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This is a story my seven-year-old granddaughter and I started last Halloween. Like most children her age, her interests move from one topic to the next, and it was ignored for a long time. When she showed an interest in it again, we worked to finish it. I added the ending page last night.

Now she wants to publish it. I’m not aware of any publisher who would be immediately interested, so the story now appears here on my blog. It’s all in fun and I hope you enjoy it. If you think your children and grandchildren would like it, by all means please share.

Oh, and my granddaughter wants to write a sequel.

Chapter 1

Once upon a time there was a spider named Frank. He was evil but there was a good spider named Lilly. And a team that was evil too teamed up with Frank. Frank and the team of evils had an idea. They will hypnotize Lilly with hypnotizing slime. But Lilly had a team of spiders too. They were good like Lilly. But Frank and the team didn’t know. Frank and the team also didn’t know that Lilly had a force field but the force field could only be up for 10 minutes. Frank is working on an evil weapon but it’s really hard to make. But he is distracted because he is falling in love with Lilly.

But wait. How could he be falling in love with Lilly? To answer that question, we have to visit their first encounter, a random meeting a little while ago when Frank ran out of flies and went to Lilly’s web to ask for some spares.

“Um, excuse me,” Frank said. “I see your web is full of flies and mine just ran out. Could I bother you to spare me a few?”

“Yes, help yourself, but I’m quite busy. I’m trying to stop the team of evils and their leader from taking over the world.” She continued to work on her force field calculations as Frank approached her web.

Frank hesitated. He realized this wasn’t just any other spider neighbor. This was his secret foe, the famous Lilly who he had only heard about up until today. As he took the spare flies, he kept glancing in her direction and saw the diagram of her project. He and his team of evils had sworn to defeat the team of good spiders, but she looked so innocent, so beautiful. Frank could feel himself drawn to her.

“Thanks for the flies. See you around,” Frank called as he stepped away.

“Uh, sure. Bye.” Lilly was so distracted by her work, she barely noticed Frank.

Back at his web, Frank realized he had no time to lose. He had to perfect the hypnotizing slime and finish his secret weapon before Lilly found out who he really was. Munching his fly guts, he kept working on the slime’s chemical formula. Yet, in all his evilness, he couldn’t get the image of Lilly out of his mind.

Frank contacted the team of evils to get Lilly off his mind and said, “I know what Lilly is working on.”

“What is it?” said Leah.

“A force field,” said Frank.

“A force field, I knew it,” said Leah. “I have cameras in her house.”

“How did you know about Lilly,” asked Frank?

“Are you kidding? I found out about her months ago. I’ve been spying on her ever since.”

“Months ago? I just found out about her an hour ago.”

“That’s because Lilly and I go to the same girl’s spider gym and I saw she had hidden her secret journal of science stuff in her locker.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was waiting until I had her force field formula. Once we get that, we can dispose of the little, goody, spider girl.”

That really bothered Frank, but he didn’t tell Leah. Leah was dedicated to the cause of evil, even more than Frank was. He was okay with hypnotizing Lilly, but Leah wanted to trap Lilly in her own web and eat her.

“I thought that we were only going to take over the world and hypnotize Lilly, not eat her.”

“Get real, Frank,” replied Leah. “She’s too smart and that makes her dangerous. If she ever got unhypnotized, she could destroy us all.”

“Just remember, I’m the leader of this evil group. Let me handle things. Oh, and send me the code to monitor the cameras in Lilly’s web.”

“As you wish, Frank.” Leah sounded grouchy as she cut the transmission. Frank worried about her. Someday, she’d challenge him for leadership of the group. He hoped their plan worked before then so the rest of the spiders didn’t decide to follow her.

As Frank spied on Lilly, he was getting worried that Leah would take Lilly away and eat her. Frank had to hurry on his slime and evil weapon before Leah takes the team.

Meanwhile, a member of the good spider team Sam visited Lilly’s web. “How are you doing, Lilly?”

“Huh? Oh, it’s you Sam. Doing pretty well. Almost got the calculations finished.”

“Great. Mind if I munch on some of your flies? It looks like you have a bunch.”

“Sure. Funny you should ask.”

“Why?”

“Another spider came by earlier saying almost the same thing.”

Another spider?” Sam sounded alarmed.

“Yeah, what’s the problem?”

“It could have been a spy from the evil spider gang.”

“You’re being a big scardy-spider.”

“There’s too much at stake, Lilly. What was the spider’s name?”

“Uh…Frank, I think.”

“Frank? Wait a minute.” Sam pulled a tablet from a pouch on his belly and started a search. “We’ve received intelligence that the leader of the evil spiders might be called Frank.”

“Frank’s a common name.”

“Oh yeah? There’s a ‘Frank’ listed as having a web just down the street.”

“So?”

“Hmm. No criminal record, but known associates include a spider named Leah. She does have a criminal record and…ah ha! She’s an expert in electronic spying.”

“So?”

“So, you might have microphones or cameras in your web.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Let’s find out.” Sam recalibrated his tablet so it would pick up the bandwidth of wireless cameras and mikes.

Back at Frank’s web, he got a call from Leah. “Yeah, what is it?”

“You’ll want to see this.” Leah flicked a switch on her monitor station where she spied on Lilly.

The TV in front of Frank lit up and he could see Lilly’s web and the two spiders. He heard, “She does have a criminal record and…ah ha! She’s an expert in electronic spying.”

Leah cried, “Oh no. I have to shut the cameras off. Otherwise, they’ll know we’re spying on them.”

The monitors in front of Frank winked out one by one.

Back at Lilly’s web, “Wait a minute,” cried Sam. “I thought I was picking up video signals from parts of your web, but they’re dying out.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I thought there were cameras in your web but now I can’t find them.”

“Then you were wrong, Sam.”

“Maybe.” Sam got an idea. He double-checked the address to Frank’s web. “I have to go on an errand, Lilly. See you later.”

“Bye.” Lilly was relieved that Sam was leaving. She had too much work to do to keep being interrupted.

Sam walked over to Frank’s web. It was spun up in a tree so it was hard to see from the ground. He started to climb up.

In his web, Frank said to Leah, “Let me know when you think it’s safe to turn the cameras back on.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Then there was a strumming on one of the web strings.

“Hello?”

“Hi there,” said Sam. My name’s Sam. I’m selling web security cameras in the neighborhood and was wondering if you were interested in such a system.”

Frank didn’t like web-to-web sales-spiders. “No, I don’t think so.”

“I’d be glad to set up a demo. I think you’ll like it.”

Frank focused his attention on Sam. “No thank you, Sam. I’m really busy. Good-bye.”

“Okay. Have a nice day.” Sam was pretending to be friendly, but he had secretly been taking pictures of Frank and his secret project. Whispering to himself as he climbed down the tree. “I’ve got to get this back to Lilly.

As Sam scurried back to Lilly’s web, Frank got another call from Leah.

“I think it’s okay to turn the cameras back on, Frank.”

“Okay, but be careful…” Then Frank realized something. “Wait. The spider I saw with Lilly before you turned the cameras off. He just visited me pretending to be a sales-spider. They’re on to us. Quick. Turn the cameras off!”

Sam had just gotten back to Lilly’s and had his detector activated. “Lilly.”

“What now, Sam?”

“I’m getting that signal again. There are remote cameras in your web spying on you.”

“Where?” Lilly started to get really worried.

“Wait. They’re going out again.”

“I think you are going nuts again, Sam.”

“No, really. I was at Frank’s web. I saw what he was working on. I have pictures. My search engine confirms that Frank and Leah are known associates. He has to be the evil group’s leader.”

“But no signals?”

“No signals. We have to search your web to find the cameras.”

Sam crawled on the web and Lilly reluctantly helped. Then Sam found the first camera and unplugged it. “See?”

Lilly’s multiple eyes grew wide.

Leah was still on the phone with Frank. “Something’s wrong. I can’t contact the cameras anymore. Even turned off, I should still be able to ping them over the network.”

“You can’t?”

“No, and there’s only one reason. They found and unplugged the cameras. They know about us, Frank and they know where to find you.”

“We have to go to our hidden base in the mountains. I’ll gather my experiments and we’ll all meet there.”

“Roger that,” Leah said and hung up.

At Lilly’s web, Sam said, “They’re definitely on to us, Lilly and they know where you live. They might be able to use you to trace the rest of us.”

“Contact the rest of the group,” said Lilly. “We’ll meet at our secret headquarters in the forest. We can finish the force field projector there.”

“Making the calls now,” said Sam.

In short order, both spider groups abandoned their individual webs and gathered at their respective bases, ironically not far from each other in the Arachne Woods.

To be continued Next Week in Chapter 2!

This is a story in eight chapters. Initially, I was going to copy and paste the whole thing in one blog post, but it’s just over 8700 words long. That’s quite a read. So I’ll publish a chapter a week for your entertainment. Remember, this is a children’s story (although I didn’t adjust the vocabulary that much). My granddaughter can read it all pretty well. She’s at school right now, so I hope she likes what I’ve done, plus the drawings. I thought it could use a little color.

Let me know what you think and at the end, if you’d like to read a sequel as much as my granddaughter wants us to write one.

Thanks,