The novel Adriana Hallow starts out innocently enough in the point of view of Joanna, a thirty-two-year-old single mother of two who lives in Southern California. Joanna is a brilliant businesswoman who runs her own successful advertising agency. She has a loving and devoted husband, Bob; and their two children are aged eleven and five. Life is bliss, until Joanna’s friend, a tall and handsome forty-one-year-old plumber named Joe, moves into town and crashes into the house after being rejected by women. Since Joanna is so devastated by the whole incident, she completely leaves the novel.
Joanna moves in to Joe’s home and finds that the house is infested with insect larvae and other creepy crawlies. These creatures have taken up residence in every nook and cranny in the house and feed on food leftovers and food particles. Joanna assumes that she is next in line for a swarm of these creatures, but when Joanna’s friend Mary comes to visit, she learns that Joanna is not the only female in the house who has been attacked by swarms. In addition, Mary spots one of the swarms’ eggs near Joe’s pool table, which turns out to be a giant spider and a half. This shocks the girl, since it is completely out of Joanna’s experience and she does not even know what a spider looks like. Joanna and Mary run off to find help, and Joe is distracted from his game by the fact that the insects have begun to swarm again.
As it turns out, Joanna is not the only woman in the house who has been attacked by giant insects, and although she flees in terror after finding the nest, she is pursued by the swarm once she makes it into the kitchen. Joe goes after Joanna while she is pursuing Mary, and as they struggle to each other, the two end up with their arms locked in a pit. Joanna manages to push Joe back into the pit, where she is smothered by the insect’s feces, though it takes several minutes before Joe is able to free himself. This is one example of excellent tattooing work done by freelance tattoo artist, Rich Pineda, as he shows Joanna a disturbing side of the world that we seldom see through mainstream media.