Hoarder (4 page)

“Cat’s eye,” Will guessed.

Keith instructed the group, “Don’t disturb the hoard.” He saw the hoard as a sleeping beast. Disturb it, and it might inflict a fatal bite.

The procession led by Dani reached the bottom of the steep slope beneath the basement door. Ian looked up at the exit, and then he looked higher at a wooden beam beneath the ceiling. The beam was packed with boxes and other stuff precariously balanced on top. The junk appeared four times wider than the beam supporting it.

“I hope you guys can climb,” Dani called back to the others.

“Can you?” Keith called back.

“Follow me and find out.”

Dani slid her handheld camera into the front pocket of her hoodie, letting it record without her hand on the controls. The guys pocketed their handheld cameras in the same fashion. Dani started her climb up the slide, using both hands to test the surface stability.

Keith followed Dani up. Will climbed up beneath Keith. As was always the case, Ian followed last.

“Good thing I grew up a tomboy,” Dani commented as she scaled the garbage mountain with as much experience as the guys beneath her. Not that any of them were experienced with this kind of hoard climb. It was a slow and awkward ascent for them all.

“I knew you were a boy. Dani’s short for Daniel, isn’t it?” Will teased.

“You wish.”

Dani had three quarters of the slope scaled when a large rat sprang out of the hoard and ran over her right wrist. Dani instinctively pulled both of her hands back, losing her grip on the surface. She began to slide down.

Keith looked up as Dani’s right shoe landed on his face. His nose erupted with blood and he was knocked loose on the slope. Keith was momentarily thankful that Dani’s shoe had missed the camera on his head as he slid down. He shouted, “Look out!”

Will saw Keith sliding toward him and moved fast. He gripped a table leg to the right and swung his body that way. There was a painful spike of pain against his upper back. Will looked over his shoulder at the edge of the wooden table he had just swung into. Keith slid down beside him, passing within a few inches.

Ian looked up at his older brother sliding down toward him. Ian raised a hand and caught the bottom of Keith’s shoe, just hard enough to stop Keith’s slide.

Dani’s left foot punched through a discarded screen door, stopping her slide. Below her, Keith tested his grip on the slope and started to climb again. Will resumed his climb beneath Dani. Ian followed his youthful elders.

As she tried to dislodge her foot from the torn screen door, Dani felt something warm and furry brush against her buried left ankle. She panicked, evincing her gender for the first time with a high-pitched shriek.

“There’s something down there!”

Dani’s left leg thrashed as her foot sought freedom. There was another pass of warm pressure against her calf. Dani kicked her leg back and the screen ripped further. A black cat was even more eager for exit, leaping out of the screen and climbing over Dani’s ass as it ran upwards. The cat’s color was not lost on her.

Dani released a mad bark of laughter. “I love cats!”

The dislodged screen door slid to the left, where it disturbed a teetering stack of crushed boxes. The crooked box on top fell onto its side. The folded top flaps bulged outward.

Keith didn’t know what was pressing for release within the tipped box, but he wanted everyone past it before it escaped.

“Keep going!” Keith cried out.

Second in line behind Dani, Will climbed past the bulging box top. As Keith came upon it, the folded flaps burst open. Unlabeled tin cans spilled out of the box, raining down onto Keith and Ian.

“Watch out!” Keith called down to his brother.

Keith held onto the slide with one hand as he shielded his head with his other arm. Ian looked up just in time for a tin can to bounce off of his face.

“Owww!”

Ian knew the can would leave a nice bruise. He wondered what food could possibly be contained within those cans to give them such weight, and he would have to be content with never knowing the answer. As the cascading cans decreased, Keith and Ian resumed their climb.

Near the top of the slope, Dani came upon a swinging ceiling lamp hanging in her path. She knew that meant the packed junk that made up the slope was at least five feet deep to put her in the lamp’s path. Dani pushed the hot light draped with cobwebs aside so she could crawl past it. Once released, the light swung behind her, releasing dust and some of its brittle webs.

A wayward tin can, a late escapee from the fallen cardboard box, rolled off of the slope and hit a pile of garden tools. One weathered handle with splinters sticking out was knocked aside, and a rusty hoe careened down at Ian’s head. Ian reached out and grabbed the handle, preventing it from scalping him. He threw the hoe behind him, and heard it slide down the slope.

Ian was left with wooden splinters in his fingers and palm, but he was in no position to pluck them now. He would have to dig them out later. He hoped that the handle had not been drenched in rat and cat piss (or people piss, there were those leaky sewer pipes overhead) or covered with mold spores, and then he admitted to himself that his slim hope was just a lie. Every item in this basement had been touched by toxic crud. Ian was eager to get home and break out the peroxide and Band-Aids. He wondered if they had enough peroxide under the sink to bathe in, him and Keith both.

Ian had broached the subject of gloves with his brother before departure. It was a valid question; why would they risk leaving fingerprints in the house they were invading? Keith’s response had been convincing at the time. Getting caught red handed would never happen with his fail-proof plan, plus if Missy’s house was as full of stolen goods as he knew it was, she would not risk bringing the cops in to investigate a stolen bike she had stolen first. Despite his trust in his brother, Ian thought he should have worn gloves anyway, if only to protect his flesh from germs and harm. Only none of them had known about the contaminated hoard beforehand.

Dani reached the open half door at the top of the slope. She was eager to climb out of this basement death trap. In fact, she could not remember ever wanting to be out of a room more in her life. She didn’t want to think about the fact that there was certainly a lot more hoard to come upstairs. She’d see it soon enough. Missy’s house was like a human Chinese finger trap; the deeper in she went, the more locked in she became as the walls seized in around her. Around them all.

As ridiculous a thought as it was, Dani figured this dangerous dump they found themselves swallowed up by and fighting against likely brought its creator great comfort. And then she was the first one fully out of the basement.

Will pushed his way past the hot lamp, taking more of its webs with him. Dani reappeared in the open doorway above him. She reached in for Will’s hand, helping him out and onto another unstable hoard.

Relieved to see two of his friends out of the basement, Keith pushed past the swinging lamp. Will’s hand reached down, to help Keith as Dani had helped him.

Ian had lost some distance behind his brother. He looked nervously at more shifting garden tools stacked beside him. A standing rake fell away from the other tools, starting an amazing upward domino effect that kept Ian transfixed, his head tilting up to follow it.

The rake hit a folded ladder, which was already leaning at an impossible angle. The ladder spun forty-five degrees and fell against a loose clothesline, which gave about five inches before pulling taut. The clothesline knocked loose a curtain rod that stood up vertically, balancing the overhanging hoard atop the high wooden beam.

Ian didn’t register his brother shouting as he saw the ceiling hoard shifting out of place above. Boxes, bulging bags, appliances, and giant holiday decorations moved for the first time in years, sending down a rain of dust and rat droppings.

Keith reached through the door above, waving his brother on.

“Come on!”

Ian kicked into overdrive and scurried up the incline. The first falling box landed directly behind him and didn’t stay there, rolling fast. It sounded full of bells as it jingled all the way down.

“Faster!”

An aquarium landed directly beside Ian and exploded. Colored gravel, glass, and a few goldfish skeletons flew at Ian’s face, which he turned away. He still got a few neon nuggets in his mouth, but that was better than glass. He was nauseous to notice the gravel did indeed taste like fish.
Like sucking on a dead goldfish
he thought as he spit out the gravel and continued to climb.

A six-foot plastic Frosty the Snowman with lights inside took a headfirst dive off of the high beam. Turned amateur wrestler, Frosty performed a piledriver into Ian’s back, knocking him flat. Ian was not down for the count, and he kicked Frosty down the slope as he pushed past the swinging lamp. Pushed too hard apparently, as the bulb sparked and went out. Ian noticed the bulb remained unbroken, and he was thankful the sparks had not escaped their glass casing.

Keith leaned through the door for Ian, ready to grab his hand when he got within reach. Ian had his eyes firmly set on his brother ahead, so he didn’t see what Keith saw. An enormous radiator was balanced atop the high beam, and it looked like it weighed a couple hundred pounds. Only it was no longer balanced, and it slowly tilted to the right.

“Hurry!”

Ian propelled himself up the slope as metal scraped against wood above him. He didn’t waste a second to see what it was, nor did he see the radiator crash down on its side beneath his shoes. The massive impact shattered the stability of the entire slide as it rolled down.

Ian’s hand clamped with Keith’s as the ground beneath Ian shifted and sank. Keith yanked Ian through the door. In the basement beneath them, they heard the radiator hit a table half way down, and the cacophony stopped with a crack of wood. The radiator remained barely balanced against the same table edge that had jabbed Will in the back.

Ian, Dani, and Will looked down into the basement with relief that they hadn’t been in the radiator’s path. Keith’s concern was on the added risk the collapsed path posed to them all. Leaving the same way had been considerably complicated.

“We’ll find another way out,” Keith instructed his followers, and he hoped it relieved them. He didn’t feel relieved, that was for sure.

Only now that they had all narrowly escaped from the basement did they begin to assess their surroundings. As they looked upon their current room inside Missy’s house, they were shocked and speechless. They had assumed that the basement was as bad as it gets, and they were so terribly wrong.

Chapter Five

Missy was used to getting whatever she wanted at the Mega-Mart, whether it was her yummy-yummy food or her pretty-pretty clothes. And Tuesday night’s weekly Late Bird Sale was Missy’s most anticipated event of the week.

The Late Bird Sale always started at ten p.m., and Missy would march through the automated doors at ten p.m. sharp, sometimes with a “Kaw! Kaw!” to announce her arrival. She was Mega-Mart’s most punctual and excitable Late Bird, and she saw the store as her own personal nest. Sometimes she would go “Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!” up and down the aisles until two a.m. or later. Later was partly due to the Mega-Gulps of soda she would consume as she shopped, literally gallons of sugar and caffeine slurped through a bendy straw.

All of the staff and managers knew Missy by name at the Mega-Mart, and they gosh darn well better, considering how much time and money she spent there. The staff was usually good about fulfilling her needs, but if there was a problem, usually from a new hire, Missy could lay a few eggs, and she wasn’t afraid to break those eggs and make an omelet. The staff knew it was in their best interest not to get served one of Missy’s Omelets.

Missy was quite accustomed to her weekly routine, which was why tonight’s unexpected interruption of her program had her so panic-stricken.
It’s not fair!
Missy thought as she coughed from the smoke and exited the store with a flood of fleeing shoppers.

The Late Bird Sale had started fine and on time. One reason she was so punctual was because she always wanted first pick, before other shoppers could get their grubby mitts on the Mega-sale products. And Missy often bought more than one of the same sale items. Sometimes she would buy all of them if it tickled her fancy. A Late Bird who wasn’t early was apt to find the best pickings already picked over, and she didn’t want to be the Dumb Bird in that position.

One of tonight’s most sought after sale items was the two-liter bottles of Freshie’s Fruit Punch, but that was too long of a name for Missy to remember, so she just thought of it as her Red. It was when she pushed her near empty cart into the soft drink aisle that Missy encountered that cheapskate, and cheap trash, Mrs. Cutter.

The big basket of Missy’s cart was empty, but the top seat was filled with the latest tabloids. When Missy would pass the news racks on her way into the store, if the headlines screamed at her, she was likely to scream back. Missy parked her cart before the fruit punch sale sign, only the shelf was empty. Every bottle of Missy’s Red was in the cart of that nasty woman. Missy was nice at first, and willing to negotiate.

“I need half of those,” Missy demanded.

That Cutter woman had dared to laugh at her. Then Mrs. Cutter went on and on about her coupon counting and her shelf clearing rights, and to Missy, it all went in one ear and blew right out her butthole; it was all the same sound to her. Missy knew what kind of bird Mrs. Cutter was.
Cheap! Cheap!

“I got first dibs. It’s store policy,” Missy announced with authority. She grabbed the binder overflowing with coupons out of Mrs. Cutter’s basket and threw it on the floor. Coupons scattered like confetti.

“I hope you enjoy Missy’s Omelet!” Missy gloated. “They’re on special today, and you don’t even need a coupon!”

Mrs. Cutter tended to the fallen coupons like they were a fallen child, and she let loose a tirade of dirty words that Missy was too much of a lady to repeat. With Mrs. Cutter’s cart unattended, Missy grabbed the handle and pushed her Red away, leaving her own cart with the tabloids behind.

When Mrs. Cutter caught up with Missy in the front aisle, there was nearly a catfight between the birds. The store manager had to break it up, and because Missy was the longtime customer on a first name basis, she was granted the Fruit Punch Prize. Missy threw a “Cheap! Cheap!” over her shoulder as she went back to her serious business of shopping.

Three minutes later, nobody saw Mrs. Cutter in the home supplies aisle, lighting the EZ-Lite Logs with a fireplace lighter, both items on sale when bought as a pair. The logs lived up to their name.

When Missy saw the smoke rising from Aisle 8, she pushed her cart with urgency toward the nearest empty checkout lane. She reached out and grabbed about a half dozen bags of chips (all on sale) without slowing. Missy didn’t have time to restock the tabloids she had left in her first cart, but that was okay because tonight’s television schedule would keep her occupied.

Missy didn’t have to see who started the fire to know who was responsible. She hoped Mrs. Cutter cooked her goose good in that barbeque. Preferably overdone.

Missy barked at the cashier to check her out faster, while the cashier’s concern was on the smoke and self-preservation. Missy even pitched in and bagged the bottles of Red and bags of chips as fast as the cashier could scan them. Then the fire alarm went off and the manager’s voice boomed over the PA, ordering an immediate cease to all sales and a nice and orderly evacuation.

Missy was not going to be denied her yummy-yummy snacks, which were her God given right. She grabbed the plastic bag handles and shouted at the cashier before he could halt the sale.

“I.O.U.!”

Missy flew the coop with the other shoppers, who were not leaving in a nice and orderly fashion as they’d been instructed.

Fire trucks and police cars were pulling into the lot as Missy headed for her car, carrying her grocery bags in triumph. She thought the rotating red and blue lights were pretty-pretty, but she wasn’t going to stick around and voice her suspicion on the fire’s cause. Missy had gotten what she wanted, as she was entitled, and Mrs. Cutter hadn’t bought squat. Why, Mrs. Cutter could kiss her high turned tail feathers!

Missy had been in a rush to leave, and while she had gotten her snacks, she had forgotten to get cat food. She figured that was okay, she’d have to go to the store again soon, assuming it was still standing, to stock up on everything she missed tonight. Missy didn’t realize that she had been coming up with excuses for forgetting to buy cat food for over three months straight, a new record.

Missy was suddenly eager to get home, her thwarted hours of shopping already forgotten. She was never home during these hours on Tuesday nights, and she was excited to find some new programs on TV that she would normally miss. It would be like a whole new night of television. How awesome was that?

Missy never knew what the Mega-Mart staff called her behind her back when she left following her weekly shopping excursions. Bird Lady was too kind, and Crazy Bird was not severe enough. They called her
The Vulture
.

Later it would become incorrect legend that The Vulture started the fire that night inside the Mega-Mart.