Arachne's Tapestry

By Kay Springsteen

Author John Mason cannot seem to start his sixth book... that is, until he meets an inspiring new friend with eight legs and a love of weaving webs. Suddenly he’s got all kinds of ideas and his typing isn’t fast enough to keep up. Trouble is, whatever he writes is starting to come true, no matter how terrible the event, and even his lovely agent can’t solve that!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dingbat Publishing
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215376393

Kay Springsteen

Kay Springsteen grew up in Michigan but transplanted to the south about 10 years ago and now resides in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia with her five small dogs. Two of her four children live nearby, a married son who has a daughter of his own, and one of her twins. The other twin lives just outside of USMC Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Her oldest daughter still resides in Michigan. When she's not writing, she is transcribing and editing medical reports. Besides being an avid reader, hobbies include photography, gardening, hiking and camping, and of course spending time with her terrific G-baby. She is a firm believer in happily ever after endings and believes there is one out there for everyone; it just may not be exactly what you expect or think you want.

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ARACHNE’S TAPESTRY

Copyright © 2022 by Kay Springsteen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are entirely the produce of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual locations, events, or organizations is coincidental.

Dedication

For Jared: my son, my angel in heaven.

Chapter One

Davidsonville, Maryland

Present Day

Blink... blink... blink.

At the top of an all-white screen, the cursor mocked him.

You don’t have any words, whispered the devil in his mind.

Blink... blink... blink...

John stole a glance the countdown calendar on his desk. The number fifteen winked on and off in brilliant green. At midnight, when the number of days flipped to fourteen, the green would turn red.

Blinking and winking.

That was what his life had boiled down to.

He stared at his hands. Soft and firm. The hands of someone who didn't regularly perform any sort of labor. But they could type over a hundred words per minute. They’d never let him down before. Five books... all had debuted on the best sellers’ lists. The last book, though... the one that would tie up the series, make his main character either hero or human? Nada. Nothing. It was like his brain had been emptied, drained and not replenished. Who would have thought his thirtieth birthday would bring on the sudden inability to form coherent words and sentences?

Why had he decided on the seventeen-inch laptop again? The screen made the blankness look even... blanker.

Type something. Anything. He directed the thought at his hands, willing them to perform.

Huffing out a breath, he stabbed the enter key. Then again. Almost giddy with the power, he punched the key over and over. Then he held it down. Line after line scrolled by until he noted page 200 at the bottom left of his screen. He centered the line and typed: The End.

He sat back in his leather chair and sighed at his accomplishment. It was a good start. Now to fill in all those empty lines with words that formed sentences, which formed paragraphs, which formed chapters.

A hundred thousand words.

Blink... blink... blink...

It might as well be a million.

He’d told his agent he already had half the book written. Eden Ford hadn’t been impressed. You’re my only male client and the only one who’s always running behind, she’d grumbled that morning.

The curtain behind him moved, and John’s breath caught. But it was just Ichabod shifting in the sun. He released a derisive snicker at his girlish reaction. Maybe Eden had put a curse on him. Perhaps he should start shaving his legs and wearing a bra if that might help him stick to a writing schedule.

John pulled the heavy brown curtain back and squinted against the brilliance pouring through the glass. The day’s heat washed over his face like a furnace. Don’t you ever get too hot?

Blue and green scales flashed as the iguana bobbed his head up and down in an attempt to appear threatening.

Hmm, impressive. John stroked the tip of his index finger along the top of the lizard’s head. But you’re not scaring me.

The head pumping stopped. Ichabod did a half pushup on his front legs, puffing out his chest, dewlap extended. The spikes of his nuchal crest pointed upward.

John selected a spinach leaf from the orange plastic bowl on his desk and rubbed it between his first two fingers. Still leathery-fresh. He dangled it in front of Ichabod and waited. The lizard cocked his head to the side and subjected the leaf to a nearsighted stare.

Well, come on. Don’t be all day about it. John chuckled and gave the spinach a little jiggle.

Ichy pushed his head up and forward in a halfhearted lunge, and his powerful jaws closed over the leaf. At least someone was satisfied.

John stole a peek at the computer screen.

Blink... blink... blink...

He returned his attention to the window. The boxwoods had grown a little shaggy since their trimming in the spring. Some kind of grapevine had escaped the arbor and wound itself around his porch trellis. He frowned. When was the last time he’d walked in the garden? The heat of the summer was beginning to ease, but it was still muggy as a hot shower out there. The kudzu had gone crazy after a week of rain.

He didn’t know why he bothered. Terri hadn't cared enough about the gardens to hang around and take care of them after she’d spent two years overseeing the work putting them in to her exact specifications.

So, if the boxwoods looked shaggy, why should it matter to him?

He glanced over his shoulder at the long white envelope leaning upright against his desk lamp. The one with the terse letter inside from the Harper Woods Homeowner’s Association. If they cared so much, maybe they ought to come and clean it up. Hey, he’d even light up the barbecue and make a party out of it if they did. He reached out and tipped the envelope forward onto its face. Not that it mattered; he could recite the letter inside from memory.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Mason,

Once again we are in the position of reminding you that here at Harper Woods, lawns are to be maintained at precisely one and one-half inches, yet the lawn at your residence is considerably taller. The sidewalks are to be appropriately edged free of all overgrowth. All shrubbery must be of uniform height, no taller than two and one-half feet, globe-shaped, with no protruding stems.

We will appreciate your compliance on this matter within two weeks of the date of this letter. A copy of the Harper Woods Homeowners’ Association regulations has been attached.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Appleton, President

Harper Woods Homeowners’ Association

John snorted. "News flash, Elizabeth Appleton. Mr. Mason doesn’t give a rat’s tushie, and there hasn’t been a Mrs. Mason here for over a year." Not since the wife ran off with the gardener.

The very expensive gardener Terri had simply had to have working on their yard. The often shirtless waste of skin whose services — those in the garden anyway — had been paid for by the advance from book number six.

He shook his head, resisting the urge to crumple the association’s letter. Unbelievable, the amount of control the organization sought to exert on its environment. Well, the date had come and gone by a good two weeks, and his yard hadn’t been condemned.

Yet.

He glanced at the computer screen.

Blink... blink... blink...

Right. Maybe he should just go ahead and deal with the yard. Get it out of the way. Maybe use his head space while working to plot some of the story he’d been trying to craft for the past two months. The one he’d been paid a healthy advance to finish.

The one that had precisely two words written on it. The End.

Wait here, Ichy, murmured John, pushing himself out of the brown leather chair.

Ichabod turned a hopeful eye on the orange bowl.

Oh, what the hay? Everyone deserves a splurge sometime. John picked it up and set it on the windowsill in front of the iguana. Bon appetit.

typewriter.png

PANTING, JOHN STOPPED to study his work. He’d attacked the overgrown vegetation without a plan, much the same way he crafted his books. He should feel a sense of accomplishment. After an hour and a nasty spill from the ladder, a six-by-six-foot pile of wilting kudzu about three feet high had taken over the space directly behind the garage. All from one beech tree. He glanced at the four others lining his property, all standing like misshapen soldiers beneath the mantle of twining, spiraling,