Enlightenment and Fate

Enlightenment and Fate

Chase McQuade

A single, monstrous spider, with three distinct heads and one piercing eye, sat at the heart of an immense web. This wasn't just any web; it was a cosmic loom, perpetually weaving new threads for all of humankind. Suddenly, the web trembled, a tremor signaling a new capture, another being ensnared within its intricate strands.

The lone eye, nestled in the middle head, shifted. The head to its left, Lachesis, spoke first, her voice a curious whisper. “Lachesis, Lachesis—what is this I feel, fallen into our growing web?” Without waiting for a reply, the left head snatched the eye, placing it into her own socket. “Ah… I see. Enlightenment again. Shall I cut it loose?”

From the far end, the oldest, slowest head, Atropos, responded, her voice heavy with ages. “Let me see. I have not created it, I think not.”

The middle head then turned to the right. “Clotho. I did not weave our web to hold such a delight as this. Ah yes… a moth, trapped in the web of fate.”

Lachesis, reclaiming the eye, gazed into it, a ripple of delight crossing her features. “Yesss. What a gift. The struggle, the suffering this mortal lays upon himself. No, let us not free this one. We can draw sustenance from him.”

Clotho, ever impatient, whined, “It’s my turn! Let me witness!”

The youngest head, savoring the rare chance, took the eye. She peered in, her expression softening. “Oh… he is beautiful. Yes. Yes. I can draw new thread from him.”

The three heads spoke in unison, their voices intertwining. “Beautiful. Yes. We shall take a closer look.”

Atropos, the eldest, began to lift her scissors. “What?” Lachesis snapped, snatching the eye back again. “I said we will not free this one. There is much to learn in him. Enlightenment…”

A collective whisper rose from the three: “Liberation.” Their eyes narrowed, and they began to creep, slowly, deliberately, toward the glowing moth, caught and struggling within the shimmering strands.-----“Oh dear, oh dear,” Lachesis cooed, her voice dripping with a feigned sympathy. “What will you do? I see thread beset upon you, and yet you fight. Why?”

The moth whimpered, straining in silent desperation against its bonds.

Clotho, ever the instigator, urged, “Atropos, cut him free—yes, yes, let us speak to him!”

“Silence,” Lachesis hissed, her gaze unwavering. Yet, Atropos, with the hand of eternity, subtly snipped the threads, just enough to loosen the moth. The moth gasped, its eyes opening to truly see them for the first time.

The spider recoiled momentarily, then leaned forward again. “He can see us. He can hear us.”

Lachesis spoke, her voice holding an ancient challenge. “What do you think will happen now?”

The moth stammered, his words a desperate jumble. “Where—what—oh my God, what the hell?”

The three heads laughed, a chilling, synchronized sound. “You have become something we cannot free,” they sang together, their voices a discordant harmony.-----Lachesis’s voice was a silken trap. “What do you expect from us, mortal? Freedom? And to where? What lies outside our web?”

“Cut me loose!” the moth cried, his voice laced with terror.

“We can, we can,” they chuckled, their amusement palpable. “But look—Clotho is already tying what you are leaving behind. I am measuring your new lifeline. And Atropos—” they all looked left, their single eye sweeping to the eldest head—“She waits to cut you down.”

The moth, in a surge of desperation, spat out threads of his own, words tangled with an undeniable destiny.

“Very well,” they conceded. “You may go free. But once cut, you cannot return. You cannot have both. Look back—see your life.”

The moth looked, but he saw not his own life, but theirs. The web itself, intricately woven from his very struggle, his very being.

“Enlightenment,” they whispered, their voices a hypnotic chorus, “is not you. It is the moth itself. If you wish freedom, your self will be ours. In exchange, you will be given a new thread, a new lifeline. What is your choice?”

The moth trembled. He saw threads of countless other consciousnesses, all woven into him. A terrifying realization dawned: he was their culmination.

“Good,” they whispered. “Good. It is hypnotic, isn’t it? We have been doing this since the beginning.”

Clotho’s voice was a soft hum: “The middle.” Lachesis added, a measured tone: “The measure.” And Atropos, with a soft, decisive snip— “The end.”-----“I can make this better,” the moth pleaded, a new resolve in his voice, “for everyone.”

“Yes, yes,” they chimed, their voices laced with an ancient cunning. “You will. Our web will grow stronger, more perfect, for others like you.”

“Do you want to see it?” they asked.

“See what?”

A new thread shimmered above, just out of reach, glowing with an ethereal light. “You may take that path, if you wish. Where it leads, we do not know. But beware—spiders are everywhere.”

The moth, his voice firm, demanded, “What is my choice exactly?”

The spider laughed, all three heads swaying in a synchronized, unsettling rhythm. “Simple. Either you go free—and never return. Or you stay, and go mad within our sea of insanity. Clotho will thread voices into your mind, Lachesis will bind them, and Atropos will cut when you stumble. Stay—and you fight forever, keeping them out. Slip once, and you are replaced. No one will know the difference. You will be back in the web, as thread.”

Lachesis, ever working the strands, spoke as the eye gleamed, “We survive on moths of enlightenment. Clotho spins new lines from them. I jewel the web with wisdom, truth, love. And Atropos—” Atropos smiled, took the eye, and with a swift, final cut of the thread— “I end them.”

“In order to be one with the moth,” they whispered, their voices a fading echo, “you must free them all. Even us. For if not, we will drain it.”

A sudden snip. And I awoke.