Once upon a time, long long ago,
there was Sultan that was madly in love with his wife. After many years of
happiness, the Sultan found out that his wife had been cheating on him since
their first day of marriage. He was so hurt and ashamed that he had her
beheaded. His heart turned black and hard as a stone. He thought he could never
trust another woman.
He felt
lonely after a few months and decided he would take a new wife every night and
the next morning he would kill her before she had the chance to disappoint him.
The whole
town was in a frenzy after they found out what was happening. Everyone was so
afraid of the crazy Sultan. Word spread throughout the kingdom of the horrible
murdering Sultan. A very special woman heard the horrible tales and decided to
do something about the problem.
She
traveled for two weeks to reach the horrible Sultan. When she arrived in the
town she went straight to his house. It was afternoon and the Sultan was on the
prowl for his next victim.
“Sultan, I
have come to end your ways of suffering. Take my hand in marriage tonight and I
can show you how happy you can truly be,” the wise woman said.
“What is
your name woman,” the Sultan asked.
“I’m Scheherazade
Latrodectus, but you can call me BW. I can make all your dreams and desires come
true,” the woman said.
The Sultan
married the woman the woman knowing he would kill her the next day. As they
both lie in bed, BW started telling the tales of her past. She had the Sultan
engrossed in her black-eye stare.
As the Sultan listened, he noticed
that he became very tired and almost hypnotized. What the he didn’t know was
that BW was not actually human. She was the fabled black widow that would use
her storytelling to put her husband in a trance before killing him.
The Sultan fell flat on the bed
just as BW finished her final story. Right before closing his eyes, he was shocked to see the beautiful BW had transformed into a horrible eight legged, poisonous fanged monster.
She frantically wrapped him in her constricting-poisonous
web that would slowly kill him overnight. She wanted to make sure though that
he would never hurt another woman in the town. Instead of leaving him to slowly
die, she decided it best to inject her deadly venom into his heart to seal the
deal.
The next morning, the Sultan’s
staff woke up to the horror of what happened the night before. BW was nowhere
in sight. The news quickly spread across the town and the town’s people celebrated
for a month straight.
BW left the town feeling good that
she saved so many innocent lives. She still roams the world to this day,
seeking justice for those that can’t seek it themselves.
 |
| Woman Spider |
This story is loosely based on Arabian Nights: Scheherazade. In the original story, a Sultan was betrayed by his wife, so he kills her and then takes in a new wife every night. Before the new wife can betray him though, he kills her the next day. Scheherazade wants to stop the killings so she decides to marry the Sultan. Instead of being killed everyday, she tells the Sultan an ongoing story and says he will have to wait until the next day to hear the ending. It was really fun incorporating a different legend into this classic story. I tried some of the same plot line in the story, but I had to put a scary twist to it. I liked turning Scheherazade into a half human/half spider heroin that swoops in and saves the town people from the evil Sultan. The reason I chose this image was because I wanted to show the reader that Scheherazade could morph from human to spider form. I thought this was a great image that could capture that moment where she was in mid transition from human to spider. I think it's a creepy photo as well. My overall goal was to make a traditional story have a more sinister plot twist.
Bibliography:
Book: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments
Author: Andrew Lang
Illustrator: H. J. Ford
Year: 1898
Hi Dylan,
ReplyDeleteThis was such a cool story! Even though I hate spiders, I really enjoyed reading this story. Usually people really hate spiders and they are the "bad guy" in the story so I really liked that the spider was the hero in the tale and that she saved so many people in the village. It had a mysterious and scary twist to the story and I really liked the image you attached to this, as well. I was trying to picture what she would look like and that gave me a good idea of what a half woman/ half spider would look like. Awesome job!
Dyl-bear,
ReplyDeleteWow! This story was so awesome!
The flow and creativity of your writing made it so I never lost interest.
I really like your picture choice. It's very much like what I imagined when you described her in the story.
Your author's note is also great! It really helped me understand the context of your story.
Thanks for digging deep into the original story and making something so fresh and creative.
<3 Kels
Dylan,
ReplyDeleteYou made the terrifying spider lady the good guy! I never thought anyone could make me okay with, much less like, any kind of spider character in anything-- ever, but then you did it. What caught my attention at first was the picture which, while mildly terrifying (still a chicken), was very gripping and I just couldn't pass by it without investigating. Very, very good choice. This story was really great and I can't believe you managed to make the infamous black widow into the protector of the innocent!
Hi Dylan,
ReplyDeleteThis is a great story! I was hunting for the story for your storytelling for week 12 and I could not find your story under chapter 2 the Monsters. So I scrolled through to see if I could see it here. I seem to have this trouble of getting my story in the right place a lot.
I stopped to read this story because it sounded so interesting. I like how the plot builds up. The black widow thing is so good. It's a good old myth that most people know but don't really know much about why or what they know about it. The Sultan killing all the women off is way creepy in and of itself and then adding the Black Widow to it was the perfect mixture of scary and horror. I felt like I could be watching an episode of the old black and white television series The Twilight Zone.
I enjoyed your story, it was a good read.