Sloane is a drunk and a failed poet/part-time short fiction writer. Sloane figures he'll languish about the same as always when his luck changes after he finds a talking cockroach inside a Chinese matchbook he discovers in the bottom of a box. The cockroach named Friend is also an excellent poet and author of fiction stories. Sloane immediately gets an idea...he'll publish Friends work and take credit for it. It might work out so long as nothing bad happens to Friend