Abandoned

Great Uncle Todd had lived and died here. The house reeked. The stench of old man, dust, and musty desperation assaulted my nostrils as I stepped through the door.

The house creaked ominously under at least thirty years of accumulated junk. There were narrow paths carved to and from the front door, bay window, a corner with a twelve gallon bucket and hot plate, plus a small spot for sitting on the overstuffed and ancient sofa.

I’d only met him once, just after I’d started grade school. My mom was aghast as Great Uncle Todd presented me with a cheque for seven dollars to start saving for college. I could tell that Unca Todd was not someone like the other adults I knew. He just didn’t fit in.

Home from school with no immediate job prospects, I’d been assigned to clean up his hovel, now that he was pushing up daisies. He’d died in the front room, rotted and mummified among the piles of papers, magazines and trash. It was nearly seven months before anyone checked up on him.

His entire five bed room, three story house was filled to rafters with junk, until he could only live in the front room, sleeping on a dingy cot, cooking canned food on a beat up hot plate, relieving himself in a bucket in the corner.

I’d arrived yesterday, opened the front door, and nearly passed out. I held my breath long enough to crack most of the windows I could get too, then locked the front door and found a motel. I hoped that a night of airing out would make the clean up process less unpleasant.

The left wall was dominated by soot stained brick fireplace, its mantle filled with porcelain and kewpie dolls, and a lone, one armed cabbage patch with its eyes punched out.

The back wall at first looked like it had several small heart and star shaped mirrors on it, but was actually one large mirror, painted over with the shapes scratched out of the paint.

The potty bucket was next to it, and on the right hand wall next to it was a narrow window, which looked to have been used to empty the bucket. There had been no running water here for over a decade, the coroner/funeral director had told me. Electricity had been cut off for longer than that.

Any doors out of this room were closed and blocked by junk, though one looked to have been nailed shut, boards criss-crossing it haphazardly.

The only other window looked out to the dooryard, and was covered with heavy, dark drapes. Empty cans once containing beans and spaghetti-o’s lay on the floor by the window, half kicked under a chair that Todd must have sat in while watching the world pass him by.

Judging by the smell, the cans contents had been replaced with mouse droppings. I picked one up tentatively, hoping the rubber gloves and the latex gloves beneath would keep me from getting lockjaw, or worse. The chef in the big white hat looked sea-sick.

I decided to start from the door, and slowly work my way in. The first stack of junk was newspapers, five feet high. The top date was New Year’s Day, 1999. I adjusted the dust mask I’d picked up; it was going to be a long day.