Wendy the Bed-Wetter said, “Get him, Missy! Get him!”
Burly Bear shouted, “Let me maul him! And eat him!”
Despite her pulverized skull, Saffy yelled, “Break all his bones for me, mommy!”
Hanging from the ceiling and spinning on a string, Toots the Angel trumpeted, “Kill him, Missy! Kill him!”
As Missy continued her pursuit, she failed to notice the sanitary napkin had detached from the stab wound on her back. She was leaving a considerable trail of blood behind her, which was eagerly sopped up by the stuffies underneath.
The master bedroom held a bloodthirsty hoard, just like the rest of the house.
Chapter Thirty
As Ian pushed up, he realized his hands were empty. He’d dropped the camera during his fall. He didn’t see it around him, and then he discovered it between his legs. He’d landed on it, and he would find that bruise later. The red light was no longer on, but he picked it up anyway and stashed it in his front hoodie pocket. He didn’t need to record anymore. He had more than enough evidence.
Ian reached the first obstacle in his escape, his brother. There was still something very important he had to give Keith. It was a promise.
“She’ll regret ever taking your bike, Keith.”
Ian had a much smaller cheering section than Missy, but he heard Keith loud and clear in his head. “Kill that gluttonous bitch.”
“I will. Love you, brother.” I love you was a sentiment Ian had rarely said to Keith, but he had no doubt that his brother had known it. Ian told himself he’d have to start saying it more often. He would always want to be a better brother.
Ian stepped carefully over Keith’s not yet room temperature body without disturbing it. A few steps beyond, Ian disappeared from view inside the back bedroom.
Fury entered the hallway first as the broken crib bottom was kicked in from the master bedroom. Missy stomped out and broke the crib bottom into pieces as she plowed over it. More of Saffy’s bone dust rose into the air.
Unlike her former passage through the hallway, where she hadn’t seen Keith as she passed over him, he got her attention now. He was part of that bad family of boys, and would be the recipient of her rage.
“I should have never dated your daddy,” Missy told Keith at her feet. The pain he had made in her back was really starting to irritate her, and she wanted to give some of that pain back.
Missy stomped on Keith’s head, onto his upturned cheek and temple, cracking his cranium in multiple places. Her second stomp went higher and managed to leave a dent in Keith’s skull. A third stomp broke the skull enough to release his brains.
“See how you like it!” Missy exclaimed. By the sixth stomp, the bottom of her shoe was coated in brains. Missy was stomping in revenge for Saffy, despite the fact that the one she was stomping on had never seen or known about her child. Missy often got confused like that.
Keith’s head was left nearly as separated as Saffy’s skull, only a lot wetter. Missy thought that was kind of funny, and then she saw something below that earned more of her anger.
Missy squatted and pulled the butcher knife out of Keith’s chest. Blood slowly drained out of the wound since Keith no longer had a pulse to propel it. She had been responsible for the knife’s placement inside him, but her fractured memory was that Keith had injured himself with the blade after playing with it. That was just the kind of trouble boys were always getting into.
“I told you to put this away!”
Missy took the butcher knife with her. She would have to put it away herself, although she might find another chest to plant it in first.
As Ian worked his way through the thin passageway at the back of the room, he noticed another swarm of flies ahead, as bad as the swarm in the Rot Room. Maybe worse, since no flypaper strips hung in this room to lessen their number.
When Ian reached the landing and discovered what Keith had found before him, he stated what he saw.
“Fucking shit.”
Ian regretted saying anything at all, since the air tasted like a dirty toilet.
If Ian had known the second path down was over a steep slope of shit bags, he would have crawled over the dresser in the hallway and gone the other way. These stairs made the ones in the basement and living room look like a cakewalk (these were a crapwalk). He tried to estimate how many shit bags were spread down below him and settled on innumerable.
It wasn’t just the dangerously slippery surface that worried Ian. There was also the stink, which was worse than the smelliest bathroom he had ever been in (at last summer’s Warped Tour, where every toilet in the stadium men’s room had been backed up), times one thousand. Ian feared the air ahead was so full of fecal matter it would be like wading through mud. Butt-mud. He feared he would choke on the air, pass out, and take a header down this enormous crapper.
Ian’s nose was forgotten as his ears took over, hearing Missy crashing through the bedroom behind him. Her voice boomed louder than the shouting on the television.
“Get up and help me, Tickles! He took our bike!”
Ian knew it was time to get to shit stepping. On Ian’s right was a crap-smeared railing, caked from top to bottom. Ian grabbed the railing tight and took slow steps down the slope, unable to see where the steps actually were. Each step produced an audible squish, and nearly every one caused a slip. The only thing that kept Ian from repeated disaster was his white-knuckle grip on the chunky brown railing. Many of the bags under Ian’s shoes burst with a wet pop, caking his shoes in whipped waste.
Ian noticed, as much as he didn’t want to, that the railing didn’t just have human waste on it, but also chunks of toilet paper. And the TP was transferring to his fingers. The railing was also crawling with vermin. A few roaches ran up Ian’s hand, leaving little brown footprints behind them.
The shit roaches also, regrettably, startled him. Ian instinctively let go of the railing to fling his arm out, sending the roaches flying. He nearly flew with them, realizing too late the mistake he’d made (the coward’s cootie dance again), and all because he’d been touched by dung bugs.
For Ian, the next few seconds seemed to slow down considerably. Every detail sharpened in his attempt to save himself.
Ian brought his right foot down hard, and only the heel of his shoe hit an unseen step before it slipped off. As Ian pitched forward, he saw the railing and knew if he didn’t get an iron grip on it within the next second, he would get to know exactly what a flushed turd felt like. And tasted like, too.
As Ian’s hand flew out, wide open to grip the railing, he saw a thick, seven-inch shit lying right where he was reaching. Ian grabbed the loaf for dear life. After breaking through the crusty shell, the inner cream squirted up between his fingers as they wrapped around the railing.
It was a sickening but successful grab, and it saved Ian from falling down the stairs. He let out a fecal flavored breath of relief and continued down. His mouth tasted like he was chewing Honey Bucket flavored Bubblicious.
When Ian reached the last dozen steps, the next thing that nearly made him lose his footing was Missy’s booming voice behind him.
“YOU!”
Ian gripped the railing, and the sticky crap on his hand acted as an adhesive. He looked back over his shoulder.
Missy stood at the top of the stairs, her face twisted in anger. Eager to catch the dirty bike stealer in her house, she started down without grabbing the railing that was coated in her own waste, since her right hand was occupied with the knife. On her first step, her left foot slipped, and in trying to catch herself, she overcorrected and pitched forward.
Missy fell onto her belly on the slope, in her good dress no less, and slid down like a fallen log over brown snow. The log screamed all the way down.
Ian knew he only had seconds before Missy rammed into him. He let go of the railing and let his feet carry him down, uncontrollably, his arms pin wheeling as he pitched forward. Missy’s scream followed at his heels.
Hitting the fi
rst floor landing at a run, Ian collided with a tall dresser that stood less than four feet from the bottom stair. The dresser tipped back until the top hit the wall behind it, a few feet back, stopping Ian’s fall. Dust, cobwebs, and knick-knacks of cute animals rained down around him.
Ian rolled to the right, off of the dresser as Missy launched head first off the slope. Missy’s face hit the lower dresser with a crunch, which could have been wood or bone, Ian couldn’t tell. Missy’s screaming had finally stopped. She was knocked out cold.
Ian saw that Missy had left a shit face print with a smear of blood in the middle on the bottom of the dresser, and he let out a triumphant laugh. “Ha!”
Ian turned away from Missy to find his way out of the alcove. He saw no way out.
Ian’s surroundings consisted of three tall dressers (one tipped), two rods of hanging clothes (one above the other), and three walls. There was one way out, the shitty staircase past Missy. It had been risky enough coming down, but it would be even worse climbing up.
“No!” Ian cried in denial.
Missy moaned, eyes closed, and remained on the floor in impact position. Ian saw her legs stir and knew he had only a few more seconds to get past her and start scaling Crap Mountain.
“Fuck that.” He’d find another way out, even if he had to climb the walls like a fly using the tacky shit on his fingers. Or maybe he’d find another patch of soft wall to punch his way through, made moist by years of diarrhea saturation.
In a growing panic, Ian turned away from Missy and looked more closely around the alcove, hoping to find a way out he might have missed at first glance. He squeezed around the tipped dresser and looked behind it. There was only a wall with garbage bags stacked against it.
Ian turned to the clothes hanging in two levels. He parted through the dusty, web draped wardrobe, all of it women’s, and saw more clothes hanging behind the first rods. It had to be an exceptionally tall and deep closet to hold so many racks of clothing.
Ian ducked into the closet and tried to push through the second rod of clothing, which was even more densely caked in webs. The dresses and shirts were so tightly packed, Ian doubted one more hanger could be added to the rod. Ian pushed harder into the garments and saw, much to his disbelief, another tightly packed rod of clothing behind it. He also glimpsed a few slivers of light above it.
Ian had found his way out of the alcove. He was in a corridor that had been transformed into a multilevel closet. He crouched down, finding it easier to duck through the bottom of the garments. The cobwebs that had long encased the wardrobe transferred to him. He felt the passage of little legs along the back of his neck, and something else crawled over his left ear. Whether the creepy-crawlies had six or eight legs, Ian couldn’t tell. The crawler he felt cross the back of his neck felt like it had a hundred legs. He forced himself not to care. He had a far larger two-legged threat close behind him. This whole house was her web, and he felt seized in it.
Ian took a moment to wipe off his poopy hands on a white dress. He hoped it was her wedding dress and she would put it on before she found his brown handprints, but he knew she would never get the chance to wear any of these clothes again. Even if he wasn’t planning to stop her and she lived to be one hundred years old, all of this clothing would stay untouched. Missy might claim that every item in her collections, every piece of her hoard, was cherished and necessary, but in reality most everything was neglected and forgotten. Missy had standard hoarder-vision.
Ian could see more of an alcove ahead after passing the fourth rod of clothing. There was only one more rod of wardrobe left to push through. A hand that was more bone then flesh hung under the final fashions, and Ian ducked beneath it with a shudder of disgust. The dead fashionista helped Ian by catching hold of some of the cobwebs on his cap.
Coming up out of the final rod of clothing, Ian vigorously shook his head to throw off the crawling stowaways. He got a good look at the small alcove he stood in.
Ian’s fear grew as he realized the only way out was behind him.
Chapter Thirty-One
Missy moaned as she used the tipped dresser to pull herself up. She could already tell that everything on the shelves had been moved out of place, thanks to that bad boy. Bad boys deserved a spanking, and she couldn’t wait to tenderize this bad boy’s bottom, one swat for every item in her house he had moved out of place. Followed by a thousand more for taking her favorite bike.
Once Missy was on her feet, she looked down at her dress. It looked like her entire front side had been covered in chocolate frosting. She couldn’t see that her face was equally frosted, but she figured her sexy make-up job was probably messed up. It wasn’t enough of a bother for her to wipe her face off.
What did capture Missy’s attention was the cool new cap she had been wearing for the last hour, at her feet. She picked it up and pulled it back onto her head. The addition of this one accessory pleased her and made her forget all about her full face and body butt-mud treatment.
Missy put one hand to her back and the other to her face as she took an inventory of her injuries. Her bruised face and nose were hollering louder than the hot jab in her back. She would have to take a few aspirin soon. She would have gobbled down a few dry ones if she had them on her, which was her favorite method for taking aspirin since she liked the chalky taste. Unfortunately, her aspirin bottle was down in her hidey-hole, a few rooms away.
Missy knew she had to get moving, she didn’t want that boy to get too far ahead of her. She had seen him disappear into her clothing, which made her worry more. She wouldn’t put it past him to rearrange some of her hangers of fine attire to confuse her. That was just the kind of thing that delinquents did for fun. She would have to talk to Roland later and tell him to get better control of his boys. He was the man of the house, after all. She thought Roland might be neglecting his fatherly duties lately.
She would forgive him though, the next time she sat on his face.
Missy remembered the knife she had been holding at the top of the stairs, the one she had to unfairly take back to the kitchen herself. Looking around, she didn’t see the knife anywhere on the landing. She looked up the stairs and saw the blade a few feet from the top, stabbed into a waste bag, which was bleeding its viscous contents as a result.
The knife was too far up the stairs to bother getting now. She’d have to pick it up the next time she visited Tickles in the back bedroom. Just another inconvenience on a night that had been full of them, starting with the fire at the store that no good Cutter bitch had started. Honestly, if she had known how much annoyance everything was going to be, she never would have allowed the production crew into her house in the first place. If there was any good to come from this, it was that they had gotten so much good footage of her, they would have to turn tonight’s episode into a two-parter. That would mean twice the money.
Missy turned to the clothing to follow Ian, saw something out of the corner of her eye, and turned back to the tipped dresser. There was something of critical importance that had to be dealt with, even more critical than the delinquent director running rampant through her house. There was an overturned glass jar on one of the shelves, and all of the colored pens that had been held inside had spilled out, lying in a chaotic pile like pick up sticks.
Missy picked up every pen, returned them to the jar, tip down, organized from lightest colors on the left to darkest on the right, set the full jar upright, and then she resumed the chase.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ian was realizing far too late that the deeper he went into the house, the denser the hoard got. Missy had mentioned the other path that went through the house, but that was apparently just another one of her delusions. A rat could get through this path with ease, but Missy sure couldn’t. Ian didn’t think he could either.
The alcove he stood in was more the size of a closet. He could take no more than two steps in any direction. There was a corridor in front of him, nearly thirty feet long, and every foot of
it was crammed with furniture, stacked topsy-turvy. Ian didn’t know this was the same corridor that had stopped Dani on the other side earlier.
Ian looked back at the hanging clothes, afraid that Missy would burst through them at any moment, as Boogeymen and Boogeywomen do.
Ian reconsidered the stuffed hallway. The furniture was packed in tight, but it was not packed solid. There were crawlspaces visible through the corridor. Ian had done his fair share of climbing and crawling through perilous locations, including that black mold spotted boiler room at school. He considered himself good at it, and could see himself practicing parkour in the future. Of course, if he wanted a future, he had to get outside of Missy’s house.
The corridor ahead could prove to be a death trap just as the living room had been for Will, but retreating back and facing Missy seemed a far less desirable way to die. Besides, he refused to give Missy the satisfaction of doing the same thing to him she had done to his father, brother, and friends.
It was time for Ian to act as a rat and crawl through Missy’s maze. Ian hoisted himself up to the widest channel available, just over two-feet long and a foot and a half tall, between a hutch and a desk stacked on top. He squirmed his way into the furniture hoard.
Ian bumped his head on the bottom of the desk and the whole house of heavy wooden cards shifted with alarming scraping and squealing sounds. Ian continued even quicker, making himself as light as possible. Light as a feather, don’t get squished by a hoard.
Ian slipped off of the hutch into a hole just big enough for him to get back onto his feet. He had a refrigerator on his left, an upended sofa on his right, and a seven-foot tall dresser directly in front of him. There looked to be maybe a foot of space between the top of the dresser and the mold saturated ceiling. It was the only space available.
Ian climbed the dresser and was startled by a cat lying on top. He quickly realized the animal was dead. He couldn’t be squeamish now, and he squeezed into the space on top, sliding over it as ceiling mold smeared onto his backside. Passing the cat corpse, Ian couldn’t help but feel sympathy for it. What a horrible fate to perish in this dark and lonely crawlspace. Ian had seen enough dead cats at this point to knit that terrible tapestry of cat carcasses he had imagined earlier.
Hoarder Page 22