Hoarder (15 page)

Missy knew her parents had been crazy in their cleanliness, and she had justifiably revolted against their compulsions. They had not been poor, but they had been so cheap, the use of electricity inside the house had been severely limited. As a result, the house had been frightfully dark growing up, and Missy’s skin had also been dark with the endless bruises she acquired bumping into things she couldn’t see. Her bedroom never had one light bulb in it. If it was dark outside, it was dark inside, and time for boring bed.

Missy thought of the first third of her life as her Dark Ages.

Missy’s first party had been for her eighteenth birthday, and it had initially been against her parents’ wishes. But they had finally come around and allowed her. It was only a shame that they had not been able to attend, due to the accident they suffered just hours before it started.

Her parents had been mopping the upstairs landing together, giving it a pre-party shine, and it had been just so horrible how the mop water had spilled and they had taken a bad slip and tumbled down those treacherous wooden stairs and broken both of their scrawny necks and fragile skulls. She had even managed to shed some tears. Only the paramedics didn’t know that they were tears of joy. She encouraged them to remove the bodies quickly. She had a party planned, after all.

Missy thought of the night of her eighteenth birthday as her Golden Dawn.

Missy had no friends to invite to her seminal birthday party, but less than one hour after her parents were removed on shrouded stretchers, the Sears delivery man had arrived with her first color television set. He even helped her set it up and showed her how to operate it, an added gift for the birthday girl. She could stay up all night now and watch shows she had only heard about, while discovering others that really tickled her fancy, like Donahue’s, and Springer’s, and that handsome Geraldo’s.

The lights were turned on all over the house (after bulbs were screwed into all of the empty sockets), so she could appreciate its size and splendor for the first time. The house did look kind of bland, but she had all the time in the world to decorate it to her liking, and fill it with all of her favorite things. Missy the collector was born.

Missy’s house had not been cleaned once since her Golden Dawn began. The crazy clean freaks had given birth and rise to a crazier filth freak.

In Missy’s mind, the party that started that night had never ended. Only tonight was an all new kind of party, a surprise party!

Missy turned Dani’s body around so it was facing her, although Dani’s head was turned at an owlish angle. She figured that Keith and this girl were actually working, filming their reality shows. They were lucky though, because even working inside Missy’s house was like a party.

Missy was eager to take control of this big Hollywood production. Tickles might be a camera whore, but she was the real star of the show. And it was her house. Unfortunately, this young girl with the camera tucked into her front pocket was a lazy sleepybones like Keith in the kitchen. Oh well, she’d use their break time to doll herself up for the cameras. She would have gussied herself up earlier if she had known they were coming. She might have even swept up a little. Or prepared them all dinner.

Missy grabbed onto Dani’s hood and dragged her over the hoard toward the door. Now that she had her, she had to watch her. Missy didn’t want this girl waking up and running back upstairs to film Tickles again.

Missy wanted the girl to come along for her beauty treatment. Maybe she’d even share some of her beauty secrets with her. The girl was looking a little peaked.

As Missy pulled the hood of the hoodie, Dani’s body slid on her back toward the door with her head twisted to the side. Dani’s nose passed within inches of Fiddlestick’s ruptured remains. The camera on her cap got a good passing close-up of the cat’s squirming insides.

Missy dragged her new playmate through the newly cleared doorway. The door they came out of was near the bottom of the staircase, and had previously gone unnoticed by Dani and her friends due to a large tapestry that hung over it.

Missy dragged Dani’s body up the clothing packed stairs. She had no problem with the weight she was dragging, her grocery bags usually weighed more than this skinny little sweet. They needed to serve better meals in Hollywood. This girl weighed about as much as the leaves in the salads she probably ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She’d have to make this girl a jiffy meal later, maybe something with ham, and hopefully she’d be more appreciative than Keith.

“If we’re filming my reality show, I want to put on my good dress first!” Missy squealed to her new friend. Missy stopped for a moment to pick up a dirty, tattered red garment off of the stairs, and then she continued upward with her new friend in one hand and her good dress in the other.

Chapter Eighteen

Ian’s disobedience brought him over the top lip of the basement staircase back into the kitchen. He heard more garbage roll down the steep slope behind him, but he didn’t bother to look back. He only hoped the clamor wasn’t loud enough to draw Missy. The fact that Missy had not been summoned to the rolling radiator was surprising. He guessed she was used to the sounds of her house crumbling. The structure’s wrecked condition could not have come about quietly.

As Ian entered the kitchen, he saw the black clothing and hoodie of a body lying motionless on the garbage ahead, before the refrigerator. His soul sank as he crossed the kitchen in a hurry. When Ian saw his fallen comrade was Keith, his stomach headed in the opposite direction of his soul, and he struggled to keep its contents down. He had to keep everything inside and stay in control. Keith was depending on him now.

And Ian wasn’t the type to leave a yucky mess or bad smell in somebody else’s house, especially not in their kitchen. That would be rude.

Keith wasn’t moving. He didn’t even appear to be breathing. Ian’s soul sank further, and he recognized what he was feeling wasn’t panic. It was dread.

Ian crouched next to his brother. “Keith”, he said, and shook him. Relief flooded him just to feel his brother was warm.

Ian got down on his hands and knees to lean closer to Keith, turning an ear to his brother’s mouth. He definitely didn’t like the look of Keith’s busted, blood caked nose, which canted alarmingly to the left. Keith breathing was only noticeable up close, and Ian heard a wet, gurgling sound deep inside Keith’s chest. He didn’t like that gurgling and the internal injuries it alluded to, but at least there was some sound of life.

Ian tilted Keith’s head to the side. Keith’s nose and mouth leaked blood, but more air got in and Keith’s breathing deepened. Only Keith’s consciousness remained elusive.

“Come on,” Ian goaded his brother. Perhaps he should be a bigger pest, as younger brothers do so well. He could call Keith a sissy or pansy and pester him back to consciousness. He was about to call him Rip Van Stinkle when Keith began coughing up blood. Ian patted Keith’s back and helped him sit up; it was too soon for Keith to stand.

Keith’s return to consciousness had him cataloguing his numerous hurts as he coughed on blood and what tasted like bile. His nose had felt broken by Dani’s shoe plant in the basement. Now his nose felt shattered, like he had snorted thin shards of broken glass. Some of those glass needles felt like they’d made it down into his lungs.

Next on his injury list, Keith’s right cheek throbbed and felt split on the inside, plus the molars beneath felt loose in their sockets. That must have been where Missy had knocked him out, although he couldn’t remember how. He had been hurrying away from Missy and her shit sandwich and then
WHAM!
Perhaps she had smashed him in the face with a toaster, swinging the appliance by its cord, that’s how bad the damage felt.

Keith’s worst injury had thankfully gone nearly numb, and that was his broken left wrist. When he glanced at it lying beside him at such an unnatural angle, the numbness became a painful, cold pressure, and he had to look away. Better not to see or feel it.

When Keith turned his mind away from his numerous agonies, he thought of their inflictor. They had all underestimated Missy and her capacity for violence. Keith remembered how much quieter Missy’s voice had been when she turned violent on him. Gone was the he-he ha-ha hollering that was her normal, playful, and ever annoying kiddy voice. When she got serious, her tone had turned soft and seething. Gone were all niceties when she got down to business, the business of delivering pain.

Worse yet, Keith had received all of his life threatening injuries when he was Missy’s friend. What might she do if she saw him as her enemy, which is what he really was? Good thing she was too lonely and loony to see it.

As Keith spit out the blood that was choking him, he saw something green and slimy on the ground of garbage. It looked like a slice of Missy’s ham, and then he could smell it, too. It didn’t smell like ham anymore. It was enough to trigger the taste of what he had been force fed, Missy’s Puke Plate Special. He quickly leaned over to regurgitate his last meal, bracing his right hand on the ground for balance.

Ian sat back from Keith to avoid getting any upchuck on him. Normally the sight of somebody vomiting disgusted him, but he only felt relief that Keith was conscious and able to void the bad stuff from his system. Then he saw the disturbing angle of Keith’s left hand, and his relief disappeared. Keith’s wrist was swelling and turning red. There also seemed to be a bone sitting entirely the wrong angle, stretching the skin taut as it pushed for release. It was the kind of injury that needed a doctor right away if there was going to be any hope of it healing correctly. He didn’t want to see Keith gimped for life.

Following the blood and vomit, Keith got a mouthful of the burning bile again. He welcomed the fiery fluid; it neutralized the taste of the horrid ham.

“Water,” Keith said in a raspy whisper. It was the only voice he could muster.

Ian snapped into action and instinctively grabbed the refrigerator door handle. Remembering what festered behind the door (not that he’d ever be able to forget it), he knew any liquid in that sea of spoilage would only poison his brother further. He let the door handle go with difficulty; the sticky handle did not want to let go of him.

Ian looked for the sink and remembered he hadn’t been able to find it earlier. Every counter was buried by the hoard up to the cupboards. The sink could be anywhere. If he dug for it he knew he’d find the sink eventually, but it could be counted on not to work. That he also remembered from the hoarder shows he watched.
The sink broke
was an excuse a majority of hoarders used to justify the shameful state of their kitchens.

Keith was wracked with dry gagging, and Ian saw that the precious little spittle he was spraying was actually blood. Ian’s worry worsened as he looked around the kitchen. Water was his brother’s one request, and from the sounds he was making, he desperately needed it. Water was such a simple request and life supporting element, and it was obscene to him that something so necessary could be completely missing from Missy’s house, or at least missing from the room where it should have been the most easily accessible.

If he couldn’t find water, some other drink would have to suffice. The kitchen was generously filled with aluminum soda cans, but they were all empty, making a mockery of their dire situation.

Ian spotted a translucent soda cup with its lid and straw intact, two inches of stale liquid at the bottom. He grabbed it with relief and peeled off the lid. The cup’s limited contents was neither liquid nor slush, it was a solid.

Ian tossed the cup aside with frustration and gave voice to his worry. “There’s no water. There’s nothing to drink, nothing safe.”

Keith was finally getting his heaving under control, and he spit out one last bloody glob from his throat, which landed right before Ian’s shoes.

“Sorry,” Keith rasped out.

“That’s okay, I’m used to your bad breath,” Ian ribbed him.

Keith appreciated the jab and managed a minor smile. He sat up on his knees to test his balance. He looked down and saw his handheld camera was still sticking out of the hoodie pocket, recording. Keith couldn’t believe his luck at that. The footage of Missy’s attempted murder of him would be priceless when Missy finally went on trial. The whole world would, and should, get to see inside Missy’s house and just how bat-shit crazy she was.

Keith had been relieved to find Ian at his side when he had come to, felt he needed it in fact, but the grim reality of their situation returned and disappointment at Ian’s disobedience set in. Keith did not want Ian to cross paths with the impossibly strong madwoman of the house. Ian didn’t know how violent she was, although he might make an educated guess based on the sorry state he’d found his brother in.

Keith had also suffered, and was still suffering a number of outrageous injuries in order for his younger brother to get to safety, yet here Ian was sitting at the scene of the crimes.

Keith could not be mad at Ian’s decision. It wasn’t meant as disobedience, he recognized it was an act of love, and love always made people do foolish things. And had their roles and ages been reversed, he would have done the same. They were in this nightmare house together, and they had to help each other get out.

“What are you still doing here? I told you to get out,” Keith scolded Ian anyway.

“I’m not leaving you.”

Keith might frequently be hard on his brother, but he knew he was smart. Hopefully, Ian’s smarts would not falter in a terrifying, life threatening situation like this. Only Keith considered himself smart, and Will as well, and it hadn’t helped them much. Remembering Will’s fate, Keith’s heart hurt.

“Where’s Dani?” Keith asked with renewed worry. Dani was a strong girl, the toughest one he knew. Dani might even be stronger than his mother, who had recently shown a surprising amount of fortitude and strength following the abandonment of her husband and his father. So Dani was a tough cookie, but Missy was the butcher baker. He had barely survived his encounter with Missy; how would Dani fare in a grudge match with her? He hoped Dani had gotten out before she could find out.

“I don’t know. I think I heard her scream. It sounded like the whole house was coming apart,” Ian replied.

That was not at all what Keith wanted to hear, but he hoped the house was indeed coming apart, and even better if Dani had triggered its collapse.

“I hope it is. I hope this house sinks into the ground. Where is that bitch?”

“I heard stomping upstairs, just before you came to.”

Keith and Ian looked up at the water stained ceiling. There was no sound of movement above them now. Keith hoped that Missy’s stomping wouldn’t send her through her rotten floor on top of them. He didn’t want to be sat on again.