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.