Charlie

I didn't think it was possible for me to be more disappointed than I already was.

Granted, I had no idea it was possible to sink even further below rock bottom - I had thought I had hit 'rock bottom' over a year ago, yet somehow I kept finding a way to dig myself into an even deeper hole it seemed.

When my grandfather had called this house a 'fixer-upper' I had assumed that at most, it would need maybe a few new windows and a new roof. It could only cost around a few thousand dollars, tops, right? That's also what the pictures I had seen online made it look like. Now, I realized why it had been cheap as dirt and why no one was willing to buy the place. The fact that it was located a good distance from any other house was only part of the explanation.

It was Socrates who said, “A disorderly mob is no more an army than a heap of building materials is a house.” How fitting that I should remember that at this time, because this was almost certainly far closer to a heap of building materials than to an actual house.

I guess the only thing my grandfather had been completely truthful about was the fact that it was spacious - it looked twice as big as I'd have imagined a mansion to be as a child. I had passed by many large houses back in my hometown, which were usually owned by successful lawyers and the like, but in terms of sheer floor space, this beat them all. It looked like one of those old homes designed for multiple generations of a family to live in. In other words, it was quite old, though it was unfortunate that its age clearly showed.

While the increased floor space was nice, it also raised its own issues. There was no way that I could take care of the place by myself. Just keeping it up, even if it had been handed to me in pristine condition, would've almost been a full-time job in and of itself. It was the kind of place that would probably need an entire set of household staff to run properly - and whoever had once owned it in its prime had clearly been very wealthy.

Here I was thinking that it would be a nice launchpad to restart my life away from my old problems, not realizing that my launchpad was nearly hopelessly broken and a large amount of new problems came with it. Yes, I had definitely tunneled past rock bottom and found bedrock at this point.

With a sigh, I realized there was no use in further complaining. I had sunk too much money into this place to back out of it now. At the very minimum, I would be stuck here for at least three years. And hey - I had always complained about how cramped, claustrophobic, and small my apartment had been - this was an improvement on that front at the very least. Here, out in what was almost practically the countryside, I would have as much open space as I wanted.

As my key opened the door with a loud click!, a smell- that smell that only very old houses could have had assaulted me, followed by a wave of dust. Oh god, the dust! I might as well have ran into a sandstorm!

I was no ally of cleanliness - as my mother would say, she often described my bedroom during my teenage years as being a pigsty, but this was something else! I felt like I was nearly buried under a thick layer of dust as I took a few steps inside, and despite the sun shining in all its glory outside, several corners of the place were shrouded in darkness, with who knows what lurking in the shadows.

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I flipped on a switch. Nothing happened. Great - either there was no electricity or, more likely, the light bulbs no longer worked and had to be replaced. That was to be expected, and of course I, in my infinite wisdom, had not brought any along with me. As a matter of fact, I hadn't brought along any tools that were even close to having the capacity of being able to tackle the state of this place.

I plopped my suitcase down on the floor. I tried my hardest not to be overwhelmed by the thought of having to get this place in shape - by relying on the only way I knew how to distract myself and prevent myself from panicking since I was a child: 'Focus on your immediate needs first! Ignore everything else!'

A bedroom. Yes, I needed to get at least one bedroom working. Then, I would have to clean out a bathroom. At minimum, if I had those two things, I could live anywhere I needed to. Everything else would fall in order after that, and I could work on them at my own leisurely pace.

I would probably also need a good internet connection. I had no idea what the broadband speed would be out here in what was practically the boonies, but I needed something aside from my cellular data package. And right after those needs were met, I'd need to get a kitchen running as I couldn't live on takeout forever.

As if on cue, my phone began to ring. It was my mother with the usual questions- how was I doing, did I have breakfast, yadda yadda. On any other day I wouldn't have minded something like this as it was coming from a place of genuine concern for my well-being, but I was just so irritated by the situation I was in that I hung up on her the moment she gave a pause, telling her that I would call her back later.

I regretted my behavior ten seconds after I had disconnected the call.

I hadn't even given her a proper goodbye on this call, I winced internally- it did not feel good to talk that way to my own mother, and I definitely needed to apologize later.

For now though, I set to work at getting the minimum things done.

I took a brief tour around the house to get a rough idea of what I was facing. The furniture that was left behind seemed more than sufficient (though most of it would need a good deep cleaning), especially given there was now only one person living here. The plumbing in at least one of the bathrooms worked, thank god for that! I would just have to clean out the dust and grime layering it, which would be an afternoon's work all in itself.

I called my grandfather, mainly to give him a piece of my mind - his response was that nothing good was ever handed to someone on a platter, and I needed to chin up and get things in order. The utility company at least knew that I was moving in, so the electricity should have been working.

Granted, I was sure that my heating and my cooling costs would be through the roof given this place's sheer size, and I would need to figure out a way to make that manageable. But that would come later.

I had barely gotten all of my stuff out of my car and was in the process of trying to fix one of the bedrooms when I noticed the sun.

It was almost evening. And then my stomach began to growl.

Ah, I knew immediately then that there was no way that I was spending the night in this house. I made some toast for dinner before I decided to get out of this place as fast as I could.

There had been a motel on the way here, and I was going there for the night, and I would return well-rested the next morning. It would cost money, though at this point it would be a price I was willing to pay.

Oh, if my father could see me now, he would've no doubt been laughing at my plight, if not giving me a rant on how I should be spending my money more responsibly. My sister? She would've probably laughed at me and teased me for moving out because I thought the house was haunted. Granted, it was certainly in ruin, and would not be a nice place to spend the night- however, I was no longer the boy who had to go sleep in his parent's bed after watching a horror movie. And while I thought I saw things hiding in the shadows here, I was more concerned about vermin like rats and racoons rather than monsters.

I guess only my mother would've somewhat understood what I was going through as I got into my car and blazed off into the distance, the house no longer bigger than a dollhouse in my rearview mirror before it disappeared behind a hill. And though Mom would've understood, I had been short with her earlier, something I was beating myself over even more now.