Read Online Hoarder by Armando D. Muñoz - Free Book Online Page B

out TV filled with emptied out TV dinner trays. It was an anti-commercial, the ugly waste of modern convenience.
    The foil dinner trays also raised the question of where she cooked them. There certainly hadn’t been an oven accessible or even visible in the kitchen. She must have a microwave or toaster oven hidden somewhere. He expected every instant meal she cooked was a house fire waiting to happen. And he certainly hadn’t seen any fire extinguishers.
    Keith spotted dozens of record players, radios, boom boxes, VCRs, and random speakers, never a pair. Keith didn’t know what an eight-track player looked like, but he knew they were numbered in this low-tech graveyard. Rabbit ears rose out of the hoard like metallic weeds.
    Dani saw enough reading material to fill a whole new wing at the public library. There were countless collapsed stacks of newspapers and magazines, many of the stacks covered in a white, crystallized substance. It almost looked like a sugar glaze, but there was nothing sweet about it. Dani knew it was the corrosive residue left by dried cat piss. A stubborn tabby she’d had three years ago had frequently left a similar glaze on her bedposts, her shoes, and her cherished hardcover Harry Potter collection. Dani thought that cat had been a pissy critic, and no tears were shed when he ran away. Fiddlesticks hadn’t liked him anyway.
    Missy might be cruel and dumb, Dani thought, but at least she was a reader. The towering bookcases that lined the walls were spilling books into mounds before them, the majority paperbacks. Predominate genres were romance and youth, and it was obvious Missy had a soft spot for big cartoon books with happy animals on their covers. There were a great many grins on display. She saw toys and board games spread out for playing, but they looked never played with. The cockroaches crawling over a checkerboard were playing an altogether different game.
    What struck Will as he studied the living room was the familiarity of the garbage, because he sold so much of it at work. This was Missy’s Mega-Mart. He knew the covers of the tabloids from the news racks he stocked, the brand names of the clothing they sold, and the food and drink containers like those Freshie’s Fruit Punch bottles that were exclusive to his chain. Will was familiar with these products when they were new and prettied for purchase. Seeing the mass trashing of it all, being stomped on and reduced to piles of waste, was offensive to him, and depressing that his hard work led to this.
    Will’s attention was drawn to the shouting and fighting. Audience cheering and laughter greeted the fighting, and seemed to encourage it.
    The verbal sparring came from high atop the tallest, forward leaning bookcase, from a nineteen-inch television with a round knob for turning the channels. Considering how high the television sat, he figured the channel was never changed. The television could not be easy to reach, and it appeared pre-remote control. The TV seemed to be held in place on the tilted shelf by cobwebs alone.
    Will was not surprised that the television was tuned to a Springer-like show featuring feuds between families and lovers. The kind of program where the audience screamed in bloodlust at trailer park hussies and baby daddies in denial. Will now understood where Missy got her bossiness and bitchiness. He could imagine Missy’s power shopping accompanied by an audience chanting her name in unison, in encouragement. Only with Missy there would be no baby daddies.
    Will had another question about the television’s curious placement atop the bookcase. There were no chairs to sit and watch it, nowhere to sit in this room at all. He thought the programming was annoying, but at least it wasn’t a channel of sermons. He did not know Missy to be a God-fearing woman, which was a minor relief. Missy might be crazy, but she wasn’t crazy for Christ. She seemed to worship the almighty dollar, the same dollars it was his job to