Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm

My mom has been complaining for the last few days of a terrible smell in her room. She keeps making me sniff various areas of the room and saying stuff like, "See, right there! Can't you smell it? Something is dead in here, I swear!"

Truthfully I can't smell anything at all, but she was bugging me so much I finally agreed that something stunk so she'd leave me alone. That didn't work, though, as she then started firing questions at me.

Mom: What does it smell like to you?

Me: I don't know. Ass?

Mom: I think something must have died in here but I've looked everywhere and I can't find anything. It's driving me crazy! Do you think that's it, or does it smell more like mold?

Me: No, you're right, this room reeks of the grave.

Mom: (Nostrils flaring like a beagle on the hunt) Maybe it's coming through the air conditioning vent from the attic. Go up there and see if you see anything dead.

So, I had to pull the ladder out and climb up into the tiny, spider infested attic and crawl around with a flashlight looking for dead rats or zombies or whatever the heck else my mom could think of. I didn't see any dead rodents and I was about to climb back down when I noticed an opening in the wall towards the very back. I crept a little closer and shined the flashlight on it so I could check it out.

I'd never had any reason to enter the attic before. The real estate agent certainly didn't bring me up there before I bought the place, and it never occured to me to take a look.

Squinting through the dust, I finally located a lightswitch and turned it on. Holy cow, I wish I hadn't!

The opening was much bigger than I'd initially thought, about the size of a largish television, and circled with red paint. An eerie crimson glow seemed to emanate from the center. As I approached it, a terrible stench filled my nostrils and flies began buzzing around my head. I pulled the neck of my tee shirt up over my nose and kept going.

The opening radiated a terrible heat and what sounded like screams. I stopped right in front of it, unsure of what to do next. Then from somewhere inside the hole I heard a deep, rumbling voice bellow these words,


"get out!"



Well, I didn't have to be told twice! I scrambled out of the attic and slammed the door shut, nearly falling off the ladder in my haste to get the fuck away.

"Did you find a dead rat?" My mom asked hopefully.

"No," I said, "but it appears we have a portal to Hell in the attic."

"But no dead animals? What about a bird? A bird might have gotten up there somehow."

"Mom," I said. "Didn't you hear me? There is an opening to Hades right here in our house. This is like, some Amityville Horror type shit!"

"Oh brother," she said, rolling her eyes. "Well, since you didn't see anything I'm going to call an air conditioning company and have them come flush out the vents." Then she walked off. She never takes me seriously.

I had often wondered what was going on with this place. Now all that weird, unexplainable stuff - the fruit flies we can never seem to get rid of entirely, the green slime that oozes from the refrigerator, that time I saw the dog levitating - it all makes perfect sense. I'm not a lousy housekeeper who occasionally smokes to much pot and hallucinates things, my home is just possessed by demons!

It's good to know, but I'm not planning on moving or anything like that, any time soon. Not with the sweet interest rate I've got locked in on this mortgage.

In other news, I'm still lice free and my head no longer itches.