Cornered

A pizza box spotted with grease here, a crumpled old newspaper there, a bag of assorted trash tossed in an empty corner. One discard followed by another is such a slow buildup that it goes unnoticed. It's similar to gaining weight. A pound here and a pound there isn't noticed since it is just a gradual increase. But, link days into weeks, weeks into months, months into years and years into decades, and the accumulation becomes staggering. The first pizza box morphed into mountains and the conditions surpassed hoarding, it was a super-hoarder's house.


A wet spring ensured all weed seeds sprouted and jetted to the sky to compete with grass in the front yard. No lawn mower touched the growth that was well over knee high. Unpruned trees leaned heavily into the house causing the roof to buckle and allow rains direct access into the attic. Overgrown shrubs swallowed walkways and collapsed rotten boards on the back patio rendered it useless. Window coverings prevented looking inside, but several life cycles of flies had been trapped between the filthy shades and the glass. Dead ones were layered on the windowsill while live flies buzzed the glass as if pleading for an escape.

Peeling exterior paint, small trees growing up through the patio, broken deck railings, and evergreen shrubs stretching to conceal the front door added to the obvious neglect of the property. A relic of a TV antennae poked skyward from the rooftop while all neighbors had cable or a satellite dish replacements. Shingles were tattered, broken and frayed and gutters were either clogged or simply disintegrated from rust. Mail burped out of the mailbox was scattered on the ground.

The single car garage door was broken. Attempts to raise it revealed a broken spring on one side as the door went up all cattywampus. Once raised, unused long handled yard tools propped the door open. A 1988 Oldsmobile that, judging by the license plate, was last registered in 1993 was parked inside the cramped garage stall. Boxes of who knows what surrounded the car and a thick layer of dust buried everything.

Entry into the house is a question mark. Upon the front door being opened, a literal wall of debris introduces itself.  The back door is considered and while stealing looks from between vertical blinds covering the rear sliding glass door, an even bigger mound of accumulation was confirmed.

Name it, and it was somewhere buried within the house.  Grocery bags, food containers, unopened tax return checks, a ham from last year, bicycles, boxed deliveries from UPS and Federal Express that were still sealed in tape, furniture, a cane, bottled oxygen, folding shopping carts with wheels, toys, books, bowling balls, luggage, duffel bags, a shop vac, tools, clothing, food, cases and cases of unopened soda, a doctor's scale, a rocking chair, shoes, vinyl records, Barbies, cassette tapes, VCR movies, and the list goes on and on and on. 

Now take the mix and shake it up really well and thickly deposit it into each and every room.  But, the mix needs to start at the far corner of each room and stacked to the ceiling and then proceed across the room with the pile consistently touching the ceiling. At the front door, there is a low point that creates an elevated path that leads to the kitchen.

Footing is squishy in the kitchen. The compacted path is several feet deep and against the refrigerator doors, proving the still running appliance has not been opened for years. To the left are two bedrooms with contents touching the ceiling and spilling out of the doorway and into the hallway. No path exists into the bedrooms. Any access was buried long ago.

The rear living room has Mount Hoarder occupying the space as does the dining room.  Footing remains tricky on the collection as the path seems less traveled and therefore, less compacted.

A bathroom to the right is occupied with more debris and the path quickly climbs in elevation to the back bedroom.  Squirting over the mountain and descending slightly on the other side reveals ultimate sadness, and gagging stench.

"HELP" is written on the wall with feces. The master bedroom's bathtub brims full of excrement as does the toilet.  A bucket is at the foot of the bed, also used as a toilet.  The single bed mattress is buried under empty plastic soda bottles.

Beside the bed and on the floor, in a tiny nest amongst the vast collection of stuff, is the hoarder, dead.

She is mummified and had hoarded herself not only off her own bed, but had literally hoarded herself into a corner and slowly died.

What's just as sad is that no one missed her...