Stories

Hoarder

An unfinished story about my grandma

“It didn’t used to be like this,” He says it every time we drive this way, “It didn’t used to be this bad.”

He’s talking about different things. The roads here didn’t used to have the same gaping cracks in the asphalt, the weeds didn’t use to outgrow the houses they surround. Not when he was a kid. Back then the whole place was touched with a certain light. Who’s to say if that’s really true or just the insidious bias of childhood.

Either way, it’s hard to imagine the neighborhood as it is now ever being something as picturesque as my dad would have you believe. The sidewalks stretch out empty, taken over by city-wide neglect and age stains. The houses stand untouched from their original mid-60s construction, their inhabitants similarly aged. 

As the car swerves around the potholes my dad points out all the places that didn’t used to be there, gray lots that used to be fields, the Kroger where he worked in high school, his recently renamed elementary. All of them washed with a monotone filter, an oily film settled on its suburban vistas. 

Neither of my parents really left home. Even now it only takes us fifteen minutes to reach my dad’s childhood house. The suffocating nothingness of Dallas a constant in both of their lives.

Eventually we reach my grandma’s place, a dirt brown building with an arching porch half taken over by junk. Little motion-activated lights dot the path up to the front door, the pavement ancient and unyielding. 

Before we go in, my dad always lets out a little breath as he looks at the place, still sitting in the car, hands not having left the steering wheel. He heaves his way out of the driver’s side like a war-weary New York cop, bracing himself for a long battle against dust mites, faulty fire alarms, and his mother. 

The front door is open, like it usually is, a glass screen separating us from the smiling woman waiting for us inside. The smile isn’t fake exactly, more so perfunctory. This person is working, customer service stress lines dot the corners of her eyes. 

This woman is not my grandmother, nor is she someone I truly know. 

A few years ago, my grandma started falling so much that my dad put a camera inside her house. It didn’t actually stop the falling but it did mean we could watch a 24 hour live feed of my grandma watching TV like the world’s most abstract found-footage horror film. Eventually she fell so bad that she shattered some bone in her neck. Now, she has to indefinitely wear a neck brace in a way resembling a high Elizabethan collar, funneling her neck like a dog after surgery. It was then that my grandmother ceased to be an independent adult. For the past two years at least she’s had a regularly changing rotation of live-in “helpers” at her house, getting her groceries, joining us for awkward Thanksgiving dinners. Dad always calls them helpers, although I’m not fully sure what that means. They aren’t anything as certified as nurses, and more often than not their job seems to be to sit on my grandma’s lumpy couch and listen to her complain. 

I resented these women at first, though I’m a little ashamed to admit it. I resented their hovering, semi-silent presence. Of course, these women wanted to be there even less than I did, and more than one quit due to my grandma’s eccentricities.  

I’d met the one at the door before. I think her name is Mary, although I’ve never truly been sure of anyone’s name in my life. Names eluded me, like faces. She’s one of the helpers I tolerate more than others, mainly because of her commitment to not being too friendly to any of us. 

One of the first helpers, who quit last Christmas, infuriated me to an absurd degree. She had the audacity to try to make small talk with me at any opportunity, ask me about any of the (often inaccurate) things my grandma had told her about me (“I hear you’re majoring in geology?”)

This helper had even come to my high school graduation, went out of her way to give me a Mickey Mouse themed card with a crumpled ten dollar bill inside. I had looked at it with such a deep sense of melancholy that I decided that she was the most evil person in the world. I wonder what happened to her sometimes, though not very often. She was too nice for my family. 

When we step inside the familiar smell of the house seeps out of the off-white walls. Cat food and dust. Like a particularly stuffy antique store with no windows. And a cat, I guess. The cat in question darts out from under a cabinet, she’s a white stray named Angel with a thirst for blood. It always seemed to me less so that Angel was my grandmother’s pet, but instead a reclusive, bitey roommate.  

Grandma is sitting in the living room, a wood-paneled monstrosity that hasn’t seen much change since the late 70s. She’s laid out in her big armchair, short gray bob of hair framing her scowling face. I scowl back at her for a moment before her face breaks out in a knowing smirk and she forcefully beckons me over for a stilted hug.

Sometimes I think I’m the only one who actually gets my grandma. Perhaps because she’s a grim vision of what I’m going to be like at her age. My mom says she’s too surly for her own good, but if I was in her position, incapable of solitude, watched and followed every second of the day, I think I’d be pretty bitchy too. 

When I go to hug her, the neck brace digs into the side of my head and she smells like the acidic perfume that finds its way into the vanities of all women over the age of sixty. 

Mary is standing in the corner, a bottle of windex in her hand. My dad has already stormed his way through the kitchen and out into the labyrinthine garage to change her AC filter, the secondary reason for our visit. My brother, newly sixteen and making it everyone else’s problem, has found his way to the couch and is asking after the remote. 

Standing in the living room you wouldn’t know that my grandmother is a hoarder. In here the furniture is spread out, enough floor space for a rug. The junk lining the built-in bookshelf could be reasonably attributed to the tackiness of the elderly. The habit becomes more apparent the farther into the house you go. Cardboard boxes line the already narrow hallway, making you have to turn and shimmy sideways in places. In the kitchen, the walls have no empty spaces, colonized by the parasitic, ceramic wall-pockets that cover the room from floor to ceiling. They’re all empty despite their intended design, existing for existence’s sake. 

My grandma is a hoarder, but not the kind you see on TV. She doesn’t have heaps of trash bags and the bones of dead cats piled in her bedroom. She’s a collector, but beyond the scope of normal interest. In the kitchen it’s the wall pockets, in her old office it’s a battalion of Betty Boop figurines, in the apple room, well, it’s apples.

Mostly it’s junk. Not because the items are inherently worthless, but because she has so much that they all pile on top of each other, in boxes or precariously stacked like glass animals in any available space. There’s so much that she can’t possibly care about any of the things individually, the whole of her house a giant, breathing monument to things she couldn’t bear to throw away, and now can’t be bothered to look at. 

“It didn’t use to be this bad,” Dad’s talking about the house now, or maybe about his mom. He looks in disgust at the space that used to be his childhood bedroom. Now covered in a flood of sickly red apple themed items. The only exception being a weathered looking cot with a neatly folded blanket on it. This is where the helpers who are doing overnight duty sleep, its utilitarian discomfort a sharp contrast to the overwhelming decor of the rest of the room. 

Back in the living room I’m talking with Mary. She’s a solid foot shorter than me, and probably not much younger than my grandma is herself. She’s talking under her breath while my brother attempts to entertain the old gargoyle sitting in the armchair. 

“You know, I can’t stand mess. At home I have to have everything perfectly organized,” She says to me, a look in her eyes like she’s silently pleading with me to save her from this hell. 

I think about the perfectly folded blanket in the apple room, and I try to give her a look that says I commiserate with her plight, and that she’s truly God’s bravest soldier, but I’m not sure it goes through. Faces elude me, like names. 

The worst room in the house is the front room. It used to house a large dining table where my dad would eat his dinners, feeding scraps of food to a cat named Sushi. I don’t know where that table is, maybe it’s under all that junk somewhere. As it stands, the front room is nearly untraversable. From either end, even the most agile grandkid, which I am not, could only make it in a few feet. 

The piles of stuff have no clear organization. Christmas decorations sit on top of Italian glassware, piles and piles of Delft teacups stack themselves next to cereal mascot plushies. At the back of the room there’s a stuffed duckling leaning against a framed playboy magazine. 

“I think we need to talk about the very real possibility that your mother is a lesbian,” I say solemnly to my father as we stare up at the enlarged photo of a Dallas Cowboys’ cheerleader circa 1996.

“That was my dad’s,” He says back pointedly.

“Not much better,” I reply as I hike one of my legs over a stack of cardboard boxes that are blocking the already meager passageway. My foot lands on something that makes a loud, metallic clanking sound and I decide to not look down to preserve my piece of mind.

My brother has made his entry on the other side of the room, and is holding a rabid looking stuffed animal between two fingers like it might bite him. 

We’ve been tasked with “shopping” in the front room, pillaging the mountains of kicknacks for whatever garbage we want to take with us.

There’s a small paper box with the words “JESUS FISH” embossed in gold lettering that catches my eye. I lean over a pile of cloth dolls with ghostly eyes to pick it up. 

“Jesus fish,” I say to my dad, who is currently struggling to reach a porcelain christmas tree sitting on top of a china cabinet. 

“Jesus fish?” He inquires as he accidentally trips over a basket of plastic easter eggs.

“Jesus fish.”

Worm Days are Over

An unfinished story about a corpse and a worm

The tree root digging into my thigh is starting to rot. I can feel the bark disintegrating into the sallow flesh there. It’s itchy, I guess. I can’t really remember what itchy feels like. Like little ants are marching along through my blood vessels? That seems accurate. Itchy is ants. 

The sun is beating down with renewed contempt today, it’s waning interest as it set last night suddenly forgotten as it rises through the sky. There’s a breeze, which is new. The leaves on the tree I’m laying under are rustling and bumping up against each other, their sound outdoing the cicadas that have nearly finished un-burrowing themselves from the sandy ground. 

The bird is back today, apparently not appreciative of the breeze in the way I am, wasting no time in resuming its pecking at my exposed ribcage. 

“What’s it taste like?” I say, pushing the sounds out around my swollen tongue. 

The bird does not answer, nor does it even stutter in its movement. Its picked the last bit of flesh off rib three now, its feathers ruffling in approval before it takes off again. 

“Dumb ass bird,” I mutter.

I’d always said I wanted to be cremated. Hadn’t I always said that? Cremated and put away, have it just be done with. Now look at me, tree fertilizer and food for stupid birds who can’t even answer when you ask how you taste. 

“Dumb ass fucking tree,” I say, louder this time, up into the branches of the spindly oak I’m melting into. The tree, like the bird, must be an idiot, because it does nothing more than rustle its stupid leaves and rot its stupid roots. 

I look down at the rest of me, as much as my fused together neck will allow. My torso isn’t a pretty sight, the birds and stray cats made sure of that. Seeping out of one side of the cavity is a little family of maggots, much more polite bed warmers than the birds. They at least had the decency to stay a while after eating through my spleen. 

“Dumb fucking worms,” I breathe out. I look back up towards the sun.

“Dude, what the hell?” A worm says back. 

Sun’s still up there, still being all sunny and-

Wait, what the fuck?

I look back down at myself and see a much larger maggot sitting where my rib cages bulges outward the most. 

“Did you hear me say that?”

The maggot sits still for a moment, if maggots can sit at all. Then, it says, from no observable mouth, “Yeah man. Gotta be honest, you’ve been saying some really hurtful stuff.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say to the maggot, “I guess I’m just kinda upset that you’re eating me.”

The maggot dips its little head up and down like its nodding, “Understandable, understandable. I don’t think I’d like getting eaten either.” It slithers off my ribs and up my arm, landing where my head has been facing since the moment I died, “But I’d also be mad if I never got to eat. It’s a real moral conundrum. Have you read any Nietsczhe?”

I never read much of anything when I was alive, I’ve always regretted that. I think.

“Yeah,” I lied, “Like, all the time.” 

The maggot nodded again, the movement wiggling its whole body, blood-bloated stomach sliding against the skin of my arm.

“Real depressing guy, Nietcszhe,” It said, “Wouldn’t recommend it if you’re in a bad head space. There’s something to be said about an empty heaven, though. No expectations from the big guy up top. Just free riding and self determination.” 

I think self determination is scary, why should it all be up to me? 

“How’d you even read Nietzsche? Did you get a little worm sized book at the worm sized library?”

“I am somewhat sensitive to comments about my height, if you don’t mind.”

A little worm library with a little worm librarian in a little worm cardigan, shushing little worm students as they cram for their little worm finals. 

I think the sun is starting to get to me.

“Hey worm,” I say.

“I’m a maggot, actually.”

“What’s the difference?”

The maggot wiggles a little closer to my face, “Worms are just worms. One day I’ll turn into a crane fly.”

The maggot’s grubby little face is still staring, unmoving. I turn my gaze towards the sky. 

“Maggot, what do I taste like?” 

It doesn’t say anything for a moment, maybe looking at the sky with me.

“You taste sour, but that’s just the rot. Enzymes and such. Your different parts have different tastes. The fatty tissue around your muscles is mealy, clumps together in the mouth like wet sand.  The muscles themselves are stringy and taste like barnyard straw, trampled by the livestock. Your blood is all tacky now, but when it was fresh it tasted like energy drinks left open on nightstands and rusty metal.”

“What about my organs?”

“Which one?”

I try to think of which ones I still have. I think the liver went first. A grayish cat with a missing eye had run off with it a while ago. My stomach was currently a torn open grocery bag and my small intestine had slipped off somewhere into the dirt past where I could see. 

“My appendix,” I decide.

“Really?” The maggot says.

“I want to know what that fucker has going on, it’s not like it did much for me when I was alive.” 

The maggot goes quiet and I shift my gaze back to it. The creature has turned towards its brethren, all of them swarming and undulating as one.

There’s a chunk missing from its torso I notice, peeking out from its underbelly. 

“We’re matching,” I say, but the maggot does not respond. 

After some wormy contemplation, it slithers further up my arm, landing on my shoulder past where I can see.

“Your appendix,” it says directly into my ear, “Tastes old. Like dried out meat. It tastes like one million years of evolution, the composition of the dirt in a place you’ve never been but that is different from home. Tastes like ash left in the fireplace and the fire itself once you leave it unattended.”

That seems like a lot of baggage for one lousy appendix. 

“Is that a metaphor?” I ask, “I don’t think something can taste like evolution.”

The worm retreats back into my line of sight, “Maybe to you. Human tongues can only taste the present of things. If you ate your appendix it would probably just taste like blood. Maggots are much more observant.”

I try to imagine the taste of my appendix in my mouth. My tastebuds retract and shift as I feel the ghost of wet flesh pressing against my tongue. Imagine the feeling seeping into my teeth as I clamp down into the organ, feel it pop like a balloon and the rush of warmth that would fill my mouth. In this moment I envy the maggots. Surely no one would make a better meal than I. No one’s skin would have the same give, the same pleasant chew to it. Everyone else’s meat would be gamey, improperly cut and served. Budget take-out. The maggots and flies and the fucking cats should be thanking me really, for dying as perfectly as I had. 

“Excuse me, Ms. Corpse?” The sound of the maggot’s voice pulls me from my fantasizing.

“Am I a Ms even in death?”

The creature is back on my ribs now, polished clean and bleachy white. 

“Not if you don’t want to be,” It says.

I think about that as I watch the colony of maggots slowly migrating out of my body. They swarm and move as one, a little tidal wave of yellows and reds. 

“You going somewhere?” I ask, suddenly feeling the coldness of a dead body coursing through me, poking all the way at my toes and the ends of my fingers. My stomach feels empty now without the worms, a phantom hunger cramp echoing in the hole they were still flowing out of. 

The maggot bobbed its head up and down, “Sun’s setting. Wouldn’t want to be caught out here when the coyotes come sniffing around.”

Right. The fucking coyotes. Surely the most inconsiderate of my recent lovers. Skittish and hungry, able to take more meat with them than the rodents and bugs. 

“Are you coming back?” I say, a twinge of desperation leaking into my voice.

The maggot has dropped itself into the dirt beside my corpse, “Oh, I’m sure,” It says, “Y’know, I’ve been reading some great stuff about dealing with death, I’ll bring it in the morning for you to read. Anne Lamott will change your whole outlook, really enlightening stuff.” 

“Whatever, worm,” I say, “Do what you want. You’re probably a hallucination anyway.”

“Maybe you’re the hallucination. Can you prove that you’re real.”

“Fuck you.” 

The maggot shakes its head in disapproval before slithering off to follow its brethren. 

—

At night everything seems to slow. The vestigial instinct to pass the time with sleep prickling at the back of my prefrontal cortex, confused and upset that we’re not currently unconscious. It puts up a fight, kicks up dust between my neurons, tries to punish me with extreme boredom. It stretches out the minutes into hours, the hours into years. 

It’s not as if there’s a slow of activity in the micro ecosystem of my cadaver. With the retreat of the maggots and other midday bugs comes the less handsome scavengers, more cowardly and secretive. 

With all this time to think I find myself wondering why they’ve avoided my face. 

Is it so unappealing? Wanting for excess flesh perhaps, at least in comparison to the rest of me. But they have picked the flesh off my brittle phalanges, have attacked my ankles with seemingly endless vigor. Is there something unappetizing about a face? Is the meat not the same? Maybe they appraise the different cuts of meat as humans do. I suppose we rarely eat the face outside of certain delicacies. I think maybe when we eat the thighs or stomach or bones we only eat part of the animal. But the face is the stand in for the whole. When you eat the face you eat the person.  

Little bastards. Like I’m unworthy of being eaten.