Little Miss Muffet
Little Miss Muffet
sat on a tuffet
eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
and sat down beside her
and frightened Miss Muffet away.
The one short street of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, was silent
but for the steady plod of hoofbeats rolling in with the
wind from the plains. A lone rider, his boots dusty and his
face creased with years of wind and sun, dismounted slowly
in front of the telegraph office. He stood tall in front of
an old-timer sitting on the porch, whittling a piece of
mountain pine. "I come for the school marm," the stranger
said menacingly. A Remington hung low on his hip.
The old coot leaned back in his chair, squinted against
the harsh high country sun, spat, and then paused a long
time before finally answering, "I spose you must be speakin
o' Miss Evangeline Muffet. Yep, she useta be the school marm
round these parts, but she ain't here no more. Tiny little
gal she was. Yep. I cain't figger what musta got inta her.
Some folks say that once't she was settin right over there
yonder on a clump o' somethin when some kind of pesky ol'
black widder lollygags up to 'er an' sceert the bejeezus out
of 'er. Yep. Right out of 'er. An then she skidaddled. Jess
like that. Course it could'na been a poor little ol' spider
or nuthin, musta been a rattler or a coyote or somethin. Or
maybe a horny toad, they git mighty big in these parts. She
would'na paid no never mind to no spider, that's fer sure.
Horny toad, maybe."
"I say yer lyin'," hissed the stranger, who suddenly drew
his pistol and fired, blowing the knife out of the old man's
hand. The shot echoed for a few moments, and then was lost
to the low moaning of the prairie wind.
Lady Amanda Muffet was a young, raven-haired beauty,
rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of
------. Though not particularly tall, she was a fine,
ample-bosomed vixen with fiery, love-hungry eyes and a
certain . . . reputation.
She took the opportunity of a lovely June afternoon to
dine al fresco in the exquisite gardens of the stately manor
home to which fortune had consigned her. Employing a tuft of
downy-soft spring grass as a settee for her comely form, she
had no sooner begun to sup upon her maiden's meal of clotted
cream, when, of an instant, her alabaster skin flushed
crimson with fright. "An insect! Oh!" she cried, upon which
she fainted dead away.
After what seemed like an eternity, she awakened to find
herself in the manly but tender embrace of the dashing and
handsome Nigel Lapgood, soon to be the Earl of
Cheesehampton. "Oh, you poor suffering thing," he murmured.
"Look, you've torn open your silken bodice. Here, let me . .
. let me fix it." As he kissed the tears of rapture that
flooded her burning cheeks, she sobbed, "You've saved me!
What a . . . what a man you are!"
The ship, an Argon-class transgalactic QX12, settled down
onto the uneven cobalt surface of planet Zorbon-7, as clouds
of pink ammonia swirled around the pandirectional tritium
thruster pods. Snug inside her mylar life-support system,
Captain M. Muffet emerged from the airlock. The computer
sensors had indicated that no lifeform could survive here at
2571° Centigrade. Still, as she gazed at the iridescent
landscape through the polarized lens of her dichromium
helmet, she sensed something . . . something evil. . . .
After she had explored the area for 19.4 minutes, the ship's nutritional control officer radioed that it was O-one hundred hours: lunchtime. She rested herself on a small mound of volcanic extrusion and injected her ration of hydrolyzed lactic semisolids. Suddenly Captain Muffet was enveloped in shadow. She spun around and found herself confronting an arachnoid creature, seemingly carbon based, approximately 17.4 meters in height. Leaping to evade the hairy, glistening green mandibulae that clamped together precisely where she had been sitting, Muffet drew her polarity-reversing transducer, took quick aim, activated the triggering device. For an instant she faced a hanging cluster of sparkling electromagnetic antimatter, then nothing. . . .
© Michael Fleming
Berkeley, California
November, 1991
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