Kevin Anderson has worked as a marketing professional for fifteen years, writing award-winning copy for TV and radio. His fiction has appeared in speculative anthologies and publications such as Dark Wisdom #10, Surreal Magazine, Deathgrip: Exit Laughing (Hellbound Press) and Darkness Rising 2005 (Prime Books). He lives and writes in Menifee California, with his wife Hope, daughter Avalon and new son Ronin.

This is Kevin's first story for Something Wicked.

extract from Liberation

To most people it was just an ordinary Thursday, but to Caroline, today was the day she had decided to rid herself of the spiders living in her brain. She figured that there had to be more than one, even though they only pulled a single spider from that woman in Brazil – living just under the skullcap like a lizard burrowed beneath the floorboards. 
  It had to be more than one. She’d had so much passion and determination when she was young, it would take several brain-dwelling parasites to eat it all. The spiders lived off of the brain impulses of her desire, feeding on her resolve to do the things she really wanted to do. “That’s what the spiders live on,” she had said to her roommate exactly one week ago.
  Wendy, her roommate, stared back wide-eyed. "Please tell me you're joking, Caroline."
Caroline stepped toward Wendy, excitement and revelation growing in her eyes. "It’s all right here."  She held out the medical journal, dated July 1986. She pointed to the picture of a woman lying unconscious in an archaic-looking operating room. Then, sliding her finger across to the opposite page, she pointed to a murky photo of something whitish and puffy. The picture was just slightly out of focus like all the images ever captured of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, but a multi-legged form was clearly discernable. 
  It had the characteristics of a spider but looked more like some underwater creature – a mutated octopus or alien squid. The arachnid’s legs were thick like tentacles, splayed out on a chalky porcelain table.  Pools of blood spotted the off-white surface and a pair of forceps lay next to the spider, providing a sense of scale. The creature’s creamy white frame seemed about four inches in length. Its color reminded Caroline of the salamanders discovered in subterranean caves. Living their whole lives in darkness, the lizards looked pasty – sickly.                

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