House of Cards (160 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by charminglybeef (View user info) at 2006-10-10 04:25:53 EDT
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"Yeah, all her stuff's still inside; Dan says just go ahead."
"Doesn't anybody want it?"
"Don't think there's anybody to want it. The boys had a look though and grabbed a few things; television and whatever, you know; but I don't think there's really much to want."
"So we're just supposed to tear it down as is?"
"Trash it all; take it to the dump."
"Jesus Christ, Ronnie."
Ronnie tossed him the keys, "you won't be needing these - it's open."
David Thompson stood a long time, squinting in the cool sun and screwing his face at the house before him. It was a sad sight, the tiny patch of suburbia, standing alone in a moonscape of mud and machinery.
"Dan Biggs."
"Dan, David. Look, we got a problem with the last house on the development property."
"Oh, and what's that?"
"It's still full of stuff! There's a car in the driveway."
"Yeah I know; we bought it from the bank like that. Is the car nice?"
"No."
"Shitty. Well, I told Ronnie to let the boys take whatever they wanted and you're welcome to do the same."
"Shameful if you ask me, Dan. Shouldn't we be letting the family clear it out or something?"
"No family to speak of. And for the record, I didn't ask you."
"Well I still think we should clean it out."
"Hey, if you wanna pay the monkeys twenty-five bucks an hour to clean out a house we're just gonna tear down anyway, you're more than welcome. Otherwise, prep it for demo and make it happen - I gotta run."
The front door opened with a nudge. Beyond its creaking swing were the boot prints and drag marks of the boys and their looting. David Thompson shook his head, and drawing in all that he could of the autumn air, stepped inside.
The ceilings were low and windows few. The entryway, barren and dark, coaxed him into the relative bright of the kitchen. Its most prominent feature, the fridge, stood dutifully, but with dignity faded. It was very old. And green. And empty, he discovered. Stuck to the door by magnets shaped like cocker spaniels were a calendar and picture of a dog, aged, and of similar breed, sitting on an impressively-purple couch. The calendar hung below, stuck defiantly on the month of April. David looked cautiously over his shoulder, and leaned forward to read the entries: April second, Dr. Kwong, three o'clock; April twentieth, Dr. Braid, nine o'clock; Dr. Stevenson, noon, April twenty-eighth.
Such hopeless dates, he lamented, and walked over to a tall set of cupboards. He felt compelled to look; someone should care, he reasoned; someone should care enough to know; and he opened a door slowly: nothing. Another: nothing. Potato leek soup, three cans. Nothing. Nothing. One bowl, plate, cup, mug, fork, spoon, knife; all laid out in a humble line. Nothing. Dented pot, warped frying pan. Nothing.
He sighed aloud, vision sweeping glibly through the kitchen, and stepped into the living room.
Through the doorway lay the impressively-purple couch. It was draped by a sheet. He stepped towards it and lifted the corner, discovering why it was covered so: arms and cushions so worn their stuffing burst past the final, steadfast threading. "Better than no sheet," he admitted, collapsing heavily upon it.
Ignoring his duty - immersed instead in his archaeological macabre - he looked about; at the faded walls, the faded furniture; the faded life. Chin resting in his palms and elbows on his thighs he absorbed the room; consumed it and its odd metallic interpretations of cats, dogs, a giraffe; its frugal watercolours of animals, forest streams, deciduous trees in fall; its tiny alabaster figurines of ballerinas and young boys fishing.
Purple drapes hung from flowered, golden rods. Pillows with shining tassels accented the corners of the covered couch. Everything seemed to be embroidered or embellished by the garish, tandem effort: the deep purple, fashionable not even in its days before fading and succumbing to the dust, matched in a marriage intolerable, with a cheap, igneous gold.
There had been care attended to this room, and that made it all the more pitiful. David could feel the loneliness, the empty pockets, the dated taste; that had come here to meet with desperation, and decorate in plastic accessories and sad-tacky hues.
Fake plants. Empty vases. This was someone's life.
This was where someone sat to eat potato leek soup in front of a television that got eleven channels and a rotary phone that never rang.
He rose slowly and walked up the sagging stairs; the expedition, however depressing, felt compelled to push on. He ignored the recyclable drywall; the re-usable framing; the supporting walls; and found his vision to be focused instead, on the sad, worn carpet of the hallway. It lay like trodden grass from the stairwell to the bathroom, and the only bedroom beyond.
He followed the carpet, seeking the end, and most personal of all.
The bedroom was small and tightly-furnished. There was barely room to walk around the open side of the bed, even pushed against the wall as it was. In one corner stood a tall dresser, curling varnish congregating in only the least important of places. Sitting in the corner nearest the door was a small vanity, with an enormous frameless mirror that leaned against the wall and was supported by nothing more than the bare table top.
The room stunk horribly; but hiding high on the air, somewhere long ago, was the faint odour of a woman's perfume.
He collapsed backwards onto the bed, disconsolate, and allowed the lifeless mattress to envelope him.
"This lonely woman; has a lifetime to build and accumulate and carve out her place on this earth, and this is it: a dead dog, an empty house, and potato leek soup. Her life's work really, and here I am to kick it all down."
How close am I to this fate, he wondered; thirty-seven and without children; working this hollow job and fumbling my way through the ranks of women with kids in college.
"Such is life," he sighed, finally admitting to wasting enough time and sorrow.
He was propping himself up, determined to leave, when the sound of a wet fart filled the room.
Startled, he sat silently, and then slid off the end of the bed. "Hello?" he ventured into the empty bedroom.
No answer.
He stood a mosquito's year before his initial fright subsided, and gave way to curiosity. It couldn't have been anything too vicious, he reasoned, and there seemed but one logical source; so he stepped confidently, but with caution appropriate, towards the small slatted door of the closet, slightly ajar.
From some distance he probed the gap with his finger and slid it open violently, jumping backwards at the same time.
There was nothing inside.
He exhaled deeply, relieved, before noticing the mirror, toppling immensely from the shock of his spirited leap. It fell slowly, and shattered into its skeletal remains, revealing behind it, the figure of an elderly woman, huddled, and on her haunches.
He stood back, eyes wide and staring, at the wrinkled form before him.
Nothing of her front was exposed; only short, frizzy hair, the back of her frail arms, and the knobs of her spine, which ran down her like the buttons of an overcoat. Pools of urine and loose stool stained the carpet beneath her, and she shook irregularly.
"Hello," he dared.
She did not respond, but broke into a quiet sobbing, pausing only to gasp.
"Hello Miss, are you okay?"
She turned towards him, opening like a rotting daisy on time-lapse film.
Speaking slowly, through lips cracked and dry, she said: "I am Elisabeth Forbischer. This is my home, and this is where I wish to die." She lifted her head and offered him her eyes - the skin beneath them like burnt cauliflower. "Please leave me be," she said feebly, barely able to hold his gaze.
"I certainly can't leave you here," he said, not knowing what to do. "We're about to tear this place down." He stepped awkwardly towards the closet. "Let me get you some clothes, and we'll get you out of here, okay?"
Strength unexplainable filled her voice: "No!" And she shook wildly, bunching herself up and turning back to the wall. "This is where I wish to stay." She wheezed wetly, and a trickle of urine escaped her.
Pity and disgust swept over him. But more potent than hate, is love; especially amongst acquaintances so intimate. "We have to get you out of here, Mrs. Forbischer," he said tenderly, and stepped towards her, crunching over the broken glass to touch gingerly at the back of her arm.
She shrunk further at the contact, collapsing onto her buttocks. She spoke with quiet defiance: "Leave me. Just leave me. Please just leave me." Her volume grew, and with the effort, came the contents of her bowels, spidering outwards beneath her weight.
"Let me get you some clothes," he pleaded, "and we'll get you to a doctor."
"There's nothing they can do," she said bleakly, face buried between her knobby knees, "and there's nowhere I want to go," she added. "I am dying. Dead, even. But I know no one, and have nothing but what is around me. I don't want to die in the hospital; I will be alone. Alone in death. And is there anything worse than being alone in death?"
She sobbed once more.
David frowned, and felt all at once sad and hopeful. "I would visit you," he offered sincerely. "I really would."
She laughed; a shallow, wet laugh. "You are a nice man," she said, pausing to make room for a cough. "You mean well; but you are a stranger, and my house is an old friend, like Margaret or Charlie," she said, rocking now. The wet floor sponged around her. "Or maybe even like a child," she thought aloud, staring straight ahead.
David waited, not wanting to cut her off. But she remained silent.
"Mrs. Forbischer, you need to come with me," he said with little conviction. He knew it, and tried once again, thinking about his job, and jail. He couldn't let her stay. "You can't honestly expect me to leave you in here, knowing what is going to happen?"
She looked up at him. "I don't expect you to," she said, "but I hope you can." And her eyes went red and cloudy.
"You're putting it to the wrecking ball, my friend. You're destroying it, with everything I know inside. You're tearing down what has taken me seventy-seven years to build. I know it's sold. I know the papers say it's yours, but that certainly doesn't make it any less mine; and with it all, I will be torn down too; one way or another." She paused meaningfully. "Believe me - it will be far less painful for me in here. Far less painful," she repeated. And then: "Please, I beg you: just let me be."
He thought a while, staying on his feet; then sat back on the corner of the bed. She said nothing. He said less. He ran dirty fingers through dirty hair. They sat in the din of progress and destruction. "Alright," David said, coming to the inevitable decision. "Alright."
"Thank you," she said without lifting her head. "Thank you so much."
"God will forgive you," he heard as he walked slowly down the stairs. He grimaced at the words.
"Ronnie!"
Ronnie came lumbering over from beside the excavator.
"Good to go?" he asked, somehow out of breath.
"Yeah," David said, "but there's an old woman inside and she wants us to tear it down with her still in there."
"So, what should we do?"
"I think we should call the police, don't you?"
Police at the workplace was nothing new really; but an event worthy of attention nonetheless. After seeing David speak to them without anger or finger-pointing, most all of the boys returned to work. Not a shovel moved though, as the two officers carried that little old lady, writhing like an inch-worm mid-coitus, back to their car.
"What a crazy bitch!" Ronnie said to David after they had passed.
David said nothing.
"Did you see her, all covered in shit!?" he exclaimed.
David said nothing.
"You were fucking serious!"
He remained silent, and the great pneumatic arm of the excavator dropped into the sagging roof. It pulled away, as it longed to do, and half the house lay in ruin.
The boys cheered; David Thompson looked away; and a few miles down the road, Elisabeth Forbischer shut her eyes, never to be opened again.
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