He called me one Tuesday morning, as he always did when he wanted something done.
“Darling, there’s a vacant spot on Fifth Street,” he said. “It’s filthy, abandoned, but if you want it, it’s yours.”
“Filthy” was far from being the right word.
I had barely crossed the threshold when I almost turned back. The garbage had been piling up for ages: torn bags, soggy cardboard boxes, broken plates stacked in precarious heaps. In one corner, a pile of yellowed newspapers, reduced to dust, was heaped. The walls were stained a strange color, a shade that should never be applied to a room. A thick gray film covered everything, as if time itself had abandoned the place.
And the cockroaches.
Enormous. Some as long as my thumb. Even bigger. When I turned on the light, they scattered as if I were the intruder.
Cobwebs hung from the ceiling to the floor like rotting curtains. In one corner, there was a nest of something—what exactly, I preferred not to know. And the smell…even now, I struggle to describe it without feeling nauseous. Heavy. Rotten. Like garbage that had decomposed, then decomposed again.
