The First Bungee

Simon swallowed hard and thought, Why won’t it go down? He could feel how it seemed to have anticipated the swallow and crouched low against his trachea wall against the downflow. It waited a few seconds before resuming it’s climb up. Meanwhile, down there, a mighty struggle bewteen life and death was underway. The spider had almost fallen into the acidic soup that was simon’s tomach contents, but at the last moment managed to lodge a foot into a fold of skin at the entrance, and had hung there, desparate and gasping in fear. From there he had slowly struggled back, upwards, and through the entrance tunnel. The first time Simon had reaslised something was going wrong with his dinner, he had swallowed hard and the spider had been taken by surprise, almost lost his footing, but just managed to dig toes on two feet into the trachea wall and prevent a certain death. But that was then. Now he had hope. He could see the light at the top of the tunnel that was passing Simon’s oesophagus XXXX, and realised that he was slowly but surely getting there. He had survived numerous hard swallowing attempts, three large waterfalls of wine, and various food items all either hitting him squarely on the head, or sliding past his back, as he ducked each time. Meanwhile, Simon had given up trying to swallow and remove the problem. He had come to terms with the fact that whatever it was that has somehow fallen in his food, and he had unknowingly put in his mouth, was going to come out. Finally, he opened his mouth wide, and the spider stepped out into the light of the restaurent. He almost shouted with relief and joy. Sue took one look at it and jumped up and ran screaming out the door. He looked around and saw Simon’s nose above, so he reached a foot up and stuck the end of a piece of web thread there. Then he leapt over the edge and shimmied down towards Simon’s lap. Simon still hadn’t seen him, but he realised that whatever it was was scary. So he jumped up and ran screaming out the door too. The spider was thrown aside and hung onto the end of the thread, waving around in the wind behind the running Simon’s head. Hey, he thought to himself. This is quite fun. I think I’ll call it bungee.