Rob Kincaid cursed in anger, throwing down the manuscript in disgust, the papers flopping in every direction about the cabin upon impact with his worn oak desk.

"Horrible!" he shouted, clutching grimy chunks of hair with sweaty hands as he paced back and forth in front of the desk. "I can't believe this! It's absolutely putrid!" His hands released their grip on his scalp as he regarded the ceiling. "What am I going to do? I need an ending! I can't give it to Jean in this state!" He cursed again. "I can't believe I wrote this crap!"

He tried to ignore the long row of his framed book covers on the nearby wall--The Forgetful Spider, A Spider Walks into a Bar, Into the Spider's Web, and so on--as he stormed into the adjacent kitchen. He wrenched the refrigerator door open and groped for the closest bottle of beer.

The cap flew off clattering to the floor as Rob ingested the bottle's contents in slurping, gasping gulps. Belching vibrantly, he tossed the empty bottle with the rest, a glistening pile of glass brimming over the edge of the sink, then drifted back to the desk in his living room, listless. There, he immediately noticed the tiny black splotch dancing over the patchwork of remaining papers on the desk.

The spider turned to face him.

"I couldn't help myself," blurted the spider, its bulbous form twitching anxiously. "I just wanted to look over your revisions . . '"

"Get off of there!" Rob barked, his voice booming. "I don't need your help this time!"

The spider cringed. "I just wanted to see if I could . . ."

Rob's fist thundered down upon the desk's surface, causing the spider to start before tottering over the edge of the paper and onto the floor.

"Stay away from this!" Rob squawked hoarsely. "It's mine, goddammit!"

The spider skittered away without comment, disappearing beneath the nearby couch. Rob glared at the spider's hiding place for a few moments before turning to gather his papers.

"What a mess," he said, shaking his now-throbbing head. "It'll take me thirty minutes just to put these back in ord . . ."

Rob's voice cut off as his eyes picked out the tiny, thin markings on the page that the spider had been occupying--words, minuscule yet fine cursive, hovering over Rob's scratched-out lines, replacing them with vivid metaphors, crisp dialogue, refined proliferations of prose . . .

"For the love of Christ!" he shrieked, ripping the page into tattered shreds. "You just couldn't help it, could you? You had to mess with my work again! Couldn't just let me try to do it on my own!"

"But it's terrible..."

The spider's tinny voice in his ear caused him to teeter back. The belegged onyx creature dangled from a thread at the level of his eyes.

"I told you not to do that!" Rob screamed, swiping away at the air in front of his nose.

The spider dodged easily, dropping quietly to the surface of the desk once again.

"Relax, Rob," it cooed, its body tittering gaily. "I'm just trying to help."

"I don't want your help!" Rob continued at the top of his voice. "Not this time! Not ever again!"

The spider drummed its legs in a cascading fashion on the desk.

"Constructive criticism never hurt anybody," it said flatly.

"I don't want your criticism!"

"But I've got some great ideas for straightening out the holes in the plot that I noticed earlier-"

Rob roared, storming away to the kitchen again. Another bottle of beer emptied. Another ear-splitting crackle in the sink.

"You're drunk," said the spider, perching on Rob's shoulder. "You can't expect to write well while under the influence . . ."

"Get off!" Rob yelped, batting ferociously at the shoulder of his sweater.

"It's only ten in the morning, for crying out loud," the spider further noted from the opposite shoulder.

Rob ripped off the sweater in a twisting, wriggling, frenzied dance, wadding up the cloth and hurling it atop the closest receptacle--the jagged pile of caramel colored glass in the sink.

"Stay away from me!" Rob blubbered. "Just let me do my work!"

After a few seconds of silence, he nodded to himself and teetered back to the swimming mess of papers on the living room floor. Crouching on his hands and knees, he meticulously began to gather individual sheets.

The spider nudged his right hand.

"Can I just make a suggestion?" it asked innocently.

"No! Ew, ew, ew! Get away!" Rob squealed as he feverishly flicked his fingers at the nuisance.

"I was going to say," the spider began as he dodged acrobatically, "you should let me look over the rest," it dodged again, "before Jean shows up tonight."

"I said NO!" Rob screeched, still clumsily flicking away. "This is MY novel, get me? My words! My ideas! Not yours! Not again!"

The spider emitted a high-pitched squeak as Rob rolled up a large hunk of the papers threateningly. Retreating, it briskly galloped off once again to its hiding place beneath the couch.

"You just stay there, you hear me?" said Rob, calming slightly. "Just let me finish and you'll see . . . it'll be great. Jean will have no words to speak except praise-"

"Not unless you straighten out the point-of-view inconsistencies in chapter two," the spider commented.

Rob turned slowly in place, facing the desk, his glare catching the on a new set of pages. Unmoving, his white-knuckled fists clenched at his sides, he addressed the spider in wavering tones through his gnashing teeth.

"What . . . point-of-view . . . in-con-sis-ten-cies?" he growled.

"Well, right here on page forty-eight," the spider chirped, motioning to the page with a hairy leg. "You have narration here by the protagonist, but then it suddenly shifts to the narration by . . . WHOA!"

The thick roll of papers pounded the entire surface of the desk relentlessly, Rob's arm a piston pumping up and down, fueled by hateful venom, over and over again until the energy drained from him. He examined the roll for any signs of mutilated carcass, then the desk for any twitches of movement. Disappointed, he clutched the back of his rolling desk chair and slid it beneath his rump at the desk.

"Let's see," he said, his eyes probing lethargically. "Where'd I put my red pen?"

"Oh, sorry!" the spider cheeped from the floor, its pointy legs balancing the enormous pen as it darted back and forth over the pages, striking red marks in quick slashes. "I'll give this back to you once I'm done with chapter three."

"Argh!" screeched Rob, lunging sideways at the spider, his hands clawing freakishly for the pen. His body suddenly lurched forward as the wheels of the chair slid under him, toppling him over. His forehead collided squarely with the desktop with a thick THUMP.

The spider paused in its revisions, regarding him morosely.

"You should be more careful," it said, then turned back to the papers. "Now, what to do with all this . . ." Rob's crumpled body lay limp, unmoving, as the pen continued to whisk and whoosh across the bed of papers beneath him.

"Rob?" a voice clamored.

His body jerked involuntarily at the sound of his name. Looking up slowly, he noticed the form of his fiction agent, Jean, looming above him.

"Are you okay?" asked Jean, her brow furrowing.

"Yeah," Rob croaked as he rose. "Ow!"

Jean let out an audible gasp, examining the festering swell of flesh on Rob's forehead.

"Did you slip or something?" she asked.

Rob nodded sullenly. "Just a dumb accident. Uhn..." He winced as his hand probed the circumference of the lump, then widened his eyes dramatically. "The manuscript! Oh, Hell, Jean! I didn't get it finished yet! I was going to, but . . . "

"Hey, relax, Rob," said Jean, patting his shoulder. "It's okay. You must've really hurt your head! I've got your manuscript right here!"

Rob regarded the thick, clean stack of papers under her left arm.

"Huh?" he said.

"I can't wait to read it over before it goes out," Jean continued, smiling. "I already like the title."

"Oh, you do?" said Rob.

"Yes," she said, nodding. "Simple and direct. Your fans will love it."

Rob frowned. "You think Axiom of Delusion is simple?"

"What?" said Jean. "You put Spider Undying on the cover page, see?" She showed the top sheet of the stack to him.

"Eh?" Rob began. "No, it's . . ."

"And don't you dare say to change it!" Jean said, giggling. "It's perfect, Rob! Another great Spider novel!"

"N-no..." Rob stuttered.

"Anyway, I've gotta go. It's getting late." Jean blew him a kiss as she exited. "Take care of that lump, Rob. I'll be in touch about the concept art for the cover tomorrow! Bye!" The front door slammed shut behind her.

Rob moaned 'no' repeatedly, a mantra of misery, as his body slumped against one of the framed book covers on the wall.

"You bastard," he spat, sensing the spider dangling beside him. "You did it again..."

"I know!" the spider bleated cheerfully. "It was a rush job, but I think it turned out really well!"

"You ruined it," Rob whimpered, his glazed eyes staring into nothing.

"What are you talking about?" the spider remarked. "It's another best seller, for sure!"

"But it's not mine," Rob mumbled, strolling deliberately into the kitchen. "I wanted to finally write something of my own..." He fumbled about in a cabinet below the sink. "Something untouched by you, but you defiled it . . . again."

"Stop worrying!" the spider squeaked reassuringly from his shoulder. "The public will love it!"

"Screw the public," said Rob as he rooted through the collection of bottled spirits beneath the sink. "I wanted to create a story for me . . ." His hand decided upon the bottle with the highest proof and he wrenched it from the cabinet. "But you wouldn't let me, like you never do . . ."

"I was just trying to help," the spider scolded, resting by his left ear. "After all, we're a team!"

"We are not a team," Rob retorted, grimacing as he downed a pungent swallow from the bottle. "There's you. No one else..."

"Don't be so negative," said the spider on his right hand. "We're a success!"

"I want it to end," Rob said coldly as he poured the entire bottle over his head. "I want you to go away . . ."

The spider sighed. "I don't want to go away, Rob . . ."

"I know," said Rob, grabbing a match from a box in the cabinet.

"I'm staying with you, Rob," the spider said soothingly. "We've got lots of writing to do. I've got a dozen more ideas, more Spider novels, more successes. We'll do it together, Rob. I'll help you. I'll always be here to help you . . ."

The match ignited as it grazed across Rob's teeth.

"Not anymore," he said, dropping the flaming match to his alcohol-soaked skin, a mixture of laughing and screaming vomiting from his mouth as he watched the spider's brittle body burn.

As an agent I once knew said, "Spiders, writers, editors, cockroaches . . . what's the difference?" Comments on this story are appreciated, but before you criticize too harshly, remember this little-known fact: Statistics show that you're never more than 3 feet from a spider.--gm