by Tim Greaton
he was breaking and entering, Zachary stepped inside and heard paper crumpling under his feet. It was pitch black and something smelled rotten. If he’d had an extra hand, he would have held his nose. Unfortunately, his good hand was needed to run along the wall in search of a light switch. He fought the urge to gag when his fingers touched several sticky spots before finally settling on some sort of a knob. He turned it.
Suddenly, light flooded the garbage-strewn hallway. If anything, it was even filthier than Zachary remembered. A corridor, ankle deep in trash, led off to the left, probably a side entrance to the store. Rising out of the trash to the right was the stairway, also buried in garbage. Kicking several newspapers and bags out of the way, he felt his foot land on something soft and sticky. He lifted his sneaker and found the remains of a jelly donut hanging from the sole. It didn’t look old enough to be causing the terrible smell. Something else, maybe several somethings, must have been rotting under all the mess. He used one of the empty bags on the floor to wipe the worst of the jelly and off his shoe.
Right then, Zachary wished he could turn and leave. But to where?
Lacking any option, he climbed the narrow stairway covered in old paper, empty pastry boxes, and dirty clothes. How could anyone live like this, he wondered? Making a face, he kept his good hand on the rail, kicked the trash aside as best he could and somehow managed to wade all the way up the stairs. There, on the top step, he found a crushed chocolate cream donut, and on the wall above it a slimy frosting ring where it must have hit before falling onto the stairs.
Zachary’s stomach lurched.
Averting his eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths, he knocked on the door.
“One minute, Sweetie,” came a woman’s voice. “Just one minute.”
She sounded friendlier than Zachary remembered from the last time he’d heard her on the phone more than two years before. Shuffling, scraping and grunting noises came from the other side of the door. Worried that some animal might spring out at him, Zachary backed down one step.
“I’ll be right there, Honey Pie,” came the pleasant voice again.
As the shuffling and scraping got louder, Zachary backed down another step. There was one last grunt like a large animal getting ready to charge, then the door swung inward.
“I’m so happy to see you, Honey Pie!” Madame Kloochie exclaimed.
She was even bigger than Zachary remembered and in the dim hallway light he could see her face was so thickly coated in makeup that it looked like a kid’s paint project. Her brilliant orange hair (which he he remembered being blue the last time he’d seen her) looked like it hadn’t been combed in months. Zachary looked past her to see his memory about that had been right. The apartment floor and what might have been furniture beyond were just as covered with garbage as the hallway. Zachary could see the path she had cleared to the door.
The stench wafting out at him was even worse than the hallway.
“Where’s that wonderful uncle of yours?” she asked.
“I’m alone,” Zachary said, fighting his gag reflex.
Madame Kloochie’s face scrunched. She peered further down the stairs.
“Then how’d you get here?” she asked, the sweetness draining from her voice.
“Uncle Ned did bring me,” Zachary said. He didn’t bother to mention he had stolen a truck to do it.
“Oh, good!” Madame Kloochie exclaimed. “I haven’t seen Neddy in years. Where is that luscious mass of muscles?”
“He left already.”
Zachary tried to take only short breaths but the horrible smell wasn’t getting any better. How could he manage to breathe, forget live, in a dump like that.
“Neddy left?”
“He was in a hurry,” Zachary explained. Of course, anyone that knew his uncle would know he was always in a hurry.
“That coward!” Madame Kloochie exclaimed, all evidence of friendly now gone from her voice. “He’s afraid of a good woman, that’s his problem!”
Zachary backed down another step.
“And where do you think you’re going?” she asked, her thickly eyelined eyes focusing on him.
“Maybe I should bring my stuff up,” he forced himself to say, all the while wondering if he’d be better off living out in the woods someplace. Besides, without using a bulldozer first, where would he put his things?
She stabbed what looked to be a frosting covered finger at him.
“Every last scrap had better come up here,” she said. “Because if you leave anything in front of my store, I will sell it. Do you understand me? I-WILL-SELL-IT!”
Zachary nodded.
“You get the room off the dining room,” Madame Kloochie said. “It’s a little cluttered, but that’s your problem.”
Zachary wanted to run for fresh air but paused to make sure she was done talking.
Her eyes narrowed and her hands went to her wide hips.
Zachary waited.
“Are you a meathead?” she asked. “Because I’ve got no use for meatheads around here.”
Zachary shook his head. Maybe he should have said something else, but he got the impression she wasn’t done talking. So they stared at each other for a few seconds.
“Yep, a meathead!” she finally said, ducking inside and slamming the door.
More confused than angry, Zachary knocked again.
“No meatheads allowed!” she said. He heard her giggle after she said it.
Zachary had had enough! After everything he’d been through in the previous twenty-four hours, the last thing he needed was some crazy old weirdo playing mind games and slinging insults.
“I didn’t even want to come here!” he said so loudly it surprised even him. He couldn’t remember ever being intentionally rude to an adult, but somehow it felt right at that moment. “So you can either let me in or I’ll hitchhike back to Boston. Either way, I don’t give a crap what you decide!”
He paused, wondering if there was any chance he could find his father or his uncle. Truthfully, he doubted it.
Madame Kloochie opened the door and grinned.
“Okay, so maybe you’re not a meathead. You can bring your things up. But do it quickly, and when you’re done, I want you to scrape off that rocket fuel.” She pointed to the frosting ring on the wall. “And don’t forget the donut on the stairs, either.”
He almost asked her “Which one?” before she turned and shuffled across her trash-filled floor.
15) Neighbor Falls, Pills Die
It took the two new friends five trips each to carry all the boxes and suitcases up the stairs and into the disgusting room that Madame Kloochie let him use as a bedroom. The job would have gone a lot easier if they hadn’t been forced to wade through two feet of garbage and dirty clothes and if Bret hadn’t vomited on their way up the stairs the third time. Apparently he was as sickly as he looked and had no tolerance for bad odors which obviously meant he never should have entered a trash heap like Madame Kloochie’s house.
Zachary brought his box to the top of the stairs then hurried back down to grab the heavy suitcase from Bret. When he deposited it on top of what looked to be several weeks of dirty clothes on the living room floor, he glanced over at Madame Kloochie who was perched atop her garbage-strewn couch.
“Skinny kid should be more careful about what he eats,” she said.
Ignoring her, Zachary hurried back down to see his new friend lean against the railing and puff on an inhaler. Zachary grabbed several loose newspapers they had earlier kicked out of the way and used them to cover the vomit mess his friend had made. Not having seen any remotely clean towels anywhere in Madame Kloochie’s apartment, Zachary pulled off his tee shirt and offered it to his new friend. Bret shook his head and wiped a few speckles of barf from his lips with the back of his hand. Fortunately, he hadn’t gotten much on his clothes and only had a few splatter marks on the tips of his shiny black shoes.
“N-No, it’s okay,” he said, waving the tee shirt away. “I-I’ll clean my sho
es with th-th-the papers. I just have a weak stomach s-s-sometimes.”
“You should probably get some fresh air,” Zachary suggested.
He grabbed Bret’s elbow and helped him down the stairs. Zachary was shocked at how little meat or muscle there was. The thin boy’s arm consisted basically of bones covered with skin. He might have given the skeletal nurse from Doctor Gefarg’s clinic a challenge for thinnest frame. They had only been outside long enough for Zachary to pull his shirt back on, when Bret lifted another box, ready to carry it upstairs.
“What are you doing?”
“H-h-helping.”
“I really appreciate everything you did,” Zachary said, “but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go in there again.”
“I-I’ll try not t-t-to puke again.”
“No one could blame you if you did,” Zachary said, and he meant it. He had never seen a more disgusting place in his life. And it was even worse than Zachary remembered from when he had visited that one time as a kid. Zachary reached out and tried to take the box from Bret but the thin blond boy pulled away.
“I-I-I’m not making y-you finish by yourself,” Bret said.
Even under the dim street light, Zachary could see the determination in the blond boy’s eyes.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re a heck of a pair, though: sick and crippled.”
Both boys grinned.
Zachary lifted one of the boxes filled with plants and balanced it across his cast. Though he could live with the aching throb, he hoped using his arm so soon hadn’t caused any permanent damage. But what choice had
