Andrew sat at his desk staring forlornly out of the window. A screeching voice shattered the silence, “Andrew! Have you cleaned out the attic like I’ve asked you to?” Andrew sighed lugubriously and turned his sad gaze to the pile of unfinished stories and poems that littered his desk. He was supposed to be a great writer, but his wife, Lenore, never gave him a moment’s peace. Once more, his wife’s shouts interrupted his thoughts, “Andrew!”

“I’m cleaning, I’m cleaning!” He dragged his feet up the stairs and began his chore. Why he had ever married that clingy woman was beyond him. If only he had married that quiet, pretty girl who always had her nose in a book. As he grunted under the weight of giant, dusty trunks, the sound of flapping wings could be heard from the rafters above.

The Raven settled on an old bust of Pallas and croaked, “What up, home slice?”

Andrew set his load down and wiped his face with a rag, “Oh, it’s you. How do you do, Raven?”

“It’s all good in the hood. I see your woman has you slaving over chores again. Why do you obey her if she’s such a jerk-faced creep?”

The man stared at the bird, trying to decipher its arcane vocabulary. He gleaned from its tone that he was calling his wife a mean person. “Well, she may be bit unkind, but I love her so dearly, that I would not like to displease her.”

“Don’t gimme that crud. You don’t like her at all. I mean, there you are trying to write your next masterpiece, and there you go running after some new chore or another. You’ll never become a great writer if you don’t write anything!”

“You’re right. Oh, but I shudder to think what might happen if I anger her. ‘Hell hath no wrath like that of a woman,’ you know.”

“True dat. I don’t see why you don’t just get rid of her. It wouldn’t be that hard either. Here’s how.” The Raven whispered his devious plan to Andrew, whose sad eyes slowly began to light up and whose stern mouth gradually began to grin.

“This is brilliant! You are so wise, my friend! I shall do so at once!”

“No prob,” said the Raven, and he left.

Andrew slowly descended the stairs to where his Lenore was waiting impatiently. She scowled, “Are you finally done? It had better be spotless.” Andrew simply nodded and let his wife inspect the attic. She shouted angrily, “Andrew! Come here at once!”

“Coming, dear!” But before he started up the stairs, he took something from his desk.

“Look at this, Andrew! It’s dust! I expected this place to be absolutely spotless!” And in a rage she kicked over a box full of Andrew’s finest poems. Andrew gasped in horror as she kicked the pages around some more, not caring how torn or crumpled up they got. “You had better clean this up, too!” yelled Lenore. And with a madman’s shriek, Andrew plunged the letter-opener he had taken from his desk into his wife.
The Raven flew into the attic to see what the hullabaloo was about and squawked in terror at the sight of Lenore’s cadaver. “What the heck did you do, man?!”
Andrew beamed, “I followed your advice, dear friend! And now I am free of this woman’s clutches forever!”
The Raven cried out in dismay, “No! This isn’t what I said! I told you to talk to her. I said, ‘Stand up for yourself, and stick it to the man.’”
“And I did stick it to the man… woman! I stuck this letter-opener into her!”
“That’s not what I meant, foo!”

But Andrew’s bliss could not be interrupted now. He began to sing, “She will torture me nevermore, nevermore! She will make me clean nevermore, nevermore! Nevermore, nevermore!”
“Shut up! Your singing is atrocious, and it’s making me go bonkers! Plus, what are you gonna do about Lenore’s dead body?”
Andrew only kept singing, so joyful he was, and his incessant singing drove the Raven mad forever. Andrew went on to become a great poet, but as he never stopped singing his song, it was not long before the only thing the Raven could say was the word “nevermore.”