Week 4 Short Story

 

Spring Cleaning by Helena Wright

Despite the state of the place, Lara had been putting off cleaning out the garage for months now. The thought of such a physically demanding task was unbearable most weekends, especially after a long week at her boring office job, but today was the day.

She fiddled around with her bunch of keys, before presenting a little one, almost black with rust, to the ramshackle old door. She slid it into the lock, and turned it back and forth a few times, until there was a satisfying click, at which point, she pushed the handle away from her. It took a few tries before it finally swung open. She thought something might have fallen, and was in the way, but the heavy rain had just made the rickety door expand so much, it was reluctant to move out of position. The hinges creaked, revealing the inside of the room.

It was exceptionally untidy, Lara thought. There were boxes piled up in one corner, filled with seasonal decorations that were no longer used. Against the back wall was a row of shelves, almost completely tangled up in cobwebs, which balanced nothing but a little red toolbox on the top shelf.  The air was thick, and it smelled damp and there were rolled up carpets, bits of plywood, an endless supply of loose screws and nails scattered across the floor, some ambiguous oil-looking substance in a bottle, paint splatters on the walls, even some old camping equipment, all amongst every other item in her possession that she had not used in the last five years.

She got to work under the dingy amber light, first moving everything on to the shelves, then sweeping the floor, then throwing everything that she didn’t want into a cardboard box to sort what she was going to bin and what she was going to donate later, if she still had the motivation to do so.

Half an hour of this went by, sifting through old junk. She was almost ready to call it quits and head back inside for the day, maybe finish off the job tomorrow. That’s when something caught her eye; it was an old chest, that had once sat at the bottom of her bed, when she was a child. It was old when she first got it, somewhat fragile, somewhat decayed, but it was a charming little piece of furniture. It was full of character. Lara smiled as she bent down next to it. It was full of memories too.

Once, it had been filled with toys. When she got a little older it was books. When she got a little older, it was shoes. When she got a little older, old enough to move out, it was put in storage and was long forgotten about.

She delicately unclipped the lid, and took great care doing so, as if it was made from paper. She lifted it up in anticipation, not expecting at all what she found inside.

Her mouth fell open and her hand flew over it. Something inside her felt like it was twisting and turning, as if she was on a roller coaster.

As she stared down, into the chest, a body was staring back up at her. A single dead human body. It was white, drained of any and all blood that once pumped through it. 2 glassy blue eyes stared through her, unmoving, unchanging, unable to even blink.

Lara felt sick. It felt as if her blood had just been frozen inside of her veins. The putrid smell that seeped out of the chest was worse than the fusty stench that already sat in the garage. Much worse. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to vomit. But she couldn’t do anything. All she could do in that moment was stand frozen in place. She had just found one whole dead body in her garage. This was very concerning, because as she remembered it, there was definitely supposed to be two of them.