Jake finds some VERY strange items during a cellar cleanup.
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Jake is angry because he has to clean out the cellar all Saturday long. He had wanted to meet up with his friends. No chance -- his mother shows no mercy. But when he finds some remnants from her past, it sets off a cataclysmic chain reaction.
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Have fun with this one -- and maybe check your basement for any incriminating items no one should find!
Dingo
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"What's THAT!!!"
Jake Czerna winced so hard that the spoonful of cereal he was about to bring to his mouth splattered across the kitchen table. There was so much aggression in his mother's exclamation that it got him nervous in an eyeblink. Irina Czerna was usually of a reserved nature, but Jake had also seen her furious. Then she didn't come across as a middle-aged woman, but as a snarling leopardess, ready to bite a neck. Not someone to be messed with if you didn´t have to.
The scream had come from the side door. He jumped up and hurried in that direction. The door was open, and his mother was eyeing her car, hands clasped in front of her face. The VW Beetle convertible that she guarded like the apple of her eye had a significant scratch on the right front fender.
Irina wheeled around, her blond curls dancing. "That was YOU!" she screamed, eyes narrowed. "I give you my car so you can hang out with your friends, and you scratch it!"
"Uh, no..." stuttered Jake, taking a step back. To his knowledge, he hadn't hit anything last night. However, he did have a beer and had been pretty tired on the way back.
"Who then, huh?" Irina put her hands on her hips and made a hissing sound that would have repelled an attacking alligator. "Do you know how much that costs? At least a grand. Guess what? I don´t have that kind of money just lying around."
"I...I didn't do that." Jake hated how defensive he sounded. But before his mother's concentrated rage, he felt small and puny. "I'm sure I didn't hit anything with the..."
"Stop it!" His mother closed her eyes and took a deep breath, slowly. "I have to go. But this, this has consequences. You're broke, as usual, and you can't take this on. So you're going to work off the damages."
"Work it off?" That didn't sound good at all.
"Exactly." Irina grinned wickedly at him. "I'll be generous and pay twenty bucks an hour. That will make fifty hours of work."
"Fifty?" He blinked in disbelief.
"What's the problem? You're just sitting around at home playing computer games anyway, because you don't know what you're going to do now that High School is over."
"But..."
"No buts! You're starting today. On Wednesday, Harry can lend us his van for the bulk waste. When I come back around six o´clock, you'll have the basement cleaned out. And tip-top, if you please. You can store anything that needs to go here in the carport."
"The basement?" Jake gulped. The cellar of the small end-of-row house was a nightmare everyone avoids to go into unless it was absolutely neccessary. For many years, the basement had been used as a quick storage place for everything that was no longer wanted upstairs. It was totally cluttered by now.
"You have nine hours." Irina looked at her watch.
"But I have a date with Jason and Tick today --"
He broke off. His mother's face was suddenly right in front of his nose, her eyes formed into slits. She was breathing with labored control, he registered. Her teeth were grinding. She was half a head shorter than him, but it felt like she was staring down at him.
"Uh - it's okay. I'll do it. I'm...I'm sorry." His voice was down to a whisper. He took a step back, hating himself for it.
"Nine hours!"
His mother straightened up and got into her precious car. With one last, menacing look through the windshield, she started the car and rolled backward out of the carport and through the driveway gate, which opened automatically. A roar of the engine, and she was gone.
"What a fucking mess," Jake groaned, rubbing his face. His beautiful Saturday, for crying out loud. And that was only nine hours today. Forty-one hours of slave work remained. The hitherto wonderfully relaxed time between High School and whatever was going to come afterwards had taken a serious knock.
First, he munched on his cereal and wrote a message to his friends via Whatsapp. Immediately came condolences, mixed with sneering remarks. Offers of help, on the other hand: None whatsoever. He threw the smartphone on the table and snorted.
"All right. The basement," he muttered and headed for the stairwell. "No problem. I can handle this."
For half a minute he thought about quickly satisfying himself with the help of an online clip, just to blow off a little steam. When you're 18 years old and you never had a girlfriend, when it's been more than ten hours since your last wank, and when you are alone the whole day, this is a logical idea. Almost compelling! He had seen so many jerk-off videos lately, he considered himself a kind of porn expert by now. Wasn´t there any bachelor´s degree out there based on kinky knowledge?
No! Face it like a man!, he told himself. If you lay one finger on your cock, it will cost you two or three hours in the end. She will explode like a nuke if the basement is in a mess the time she comes back.
With a deep sigh he went downstairs. He flicked on the light and looked around. His courage sank. Next to the stairs was a small boiler room, kept reasonably clear. But the rest, an L-shaped room of at least five hundred square feet, looked like a chaotic maze. Shelves ran along the walls, crammed with boxes, crates, sacks and other things. But you couldn't reach them at all, because the entire space in the middle was also taken up by stacks, piles and boxes, adventurously layered to room-high works of abstract art. It smelled musty and of dust. Two bare light bulbs provided just enough light to properly set off the chaos.
"First of all, out. Everything has to go out of here," he spoke to himself, rolling up his sleeves. In situations like this, it was better to just throw himself into the work and not think too much. He grabbed the first box, which creaked and squeaked as he lifted it, and heaved it up the stairs.
Saturday stretched into a nightmare. For hours he lugged ancient stuff upstairs, briefly sifted through the contents of the containers, and sorted them into different piles in the carport. "Keep" was on the far right, then came "Ask Mother" next to that, "Donate," and to the left, "Trash."
By lunchtime, he had the central chaos somewhat under control and continued with the shelves. On one wall he found old building material, tiles and ancient board games. He moved that, too, into the carport, as well as the dried-up paint buckets, a box of wires and cables, and lamps that looked suspiciously ´80s. His back ached and he felt all the muscles in his body. If he hadn't been going to the gym regularly for years, he probably wouldn't have been able to do this.
He made himself a sandwich and went right back to work. Time stretched into a tunnel of carrying, sifting, sorting and coughing, with all the dust kicked up. This is how old Sisyphus must have felt, he thought.
In the afternoon, he worked his way through the shelves. It was unbelievable what was stored there. Moving boxes with children's clothes of his. A box of his Legos that he didn't want anymore when he turned fourteen. Old dishes, more clothes. A whole plastic box of old, half-burned candles, probably the legacy of several Christmas decorations. His mother attached great importance to real candles, she hated electric lights on the Christmas tree like the plague. Must be some kind of childhood sentimentality, he guessed, remaining from her first years in the old Czech Republic.
Around three o'clock, he had to realize that he would by no means get everything done that day. So Sunday would have to go, too. Fuck! Sighing, he scratched his dusty hair and limited himself to just briefly sifting through the last shelves, mentally sorting their content. Old canning jars. Fashion magazines from the ´90s. A kitchen lamp with outdated light bulbs. A half-full bag of potting soil. Soon he would come across the Nazi gold, the Ark of the Covenant, and Atlantis, for sure.
Finally he was completely through and pulled the last box from the lowest shelf at the very back. Groaning, he straightened up, grateful it didn´t weigh much. His back felt like it was about to snap. He held the find under the light bulb and turned it back and forth.
A wooden casket of some sort with a domed lid. A large combination lock held the thing closed. But when he tentatively pulled, the metal hooks where the lock was attached came loose and broke from the dried wood with almost no resistance. Carefully, he removed the debris and flipped open the lid.