Let's Pretend This Never Happened (41 page)

I’m still focused on finding the family cemetery in our subdivision, and I’ve taken to wandering in the empty fields, looking for headstones. A neighbor I hadn’t met yet pulled up to introduce herself and told me to be careful hiking because of all the snakes. I thanked her, but explained that I’m not a hiker and was just looking around for dead bodies. Victor says I’m not allowed to talk to the neighbors without him anymore.

Last night Victor was out of town, so there was no one to keep me from freaking out when something large started violently knocking on my bedroom wall at midnight. I called the exterminator to complain that something very loud was hurling itself at my bedroom wall. He said it was probably a field mouse trapped in the wall, and I said, “No. It sounds crazy-dangerous and
huge
. It sounds like a demon is throwing a bear into the wall. Or a chupacabra . . . with a handgun.” And the pest guy was all, “A chewpa-
what?
” Because HE’D NEVER HEARD OF A CHUPACABRA. Then I was like, “Wait . . .
seriously?
Are you new?
” Because that’s exactly the kind of shit I expect my pest control guy to know. Then I called Victor and I was all, “Okay, our pest control guy
doesn’t know what a chupacabra is
,” and he said, “
Really?
We live in Texas.
That shit should be on the exam
,” and I was like,
“EXACTLY.”
This whole week is being a tremendous asshole.

My bedroom smells terrible. It’s been a week since all those awful sounds stopped, and it’s become obvious that the chupacabra has died in the wall. The exterminator crawled up in the attic and said he thinks it was a squirrel that fell into a hole in between the walls, and that he was going to try to “hook him” from the attic. After twenty minutes he said he just couldn’t reach him, so he gave up. He also told me there’s a bunch of dirt in the attic we might want to check out.

Then the next day another dead-squirrel fisherman from the same company came by, because he’d heard about it and
he
wanted to try to hook it. So basically my house is like a giant claw-crane game, and the prize is a dead squirrel. After about thirty minutes I started to suspect that he’d been murdered by the remaining chupacabras, but turns out that he’d just given up and dumped a bottle of Rat Sorb into the wall. That’s a real thing, y’all.
Rat Sorb
. To absorb the smell of dead animals. That’s on the label. So apparently I just live with a dead squirrel in my bedroom wall for the rest of my life. The exterminator says this is very common and that
all
houses have desiccated dead animals in their walls. On the positive side, the next time I feel intimidated at a fancy dinner party I can remind myself that there are probably dead animals all over the place. It’s like when you have to speak in front of a group and so you imagine them all naked. Except that the dead animals in the wall aren’t imaginary and are actually naked. I can’t tell whether that makes it better or worse.

It’s been a week since the Rat Sorb, and the smell has finally dissipated, but a few minutes ago I heard something shuffling around in the walls. I can’t go through this again, so I decided to scare it out by screaming, and growling, and pounding on the walls like I was a vicious predator. But then I turned around and both of the cats were just staring at me disgustedly, like,
“You’re embarrassing us all here,”
and I was all, “Oh,
fuck you
, cats. At least
I’m
trying.” And that was when I noticed that our mailman was staring at me through the glass of the front door. I explained that I was trying to scare away the possible chupacabra that seemed to be making a home in my wall, and the mailman said, “
Oh
. It’s probably W. C. Fields,” and then I just stood there, because usually I’m the weird one in the conversation, and I wanted to appreciate the moment. Turns out, though, that there’s actually an escaped angry spider monkey named W. C. Fields who
is stalking our area, and who just attacked a woman and trapped her in her garage for an hour. All of this is true, y’all.
¹

I looked up “spider monkey” on the Internet and apparently they’re afraid of pumas, so all this morning I’ve been playing the sounds of pumas screaming (on a loop) on my computer, and so far I haven’t heard any more noises coming from the walls, which I think pretty much confirms that we totally have a spider monkey in there. Victor says it just confirms that it’s impossible to hear anything when the house is filled with screaming pumas. Then he yelled at me about the kitchen being a wreck, but it was easy to tune him out because of all the pumas. Which?
Kind of a bonus.
Screaming pumas are my new sound track.

P.S. Actual MSNBC quote about W. C. Fields, the escaped spider monkey:
“Don’t go outside. Don’t try to pet him. Do not befriend him.”
Holy crap. The spider monkey has just become the hero from
The Running Man
.

You know what’s awesome? When you move into a new (to you) house and you smell something musty in your bathroom, and so you call someone to look at what you
really
hope isn’t black mold, and they’re all, “Shit, lady.
You’re fucked.
” And then a scientist comes out to take lab samples and says, “You haven’t been sleeping near this room, have you?” And they seal the whole section of that house off and put a zipper in it so that the mold spores don’t escape into the rest of the house. Then they get dressed up in the exact same outfits that the FBI people wore when they accidentally almost killed E.T., and they rip out Sheetrock and cabinets, and you want to take pictures but they won’t let you in unless you’re dressed in protective gear, and then they’re all,
“No, ma’am, feetie pajamas are not going to cut it.”
You try to sneak into the bathroom to get your toothpaste, but you trip over the opening, because it’s almost impossible to walk into a room that has a zipper for a door, and when you fall it hurts so much that you forget that you aren’t supposed to breathe, and so you take a breath of what will probably kill you. Then you start to feel sick, but you remind yourself that you’ve been showering in that room for months, so you probably already have tuberculosis anyway, and you’re not going to have enough money for hospitalization, because you’re spending all your money on air samples, and lab techs, and supporting the people who probably killed E.T. And then you go lie down and cry for a minute, and the mold guys are all, “You know, you really shouldn’t use this room.”

Yeah. That’s awesome.

P.S. By “awesome” I mean, “I’d like to go hide under the house but I suspect that’s where all the scorpions are living now that the chupacabras have taken over the attic.” Also, yes, of course I have pictures:

It’s like living in a camping tent—if the tent were filled with spores that could kill you.

This is what the mold guys look like when you sneak up on them. Also, they might hit you with a board. But not on purpose. Just reflexes, probably.

“I just killed your alien and stuffed him in this bag. I’ll leave you alone with him so you can cry and bring him back to life. Also I just ruined
E.T.
for you. Spoiler alert.”