The spider materialized gradually. 

At first, it was nothing but a slight dark spot on the wall. It faded in 
and out of her vision as she sat there motionless in the darkness; eyes 
focused on the glaring spirit of the television set, which didn’t seem to 
be working. Nothing but steady, high-pitched fuzz came in her ears. The 
decay had begun to set in all around her, and everyone seemed to notice; 
except her.

In her eyes everything had to stay the same. Alone and practically dying, 
all she had left was her memories -— all but spoilt -— worn with age -— the fester 
of solitude teeming at the edges with nothing but the bitterness of alcoholic 
sanctuary to keep her from crumbling completely.... our inevitable conclusion. 

And the pictures hung crooked and dusty on the yellowing walls, desperately 
seeking the hands of her indifferent daughters and their alien grandchildren;
 the only hope lying in the hopeful faces of the new-born, confused at and 
in fear of her almost mummified appearance and the dry, leathery taste of her 
lips on theirs. 

And the lips with their dark tobacco stains… the lips that unleashed so much 
venomous malice -— a hiss -— from her dripping desert precipice, in response to the 
youth and their objections to chain-smoking, taking into account what they 
viewed as the unfortunate death of her husband. She couldn’t have been much 
happier; really; even though her malfunctioning hearing aid did nothing to mask 
her deafness.

It meant more time alone. Endless knitting, endless spinning.

She even smirked at the funeral. Maybe it seemed like a new beginning, a rebirth. 
She certainly did revert to childhood when they noticed the first of the dark stains 
on the backside of her pants, and the circular wetness on the cushioned dinning room 
chair. Denial was the initial result and then next Depends -— adult diapers: really 
bringing out the kid in you...

The family didn’t acknowledge her problems until they’d already consumed her. A daughter 
came for coffee, and left queasy, the electricity out, the fridge warm, filled with food, 
strange fungi covering everything like a cruel science-fair experiment gone wrong, the 
milk turned far beyond sour and a general stench of misuse and dementia billowed from the 
rotten aperture. Cobwebs dominated the tomb-like walls. And the fridge -— like her, was present 
but neglected, out of order but still in service, dead yet stalking the earth as a vicious 
shadow, haunting its owners with the illusion of normality.

And as she adopted the ever-slowing cadence of her molding milieu, the spider wove itself 
into her world seamlessly, perfectly adapting to the overall dreariness of the living room. 
She blew smoke out of her well caked lips and stared at the spider. Once she feared them, 
now she just sucked death out from the cigarette, sucked and smirked for he could not succeed 
her. She imagined herself as an everlasting beacon of radiance contrasting the opaque darkness 
of modernity, immortal. She day-dreamt of falling from buildings, being tortured to death by 
indigenous peoples, winding up carved to pieces in a saw mill, stepping on a landmine or simply 
drowning...

With her husband dead, her children born and their children raised, she sought substance; 
purpose; meaning beyond walls and corners, but nothing ever came. Brief vacations came and 
went. They were meaningless excursions, serving no purpose but to draw her further back into 
her introspective web. Stuck -— caught on herself, entangled in her own creation.

Her stasis led to physical deterioration. It was as though she were just frozen above the 
ground, watching down on the stagnant room from some lost vantage point. She wouldn’t come 
down for days. Nobody would visit anymore. Even the spider seemed to have disappeared 
altogether, and soon she faded from her own memory, with nothing left inside her but the 
soft sound of time unraveling, and ending.

Eventually someone found her hanging from the ceiling; twirling peacefully.

It was you.