Whilst I was sleeping a spider crawled inside my open mouth. The warmth of my breath tempting it in past the threshold of my lips. It stepped onto the moist damp bedding of my spongy tongue like an explorer plunging into the unknown darkness. My cheeks now acting as its walls and the roof of my mouth becoming the roof of its new home. Here it surveyed the cave, reached out its wispy legs to touch the ivory stalagmites and stalactites of my teeth. It felt safe in the dark, away from the perils of the outside world.
The spiders’ biggest lesson was about to unfold, that dangers lie in what seem the safest places. As it walked deeper into the cave it tickled my pallet with its wispy legs. My natural reflex was to swallow it whole and it quickly slid down my throat. Trying its best to cling on it had no chance as my saliva washed it down along the esophagus, here the muscles squeezed and pushed it down into the basin of my stomach. Now there was no hope for this little fellow, it had spun its last web. But this was not the end of its journey it was the beginning of something much more, its potential now was the greatest it had ever been.
The chain reaction was set in motion the spider was deceased, it slipped into the stomach acid with the rest of yesterdays’ meal. Now it could begin to work, to set about its greatest task. It was here that it was dissolved, broken down into little fragments of pieces. Bits of protein and carbohydrate. The pieces split up and filtered through the capillaries into my blood stream. The flies it used to catch now seemed trivial as it searched for my muscles looking for the chemical reaction.
It reached the brain in seconds, the greatest muscle of all, filtering though the membranes into smaller and smaller chambers binding and clinging onto cells, reacting producing energy, its greatest achievement.
I'll never know or appreciate it, what it has inadvertently done for me. It fuels my dreams, it keeps me guessing, keeps me wondering what its all for. It lives on, its part of me now, part of history, part of the future. My dream continues.
