Stay: A Novella

The spiders in the house already have names, habits, grudges, and backstories. The Coyote considers this normal.Ethel sings in the kitchen. Reggie maintains standards in the bathroom. Dolores runs security from the bookshelves. Hank hoards treasure on the porch. Esme predicts trouble from the ceiling. Together, they keep the house inhabited.Then a tiny spider named Midge arrives.What follows is not horror. It is expansion. Population growth. Administration. Territory, training, rationing, trade, defection, and the slow transformation of one quiet home into a many-legged civilization.As the numbers rise, order fractures. Systems emerge. Alliances form. Resources thin. And the house, once merely occupied, becomes something structured, alive, and increasingly difficult to control.Stay is a sharp, controlled novella about systems under pressure, the behavior of small societies, and what happens when nothing in a closed environment remains small for long.