Frank’s body is face up and lying flat on the dirty floor of the basement. On his stomach, a webbed, half spherical shape moves up and down in rhythm with his shallow breathing. I know what this is. Though my human mind should’ve been horrified, our combined minds were pleased.

Delilah had been pregnant. The half sphere was a cocoon filled with dozens of freshly laid tarantula eggs inside. Delilah had found a perfect food source for her spiderlings when they emerged in six to eight weeks. I could feel inside us the instinctive drive for the continuation of the species. The cocoon satisfied that drive. Witnessing the spiderlings birth would satisfy it yet further.

A very tiny part of my mind focuses on getting back to the aquarium in my front room. I refuse to think of anything else beyond that, less Delilah should try a battle of wills. I begin by concentrating on only one thing at a time.

I move up the basement stairs then back out the rear door, still littered about like so much broken kindling. The early evening is beginning to darken. Nevertheless, I hurry onward and into my house. I crawl to the front room and begin shrinking in girth as I make my way to the cage. I return to my original dinner-plate size and move under the hollow log.

The struggle to separate my mind from her seems hopeless. Nearly at the end of my endurance, I’m ready to give up until I hear the sound of the telephone ringing. The ring is a familiar sound from the human world. It’s something I can grab onto like a rope and pull myself out. I just barely make it.

My mind merges once again with my human body, still sitting near the aquarium. I feel like a half drowned kitten. I despise the weakness of this frail human cage my mind is trapped in. The continued ringing focuses my thoughts. Spider-crawling, on my hands and knees, I cross the floor. I pick up the phone and place it on my ear. It’s Joanie.

She’s calling to let me know her girlfriend invited her over for an all night slumber party. I don’t listen to anything much past that. I call her a lying whore because I know she’s really spending the night with Henry. I tell her what I’ve seen at the restaurant. She doesn’t even bother trying to make up an excuse.

In fact, instead of denying it, she says she’s relieved that it’s now out in the open. She says that she’s been planning to divorce me for some time now. She feels like I treat my spider better than I treat her. She says she’s never coming back to me and that the stupid spider will be the death of me.

I don’t argue. I simply tell her that she’s wrong and hang up as she continues her mindless babbling. I crawl away from the phone with my head spinning. Tears of confusion stream down my face. Time passes until a spider instinct, buried deep within my mind, burrows up to the surface. I dry my eyes as an idea begins to form and take shape.

I pull myself up to the cast iron stand upon which sits the glass aquarium of Delilah. I reach for the gas can and hold it to my chest. I fumble with the pack of matches, light one and stare thoughtfully at the ember flame until it burns my finger and thumb. Joanie has burned me even worse.

I empty out the can of gasoline onto the carpeted floor and grab a decorative candle off the coffee table. I light the wick and sit it on the gas-soaked carpet. I lie down on the floor beside it and watch the flame burn down. With the house and my body burned away, it will look like suicide.

In my experience there are never any simple answers to the problems of life. Perhaps what I have planned will be the exception to that rule. I see now that the spider I once thought was the source of all my problems can really be the source for all my answers.