Hoarder

by Armando D. Muñoz

  Slithering through this slim space, Ian didn’t notice a closed door to his right. The handle would have been inaccessible even if he had spotted the door. And good thing, too, because this long abandoned downstairs bathroom was so full of ancient shit that the trapped air would be noxious to any human or animal that inhaled it. Better that Ian didn’t know the horrors that lurked just a few feet away, beyond a door that had not opened once in twenty-two years.

  When Ian dropped down on the other side of the dresser, he was faced with a taller dresser that left about an inch on top, a crawlspace for creepy-crawlies only. Ian saw a small opening to his far left, but he would have to uncomfortably squeeze sideways and climb over a rickety card table to get there.

  When Ian got on top of the card table, Missy’s booming voice startled him into sitting up, and he knocked his head on the back of a high packed wooden rocker.

  “Get off my furniture!” Missy screamed from the alcove. “They’re antiques!”

  Ian looked back toward the voice. He saw mostly furniture, but he could see slivers of Missy’s face and an arm beyond the not so movables. With relief, he knew there was no way she could pursue through the channels he had slithered through.

  Missy pulled a chair out from the furniture hoard and threw it behind her. She pulled out the desk on top of the hutch next and tossed it behind her like it weighed next to nothing. That’s when the furniture before Missy began to rearrange itself.

  Ian could hardly believe it. She was going to move the entire hoard to get to him. He felt the card table beneath him wobble, and then it collapsed, unable to hold his weight any longer.

  Ian went down three feet with the falling table, and Missy disappeared from his view. The chairs and tables around him shifted and threatened to entomb him. Ian didn’t wait to find out if they would, and he squeezed toward the next visible crawlspace.

  The small alcove was quickly piled with overturned furniture, as Missy kept filling the limited space she was leaving in her wake. She grabbed a coffee table, breaking a leg off the heirloom as she yanked it out of the hall, and breaking it more when she threw it behind her. Missy was too angry with Ian for crawling on her furniture to notice she was the one destroying her precious antiques.

  Ian could see the end of the hallway just ten feet away. To get there, he had to get down on his belly and squirm underneath a bed frame supporting all manner of furniture. The ground was carpeted with shockingly huge rat droppings (maybe they were raccoon droppings), dense dust bunnies, and broken glass.

  Ian slithered over the mess without hesitation. A few cuts on his hands and stink nuggets up his nose were better than a hutch falling on his head. He could hear banging and breaking behind him as Missy the one woman moving crew emptied the hallway. He didn’t dare waste a moment to look back at her, not that he could turn his head in the cramped underpass if he wanted to.

  Ian squirmed his way out of the hallway and crawled up onto the elevated living room hoard. He finally allowed himself a moment to look back.

  Ian could see glimpses of Missy behind her high-stacked stuff. She was a third of the way through the hallway. At the speed she was unpacking, he had maybe two minutes before she reached him. She looked like a giant kaiju to him, tearing down buildings as the giant monster closed in on a power plant.

  Power. His monstrous image of Missy gave him an idea. He looked instinctively to the left and found the weapon he was looking for. It wouldn’t kill the giant monster named Missy, but it might immobilize her temporarily.

  Ian reached over and flipped down the switch to the hallway light.

  The bulb inside the hallway went out, plunging the furniture hoard into darkness. Missy’s screams of outright terror were immediate.

  “No! Turn on the light! Turn it on!”

  Missy backed out of the hallway until she bumped into her relocated furnishings. She started to throw everything back, working her way slowly toward the alcove. As she threw a chair back, she threw her voice at Ian.

  “How dare you!”

  “Afraid of what’s lurking in the dark? You should be!”

  “Ooo!”

  Missy threw more furniture out of her way, breaking it if it sped up the process. Ian had reduced the big monster to a frightened child trying to flee the dark. An unnaturally massive and strong child, like Godzilla Junior.

  Ian didn’t wait around to watch Missy get out. There was a chance she had a light switch on her side, but that was fine. Plunging her into the dark had turned her around and bought him more time, and he’d been able to prey on her fears in the process, a psychological blow. His weapon of darkness had delivered sufficient damage.

  Ian climbed around the nest, unsure what his next move should be. The front door was not an option. He could not run away with the fight unfinished. A weapon would be wise, and while he could grab blunt objects all over the place, he’d prefer a big knife, one even bigger than the blade Missy had used on his brother. Missy should pay with the same anguish that Keith had perished by. With a chill, Ian realized that Keith had chosen the knife that had eventually taken him out.

  That decided it for him. Ian would make the kitchen his destination. This was going to be a knife fight.

  On the far side of the nest, Ian looked back at the hallway. The banging furniture had stopped, and the hallway light remained off, which meant there wasn’t a second switch or one was inaccessible. Missy had broken through her first barricade. The closet wouldn’t take her long to get through, but getting back up that shit sack staircase, he hoped she’d slip and get flushed again.

  Ian climbed in the direction of the dining room and was faced with the tilted, crushed pizza box and the shrouded lump of Will’s hidden body. Will offered encouragement, even in death.

  “Keep it up, Squirt. Make her pay,” Will said in Ian’s head.

  “I will, Will,” Ian promised.

  Ian spotted Will’s fallen backpack, and he grabbed it, slinging it over his shoulder. The drive with their collected footage was inside, and Ian wanted control of it, to edit, release, or destroy as he saw fit. Other cameras of theirs might be left behind, but the footage was not stored on them.

  Ian looked up as he heard heavy footsteps cross the floor above him. The stomps released puffs of black spores from the moldy ceiling, showing Missy’s path. Ian turned his head down, not wanting to get those spores in his eyes.

  Movement near the staircase made Ian spin. It was another cat, circling inside its cramped cage. The cat’s tail was short, with a jagged, bloody wound at the end, having been shaved off by the corroded bars of the cage due to its incessant circling.

  Ian would not let the cat suffer in captivity for one more minute, so he headed toward it, despite it being in the opposite direction of the kitchen, and near the slide that Missy would soon be coming down.

  Ian felt a kinship with every trapped animal inside Missy’s house. He was their liberator. Whether they were alive or dead, they deserved freedom.

  Ian reached the cage and opened the door, but he didn’t wait for the cat to take its leave. As Ian turned away, one of Missy’s random, throwaway possessions caught his attention. It was a dirty white TV tray with a floral border design. A giant glob of ketchup remained in one corner. The condiment looked wet, not yet fossilized.

  Ian thought the tray would be perfect for serving justice.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Missy arrived bitching at the top of the staircase to the living room. “And don’t you dare turn off any more lights!”

  The butcher knife had been retrieved from the waste bag on the second staircase and was held in her right hand. The blade was thickly caked with the bag’s contents. Gripping the railing with her other hand, Missy easily stomped down the clothing lined staircase. She knew exactly where to step to avoid slipping. She thought of them as safe stairs, with none of the neck breaking hard edges that had killed her parents (a few extra kicks to their broken heads had helped). The clothes piled over the stairs we
ren’t just there for safety; they were working to cover the scene of a crime that Missy didn’t want to be reminded of. Thoughts of her parents were never happy-happy.

  Various garments stuck to the doo-doo on her shoes and trailed behind her. This was nothing new to her. She was frequently followed by similar hoard-streamers.

  Missy stopped when she reached the bottom of the stairs, scanning the room. “Where’d you go!?”

  Missy was not given an answer. She came upon the cage that Ian had opened. The cat inside had not yet taken its pardon, but it had stopped circling. The emaciated animal was staring her down. She didn’t think that was how friends should look at each other.

  “Where’d he go, Daffodil?” Missy asked her long time prisoner.

  Daffodil was not the cat’s original name, and the animal had long ago grown to hate this human’s high-pitched wail. Not-Daffodil leaped out of the cage with a screech at its cruel captor, clamping over Missy’s head and clawing at her.

  Missy dropped the butcher knife in her surprise, and she pulled the cat off with both hands. She twisted the cat’s biting head until she heard its neck break, once again feeling the pleasurable snap of bones in her grip (she equated it with the satisfying cracking of her knuckles). She kept twisting until she heard the sickly skin rip, and she pulled until the cat’s head ripped off of its body. Missy threw the cat’s head to the left and the body to the right. Not-Daffodil’s jaws were still trying to bite as the head flew.

  “You ungrateful pest!” Missy screamed. And to think she had treated Daffodil like a princess inside her home! Never mind that Daffodil was a prince and not a princess. Gender was never a consideration when Missy named her cats.

  Missy picked up the fallen butcher knife and moved to a dusty mirror on the nearest bookcase. She saw bleeding claw marks on her crap caked forehead and cheek. She couldn’t believe that cat, making a mess of her face when she was supposed to be on camera.

  “Bad cat! Bad bad bad!”

  Missy abandoned the mirror and climbed toward the kitchen. Missy had a feeling Ian was raiding her yummy-yum box just to spite her. Weren’t they supposed to bring craft services with them anyway? She shouldn’t have to put out her good food when Hollywood was supposed to be footing the bill.

  As Missy passed within a few feet of her nest, Ian leapt out of it and grabbed Missy’s left leg with both hands, pulling with all his might. Missy pitched over the side, falling into the nest, screaming. The butcher knife was held out high above her.

  Ian fell backward onto what he thought would be the cushioned bottom. Instead he landed on the broken mirror. Missy landed directly beside him on her side, their limbs entangled.

  Ian and Missy sat up simultaneously. Ian ducked to the side as Missy thrust the butcher knife at his face. It was coming fast, but Ian could see it was caked with shit. He could smell the rancid blade as it stabbed into the cushion beside him.

  Missy let go of the knife handle, and her hand clutched Ian’s throat instead. Barely able to breath, Ian grabbed the knife handle beside his head, withdrew it from the cushion (the blade was much cleaner now), spun the knife around, and thrust it back at Missy. Missy’s other hand grabbed Ian’s wrist, squeezing with crushing force.

  Ian flung the knife up, and it spun over the top edge of the nest, out of sight.

  Missy’s crushing hand, stained with Daffodil’s blood, landed on the side of Ian’s head and slammed it down onto the broken mirror, which cracked further.

  “You’re fucking crazy!” Ian yelled defiantly.

  “I should wash your mouth out with soap, but I don’t want to waste good soap on you!”

  “Of course not, you cheap bitch!”

  Missy couldn’t believe the brat’s dirty mouth. Did his father teach him to speak like that? Missy wasn’t going to let this little snot talk to her that way. She was the star! She simply couldn’t allow it.

  “I got something to shut your dirty mouth.”

  Missy reached into an untied plastic bag and pulled out a used sanitary napkin that was so sopped with blood, it had yet to fully dry. Ian saw what Missy held and clamped his mouth tight a moment before she pressed the moist pad to his lips.

  “Eat it! You’re used to filth in your mouth!”

  Irritated that she couldn’t get the bloody pad into his mouth, Missy smeared it all over Ian’s face. His disgust fueled his adrenaline and strength, and he pulled his head free of Missy’s hand. He pushed his body back off of the mirror and kicked up into the center of Missy’s face, stunning her.

  Ian added insult to injury. “You eat it! You made it!”

  Ian saw Missy staring at him, frozen, and couldn’t resist taking another shot. He kicked her in the face again, and heard the sickening and satisfying cracks of her front teeth breaking. His shoe also hit the bill of the camera cap and knocked it off of her head, which was appropriate since it never belonged to this career thief.

  When Ian pulled his foot back, he saw a couple of Missy’s teeth spill out of her mouth with blood. Missy clamped both hands over her busted face.

  Ian knew this was his chance to get out of the nest, and he needed that knife. First he picked up Will’s backpack and slung it over his shoulder, and then he turned to where he had thrown the knife and climbed up out of the nest. He heard no sound of pursuit behind him. Ian thought he had hurt Missy pretty badly, and was genuinely happy about that.

  Out of the nest, Ian searched the hoard for the knife. He thought he knew the general spot it had landed, yet the knife was nowhere in sight.

  Ian sat on an uneven surface of garbage bags, boxes, and speakers. The knife could have slid out of sight into any number of dark crevices. Why waste time in search for it when the kitchen had a number of blades for his choosing? About one thousand.

  As Ian decided to abandon his search for the thrown knife, Missy’s bloody right hand reached out of the nest, looking for a hold.

  Ian stomped on Missy’s hand, and he hoped it was hard enough to break her knuckles. She wailed from below. Her bloody fingers spread wide and her hand dropped out of view.

  Ian climbed toward the dining room. Getting to those knives was his singular mission now, and he did not deviate when he heard Missy grunting and climbing out of her nest. The big angry bird with a broken beak was in flight again, and it wanted the worm.

  Once Missy was back atop her high living room hoard, she gasped as she saw a stranger ahead of her.

  Will’s body was uncovered and sitting up against the tilted bookcase that had contributed to his death. The stab wound in the center of his face was still leaking. His eyes were open but they had the glassy look of doll eyes. The TV tray that Ian had grabbed was propped on its side on Will’s lap. Within the floral border and written in ketchup were four red words:

  Missy was shocked at the stranger and his sentiment. She didn’t even know what his message meant. Hoards were collections, Ian had said so himself, and collections couldn’t kill people. That was some kind of crazy talk!

  Missy caught movement to the left, and she saw Ian climbing toward the dining room. She climbed after him. Despite her stomped hand and face, which sent blood into her eyes, she could cross the hoard faster. Decades of experience gave her the legs for it, and a leg up on Ian.

  Missy came upon a cage with a bouncing kitten inside. The mewling animal seemed to be worked up by all of the action going on around it. The night’s surprise party had the cat dancing. Missy considered the cage, but not its contents.

  Ian skidded down the incline into the dining room. He was lucky to be back in a room where he didn’t have to crawl on all fours.

  “Ian!” Missy cried behind him.

  Looking back was Ian’s big mistake. A dirty cat cage hit Ian in the head, nearly knocking him over. He saw stars, and thought of the number three. Three severe blows to his head, in the last three minutes. Or maybe in the last thirty minutes, time had an elastic quality to it. The three blows were taking their toll, making him dizzy, muddy in thou
ght, blurry in vision, and prone to moments of freezing. Like right now. He was giving Missy time to catch up.

  Ian looked upon the cage responsible for rattling his brains, and he was horrified to see a kitten alive inside. The poor animal looked in worse shape than him. One ear was torn mostly off and two of its legs were broken. How could that bitch be so cruel?

  Ian willed himself back into motion, stumbling toward the kitchen. When he heard Missy’s next scream, he was alarmed by its pitch and proximity.

  “I want my bike back!” Missy demanded.

  Ian had to look back.

  Missy was in the dining room with him, a bull charging at its target. His face and hands were covered in red, and he probably smelled of fear and blood, any monster’s favorite flavors.

  Ian goaded her on. “You want it, come and get it!”

  Ian knew Missy would never touch Keith’s bike again. She just didn’t know it yet. This whole big nightmare, months for him and decades for others, had funneled down to the crucial few seconds and feet between them, in a race for stabbing weapons. This was their most primal battle, and the final act, hopefully for this ruthless, lunatic killer and not him.

  Ian risked another glance back and saw that Missy had stopped. He didn’t know why, maybe to grab something else to throw at his head. He didn’t wait to find out. The kitchen was only a few yards ahead of him, and canting to the right. His head tilted, the path threatening to spin out of control. He didn’t hesitate despite his loss of equilibrium.

  Missy’s stop lasted three seconds. She prided herself on knowing where every item was in her house of collectibles, and that wasn’t one of her delusions. Missy reached into the high-stacked kitchen table mound, stuck her hand into a mostly concealed dish strainer, and pulled out a six-inch steak knife. The knife was exactly where she’d left it. The blade still carried the residue of the steak she had used it on, which she remembered being particularly juicy and salty, her favorite Sizzler selection. There might even be a few bites of that steak left further back on the table, and she reminded herself to check for it later.