Hoarder by Armando D. Muñoz Read Free Book Online Page B

sink?”
    Will saw that Dani was right. A sink was not visible. Nor were the counters. There were only mounds of kitchen items beneath the high cupboards. One mound, over four feet high, was made up entirely of dirty dishes, as though the dishwasher had overflown. Directly beside the mountain of dishes was a mound of used utensils that had an even higher peak. It looked like every utensil in the neighborhood, perhaps the city, was stuck around a gigantic magnet. Many of the utensils were corroded with rust. The cupboards above were open, revealing shelves that were stuffed with garbage and covered in cobwebs. The cupboards lacked the contents they were made for, namely dishes and food.
    Dani removed her arm from her nose. She remained nauseous but the urge to hurl had passed. Dani was more disturbed to realize she was getting used to the dead… the smell.
    Dani led Keith and Will through the thinnest of culverts twisting around the mounds. Will wondered how Missy could maneuver through such tight spaces. She could barely be contained in the aisles of his store. Will realized he was probably conflating her size with her big personality, but the fact remained she was a massive and strong woman who moved with the grace of a buffalo.
    Ian’s curiosity kept him from following his friends. He turned to the object that intrigued him, Missy’s refrigerator. The front of the refrigerator and the handles were smeared with food. Taped to the doors in overlapping patches were messy delivery menus with fingerprints in Missy’s favorite sauces, some of which smelled spicy. Multi-colored letter magnets were assembled to spell YUMMY YUM BOX.
    Ian had seen enough television shows on hoarders to know that the best parts of their hoards were usually inside their bathrooms and within their refrigerators. And by best, Ian meant the most totally disgusting and gag inducing parts. Ian knew Missy was disturbed, but probably not a serial killer. Still, he expected to find some seriously disgusting heads inside her refrigerator, heads of decomposing lettuce.
    Keith looked around, just in time to stop his brother.
    “Don’t open that!”
    Ian’s hand froze a foot from the refrigerator door handle, which was caked with a substance that resembled yellow cottage cheese with black bugs in it.
    “I have to.”
    Ian was not going to let Keith deny him the satisfaction of seeing the grossness inside Missy’s refrigerator. He grabbed the handle, and as his fingers sank into the funk, he realized it probably was yellow cottage cheese with bugs in it. He yanked the door open, and immediately regretted giving in to his curiosity.
    Ian’s error was in not considering all of his senses first. On television, he was only seeing inside those rank refrigerators. In person, the blast of rotten, warm air that hit his face was enough to make him swoon. He briefly thought of a giant monster with poison breath blowing in his face. Not only could he smell and feel the spoiled air, he could taste it. Many new species of mold were invading his system to fight for destructive dominance.
    As the refrigerator door opened, dozens of little cockroaches swarmed out around every edge. Some of them ran around the handle and onto Ian’s fingers, causing him to let go and shake the bugs off. So Missy’s minions included the roaches, no surprise there. They were only protecting their queen, her palace, and their never-ending feast.
    The door settled into full open position, jostling just enough to cause some contents on the inside shelves to fall and slide out. Everything inside the refrigerator was glistening and wet, also like the inside of a monster’s maw. As for the patches of quivering green fuzz, those were the monster’s cavities.
    Everything inside the refrigerator was bathed in a sickly yellow light. At least that was working, because the cooling system was not. The shelves were packed with food that had transformed through fermentation. All packaging had erupted