Hoarder (26 page)

When Ian reached the kitchen’s rotten interior, he risked another look back. Missy was less than six feet from him. She was drooling blood and the occasional broken tooth shard. Ian saw a glint from the dirty knife in her hand.

Ian had hoped to get to a knife first, but he was nearly in stabbing distance of Missy. He suddenly learned he was wrong about
nearly
. Her next stab plunged in deep.

Will’s backpack was yanked off of Ian’s arm by the serrated blade stuck in it. Missy dropped the backpack and it was forgotten before it hit the hoard.

Ian’s destination was about ten feet before him, the five-foot high utensils pile. In front of it, in his way, was the slightly shorter dishes mound.

Ian was faced with a crucial decision, how to get to those utensils. He could maneuver through the cramped path that ran around the mounds, or he could go directly over the dishes, a more unstable path that would get him to the knives maybe a second or two sooner, if he didn’t slip.

Ian thought those few seconds might be life-saving ones, to get a knife in his hand and keep her knife out of his back.

Ian went up onto the dishes, using his hands to climb the pile. Plates and glasses broke beneath him, more than he expected. He slipped and slid back two feet.

Two feet was one more than Missy needed.

The steak knife stabbed into Ian’s right calf. Ian screamed, and then regretted that impulse. His cries would be music to this monster’s ears.

Missy kept hold of the knife handle and twisted it.

Ian resisted another scream, and with his teeth gritted together, he kicked back with his left leg. Missy let go of the knife handle and caught Ian’s foot before it could deliver another blow to her face. Ian pulled his left foot back, but his shoe remained in Missy’s grip. His socked foot went down onto the broken dishes he was climbing, propelling him toward the utensils.

Ian’s flying shoe kicked him in the back of the head. The blow nearly knocked him off of the dishes, but it didn’t stop him. Missy grabbed for the handle of the knife in Ian’s calf, but it pulled out of her reach.

Ian arrived at his destination, a mountain peak made of stainless steel utensils. The first handle that Ian’s hand wrapped around ended up being a mirror of the one stuck in his leg, a modestly sized steak knife. Ian threw the serrated blade behind him, and it bounced off of Missy’s cheek, leaving a one-inch cut which crossed a couple of the cat’s claw marks. A few more cuts and she could have a tick-tack-toe grid carved into her face.

Ian used his socked foot to push a bit further up onto the utensils, not really noticing the fork that jabbed up between his toes. His hands sorted through the utensils with speed, picking out four knives and an ice pick before Missy fell on his back.

The big woman crawled up over the considerably smaller young man. “Gotcha!” she screamed.

Ian thrust a carving knife over his shoulder without looking at his target, and he was pleased when he felt it plant into the meat of Missy’s right shoulder.

“I don’t feel that!” Missy screamed in Ian’s ear.

Maybe Missy wasn’t lying, maybe she was too juiced up on adrenaline and outrage to feel any pain right now. But she would suffer its effects whether she felt it or not.

Missy’s right hand closed around Ian’s hood, and she pulled him back. He thrust a butter knife over his left shoulder as he came up. The not-so-sharp blade punched through Missy’s brown frosted red dress and sank into her left breast easily without bone or muscle to get in the way.

Despite receiving two stabs to her torso, Missy continued to throttle Ian from behind. She leaned in as she clamped a hand over the back of his neck, where it fit all too easily for breaking his spine. In her fury, she didn’t consider that her current position had gotten her stabbed twice already.

Ian countered with an ice pick thrust back over his shoulder. The steel point slid into Missy easier than the knives had. Missy’s hold on the back of Ian’s neck loosened. Blood dripped down onto her hand and Ian’s neck. Ian turned underneath Missy, no easy undertaking considering her girth and the knife in his leg, to face his mortal foe and see where the blood was coming from.

The ice pick stuck out of Missy’s left eye. She drooled blood onto Ian as she spoke.

“My… bike…”

So far as final words went, Ian thought hers were particularly greedy ones.

“It was never your bike,” Ian corrected her, and hoped she understood.

Ian thrust a butcher knife that topped in length and width the one that had taken Keith’s life through the center of Missy’s neck. Whether this brutal stab was overkill was questionable. Missy might have soon perished from the ice pick in her eye, but he didn’t care to wait and risk another blow to the head or twist of the knife. He also felt Keith guiding his final strike, felt as though his brother could see through his eyes and would find peace at seeing his killer vanquished.

Missy gurgled blood in pain and protest. Ian didn’t want to hear it. He pushed himself further up onto the utensils, which didn’t feel good with forks and knives jabbing his ass, but he needed to get out from underneath Missy’s heavy, wavering body. She could fall either way.

Ian kicked Missy in the stomach with his leg that didn’t have a knife stuck in it.

Missy fell backwards on the dishes pile, her landing shattering most of the dishes that hadn’t broken already. She slid down headfirst to the bottom of the mound, her head to her hoard, and that’s where she ungracefully bled out the last of her life. Hungry cockroaches were exploring her wet wounds before she expelled her last, bubbling breath.

Missy had finally become the thing she coveted most. She was just another piece of her hoard.

Ian slid down from his perch to Missy’s side, barely noticing the broken glass and silver wear anymore. He tried standing with the knife stuck in his leg. It was pure agony, certainly the worst he’d ever felt, and he had to shift most of his weight to his other leg to keep standing.

Ian felt another ache, coming from his right arm. Pulling that arm in, he discovered a fork sticking out of his elbow, the prongs an inch under the skin, but luckily not in the meat. He hadn’t even felt the impalement during his final fight with Missy, and he wasn’t surprised. This was the price for pushing up his sleeves upstairs earlier.

Ian pulled the fork out of his elbow and discarded it. He reached for the knife in his leg to do the same, and hesitated. Ian wasn’t a doctor, but he knew that a knife in this position could be a life-threatening injury, and he didn’t want to risk opening an artery by removing the blade, causing him to bleed out. As agonizing as it felt, it was safer to leave the knife where it was. He could live with the pain long enough to get medical help.

Ian looked at Missy with cold triumph. “I’d burn this house down, but I don’t want one more cat to die.”

Ian had one final interaction with Missy before he could leave. He squatted over her, and damn did that hurt. He reached into Missy’s dress where she had earlier stashed his father’s wallet. Despite all of her falling and fighting, the wallet remained pressed between her dress and flesh. Ian withdrew the wallet and inserted it into his own pocket.

Ian knew his father’s wallet would probably be admitted into evidence, but he remembered the picture of him, his father, and Keith in a photo sleeve inside. It was a picture he had never seen before, of a day he would always remember. He planned to take that photo out for himself before the wallet was surrendered to authorities. It had his father’s handwriting on the back, and meant too much to him.

Ian knew he would need that wallet photo to heal his greatest injury of the night, his broken heart.

Ian turned away from the dead hoarder and considered the ways out. Going through the dining room, living room, and foyer seemed too long of a jaunt with his skewered leg. He didn’t even know what kind of hoard the foyer held. He’d rather risk descending back down and out through the basement. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was only one room instead of three, and that was the deciding factor.

Ian took a step away, and his socked foot landed on the first knife he’d thrown that had bounced off of Missy. He winced as he lifted his foot and shook the knife out of his sock. It only took a moment for Ian to locate his shoe that Missy had stripped and thrown at his head. Getting the shoe back on was another painful process, and as he struggled to tie the laces, his pulse quickened. It would take some time for the panic to leave his system. He hadn’t reached safety yet.

Next, Ian retrieved Will’s backpack, which had taken a knife for him. Hopefully the drive inside was okay. He would always thank his fallen friend for the foresight to bring it along.

Ian knew every minute more that he remained in Missy’s house increased his exposure to its toxic atmosphere, which increased his risk of long-term side effects. He was covered in injuries in a house built with mold and shit.

Missy was dead but the other monster was not. The hoard still wanted to feed on him. He worked his way to the basement door, eager to get out of the monster’s maw.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Six strenuous minutes later, Ian hoisted himself out of the broken basement window, groaning and sweating profusely. On the lawn, he fell onto his back and greedily gulped in the fresh air. The outdoors had never felt or tasted so good in his life. The cool night air caressed his face. The stars above reminded him that the universe remained in motion, and had other plans for him.

After a minute, the infusion of clean air gave Ian the strength to sit up. He looked down through the basement window at the hungry hoard waiting below. He hoped it was for the last time, although he knew he might have to return for the investigation. But he’d worry about that later. Ian turned away, eager to rid his vision of the obscenities inside Missy’s house.

Ian grabbed the striped handlebars of Keith’s recovered bike, which he had left leaning against the bushes. The rolling wheels helped in lieu of a walking stick. He walked his father’s final gift to Keith up the driveway, passing Missy’s car, which hadn’t been parked there when they had arrived one hundred and one minutes ago. The oil slick was covered, revealing that Missy always parked in the exact same spot.

Ian looked into the windows of Missy’s car and shook his head. The interior was completely packed with its own hoard of paper, stuffed animals, and food garbage. How fitting that she had a hoard on wheels. There was no seat available to anyone except for the driver. He guessed that only the trunk was empty, since she needed somewhere to store her weekly bounty of products purchased at the Mega-Mart.

Ian gave the house one final look. He knew how lucky he was to have gotten out alive, especially when his friends and family had not. Missy’s house really was that mythical horror house in the woods, where fecal stains joined the bloodstains and the skeletons were out of the closet and on proud display.

Ian realized how crafty Missy had been in keeping her hoard inside, completely out of view. He knew many hoarders let their hoards spill out into their yards, acting as an exclamation of
Look at me! I need attention!
The greenery was over-run, but there were no personal belongings scattered outdoors. Missy’s hoard had been a secret hidden behind decomposing walls and obscured windows, away from the public eye. Even her legendary status as the local crazy and kleptomaniac had not included hoarding. So she had not been completely ignorant of her crimes. She knew she had something to hide, namely her collection of corpses.

Ian wondered how such a nondescript dwelling could hold such a massive personality. In the end, the house had crumbled under the weight of Missy’s madness. The hoard was not to blame, because a hoard could not build itself. The hoard’s architect, the hoarder, warranted all the blame. The terrible place was just another victim choked by tons of garbage. In responsible hands, the house could have been a palace.

Ian knew that the house would be cleaned out (by authorities in Hazmat suits, whereas he and his friends had only hoodies for protection, which was no protection

at all), but the structure was far too damaged to remain standing for long. After the shocking contents and crimes were revealed, the wrecking ball would have to move in quickly before the community, entirely justified in their outrage, converged to tear Missy’s house down by hand. Ian knew it was possible; he had torn out a handful himself.

They might want to cover the neighborhood in plastic first before razing Missy’s house. He feared the airborne pathogens that would be unleashed could start the next Black Death, a great plague upon humanity. The curse of Missy would drift on the afternoon air into his neighborhood to poison him and his mother first, finishing off his family. Ian shook the thought away. Missy was dead, but it would take some time to get the hoarder out of his head.

Ian pushed Keith’s bike to the street, but he guessed it would be his bike now, his father’s final gift to his sons. He mounted the bike carefully with the knife still stuck in his leg and pedaled away from the hoarder’s house. He didn’t look back.

THE END

About the Author

Armando D. Muñoz is the award winning writer/director of a number of moist horror films including
The Killer Krapper
,
Pervula
,
Mime After Midnight
,
The Terrible Old Tran
, and
Panty Kill
. He also toils in film storyboarding, editing, scoring, make-up effects, cinematography, and acting, basically anything he needs to do to craft a bigger scare. Armando also performs as DJ Pervula, spinning an all horror themed set filled with his remixes and mash-ups.

Hoarder
is his first novel. His second novel,
Turkey Day
, is also complete and nearing release.