She wiggled, and jiggled, and even twiggled, but it didn’t help. She was stuck. And, I don’t mean stuck, like the kind of “stuck” when you say that you’re “stuck inside” cuz’ it’s raining, and it’s boring, and you‘d rather be outside playing. Nope, her wings were stuck, her six legs were stuck, and her two antennae were stuck. She wasn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon.

That’s when she started to cry. Not a soft whimper, boo-hoo, so sad for me. Nope, she started raining large drops of tears, down her cheeks, and sobbing, great, big, loud cries of sadness overwhelming her, and causing her to shake and rumble.

Off to the side, at the edge of the web, sat an old, wizened spider. He knew how to play this game. An insect would fly into his web, wiggle a lot, and then escape. Then, he’d have to go repair that part of the web, and return here, to wait for another dinner guest. Another would arrive, get tangled up, wiggle and jiggle, and get themselves further stuck. Once they were tired from all that movement, he’d walk over there, on the non-sticky parts of his web, and wrap up his dinner super fast, wrap, wrap, using his eight spinnerets. Sure, he knew which lines were sticky, and which weren’t. Every spider could see them quite easily, but not the silly, speedy, fast-talking flyers who frequented his dinner table. He’d just wait for this bee to get still, stop moving, and then…mmmmm.

But, he heard something that he had not heard before.

 

Chapter 3

Sometimes, he’d heard insects angry at him, cursing, and yelling at him to come and get him. Wasps liked to do that, daring him to attack them. “Come and get it, you eight-legged beast!” mean words that he paid no mind to. He’d learned to ignore the taunts of others.

Other times, he’d heard panicked voices, scared, aware of the danger, and fretting over just where the spider was, and how long it would take to die, and would it be painful, and what happens after you die.

But, now he heard something different. He heard the sadness that comes from intense pain, inside. Deep hurt. Incredible sorrow. A terrible loneliness that grew, and grew, until it burst forth. This is something he knew a lot about.

Long ago, he’d been abandoned by his mother. One day, he was inside a sac, with a thousand brothers and sisters, scrambling over each other, eager to exit and explore the world outside. The next day, he found himself an orphan, with no one to show him how to hunt, how to avoid danger, no home, no mother, no friends, and no family, as all of his siblings shot streams of silk into the air, and drifted away, never to be seen or heard from again.

He was alone, and it hurt. He had no one to talk to, no one to tell him that it was okay, no one to be a friend.

Well, at this moment, on this night, while clouds slowly drifted across the full moon, creating gray shadows along the ground, and eerie images in the trees, he chose to change all of that. He decided to take a chance. He wanted a friend, and it sounded like this flyer wanted one too.

“Hello” he ventured, hoping to hear a reply, but none came, only sobs and intense pain.

“Don’t cry, my friend. Tell me what is wrong.”

Well, that one word, that one magic word, caused the struggling bee to stop her crying, stop her whimpering, and wonder just who had called her “friend.” Who?

 

Chapter 4

For the first time, ever, she had hope.

For the first time, ever, he fought the urge to bite a flyer. Hanging upside down, he could see her easily, black and yellow, like him, a warning sign to predators to watch out, and a bit on the small side, like him. For years, he had been intimidated by the larger female spiders, in their beautiful webs. He’d climbed up to say hello so many times, only to be turned on, grrrrr, fangs exposed, venom dripping, and had to drop to the ground on an emergency thread and scoot back home as fast as his eight legs could carry him, laughter and insults raining down on him from above for his hasty retreat. He knew what it was like to be smaller than everyone else, and picked on by bullies.

He wandered across his web, slowly, keeping a careful watch on the stinger that was shooting in and out, in and out, a natural reflex of a threatened bee. Would she sting him, and end his life? He didn’t want to find out.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Caught in the web, she wondered how to respond. Should she answer his question, and bare her feelings, tender as they were, to HIM, and risk rejection? Or should she answer his question with one of her own, as a teacher often does when encouraging students to think for themselves?

Down below, under a pile of leaves, sat an old centipede, slow with age, and curious about this little conversation going on above him, among the upper dwellers. He wriggled a bit, sniggled his claws, triggled his twenty-six legs, and moved out from under his resting place.

“Who goes there, and wakes me, up above?” he queried.

“Go back to sleep, Centipede, for our conversation has nothing to do with you!” shouted the annoyed spider. He really didn’t like centipedes, and ignored them whenever possible.

Bee realized that another critter was speaking, from down below this time, and ventured, “Do I have a friend among the crawlers? Speak to me, please, for I am alone, and wish not to be so. I seek friendship, and happiness. Am I to find it here, among you kind folks?”

“Kind folks? Ha, ha, ha,” laughed the old centipede, thinking the flyer a bit naïve with so many stingers and fangs in the area. “Friendship?” he asked. “What is that?”

Sitting still, stuck on the web, she began to wonder what the answer to that question was herself. Just what is friendship? She had never had a true friend, and so, she didn’t really know how to respond to his question.

“Well,” she started. “Friends don’t eat each other. I‘m pretty sure of that.”

“True,” replied Centipede, having been around for many winters, keeping warm in the moist leaf piles and under fallen trees, their decaying trunks home to lots of other critters, as well as centipedes. “I don’t think that friendship would last too long if one of you ate the other. It would be like, “Hi, friend. How about coming over for dinner tonight? Gulp! Oh, tasty. Ummmm, where did you go, friend?”

They both laughed at his humor, and so stirred the comedian inside him, from the days of his youth, when he‘d entertain the locals for hours with his silliness, and funny stories. Yes, he used to be real popular, but not so much now that he was so old. The youngsters didn‘t seem to want to listen to his crackly voice, and got impatient when he‘d ask them to speak louder, cuz’ he was having hearing problems.

“Okay,” he began. “What is the difference between a bee and a bean? Give up? Okay, one has a stinger and