Glaqel

The Spider Deity

You know the saying, everything will work out? What they don't tell you is that it doesn't always work out in your favor. Let me start from the beginning, so you're caught up to speed.

Now I know most stories start with, years ago, or when I was a child. Those are most definitely outdated, but this did start years ago, more specifically when I inherited my maternal grandmother's farmhouse. I was eighteen at the time, and starting college that fall. It was my first time living on my own, and more importantly, the house was all paid off! It had a recently redone well, and solar panels. As you can tell, my grandmother was a self-sufficient woman especially after grandfather died and most of her children moved away. My mother was the only one to stay with grandma, of course, I also stayed. Lardie, my grandmother refused to rely upon electric and water companies as she believed that she shouldn't have to pay for electricity, water, or even food. Oh, which leads me to inform you that she had not only a garden but a farm on the property. Which I also inherited, from a large garden holding fruits, vegetables, and grain, to the animal pens holding sheep, chickens, cows, and even pigs. There was also a field for horses, but the last horse she had died two years before she did.

As for why I inherited it and not my mother or her siblings, well my mother died when I was ten. It wasn't really traumatic, it was more sad and stupid than anything. My mom, Linda, (yes my grandmother was a big L-name fan which I'll explain in a moment,) died by a flashlight. Now I know you're wondering how a flashlight can kill someone, well this is where it gets more stupid and sad. She was a huge bike-riding fan and was riding to the store one evening, and instead of strapping the flashlight to her handlebars, she put the flashlight in her mouth. (Why? I don't know, I never got the chance to ask her, as she's dead.) You see where this is going. I should also mention she never wore a helmet either. Okay so, with the flashlight in her mouth and no helmet on, she was going downhill and everyone knows how fast you go downhill, well as she hit the bottom of the hill in some freaky coincidental accident, from what we can assume her front tire hit a pebble and flung her off. She landed face first, her flashlight crushing through her skull. Now doctors assume she would have lived if she didn't have the flashlight in her mouth, though she would have definitely had some nasty scars, but that's how my mom died. My grandmother banned me from riding a bike at night after that, like at all, to the point that when the sun started to set she'd lock the bikes up. She also took me in because my father had never been in my life. (A long story for a much later time.)

Now, my aunt Lucy and my uncle Lee, (see the L-name obsession), weren't really involved with my mom or grandmother after they moved away and had their own families. Uncle Lee didn't like the whole self-sustaining lifestyle my grandmother lived, and well Aunt Lucy she um, well she took Grandpa's death really hard, saying she couldn't be around us because the memories were too hard. So it was just a few folks that knew my mother through work and school, and of course grandmother and myself who attended her funeral. Now because my grandmother was my legal guardian and my aunt and uncle weren't involved, that's how I inherited the farmhouse.

Grandma died at eighty-six, peacefully in her sleep from a stroke. She was sick for the last few months but refused to get help, she passed just four months after my eighteenth birthday. She was thirty-six when she had my mother, and was seventy-eight when she became my legal guardian. Now you're almost all the way caught up, just a little bit more context.

Now this is when the chaos begins. Now I had never moved out of the house so there wasn't really any moving I had to do when I inherited the house. However, I did have to clean out Grandma Lardie's room. Which wasn't too difficult, she didn't have much, I should also mention she was a minimalist but did keep every gift that I had given and made for her. I couldn't find it in myself to part with her stuff, but I also couldn't bring myself to keep staring at it. So I moved it into the attic and kept her room closed.