12/7/05

“Hired Help” Brad Walker

“This, my friends, is the site of a miracle!” A boisterous Hispanic woman preached from atop a dining room table, in a house in Megalopolis’s West-Central District (the “good neighborhood”). Her name was Imagulada Lopez, a native of Honduras, and she was working as a housekeeper. The dining room from which she sermonized belonged to her employer. She was in her mid-thirties and an evangelical Christian to the point of fanaticism. When she found out that she had gotten a job at the famed and mysterious Harlequin house, she was ecstatic.

“It was no more than four years ago that, in the very place where we stand now, the owner of this house, and his wife were kidnapped and murdered! Their son, only ten years old, was shot in the head, but—by the grace of our lord and savior, the Lord Jesus Christ—he survived the endeavor unscathed!”

Her audience let out a chorus of “oohs” and “ahhs”, peppered with a few “Hallelujahs” and “Praise the Lords”.

“And should anyone need more proof that God himself is here in this house, they need only spend a night here!” Imagulada continued. “For this house is the only place in all of this evil city where the voices of the damned cannot be heard moaning and screaming and crying out!” She explained. “And when the day of judgment comes—and heed my words, it is coming sooner than you think—when fire rains down upon this city, leaving nothing but ash and misery; this house, itself, will ascend to heaven!”

The congregation hollered and cheered for a moment, until—

“What the hell are you people doing in my house?!” The owner of the Harlequin house—fourteen-year-old Sage Harlequin—exclaimed, as he entered his home, to find it invaded by a host of strangers, all gathered in the dining room: one of the many forbidden rooms in the house. They all fell silent. “I WANT ALL YOU FUCKERS OUTTA HERE, NOW!!!” And so, the visitors quietly pressed towards the front door, leaving Imagulada—still standing on the tabletop, petrified with horror—to face her ardent atheist employer.

“… I want you out by tomorrow.” He told her, stoically, obviously stewing in his own rage.

“But Señor Harlequin, I—”

“YOU’RE FIRED!!!”

Defeated, Imagulada climbed down from the dining room table, hanging her head in loss as she shuffled off to her room to gather her belongings.

“The job’s pretty simple,” Sage told the young lady that he planned to hire as his new housekeeper, during an interview. “You’ll just need to clean a couple rooms and go to the grocery store every once in a while. Room and board is more-or-less free; you can have the bedroom off of the kitchen.”

“Alright,” she replied. “Just a few rooms? I won’t have to clean the whole place?”

“No, just the kitchen, the parlor, and the bathroom.” Sage explained. “Nobody uses the other rooms.”

“Why?”

“… Just ‘cause.”

“Oh… okay.”

Her name was Rosella Hafferty, a charming, eighteen-year-old freshman at the Megalopolis Fine Arts College. She was born and raised in a quaint, little farming community, about two hours north of the city. She had led a normal and happy life there, but she was a rather sheltered girl.

“Any questions?” Sage asked her.

She paused for a moment. “… Are the rumors true?”

“No.” He replied, without a hint of hesitation.

“So you weren’t really shot in the head?”

“I was shot in the arm.”

“Oh…”

A month passed with Rosella as housekeeper, without a problem to speak of. Rosella hardly saw Sage; he went to school during the day and stayed out all night, doing God only knows what, she thought; and when he was home, he slept. Though she enjoyed living rent-free in a beautiful, Victorian-esque mansion that she had to herself ninety percent of the time, her employer put her on edge. What was a fourteen-year-old doing living alone in a big house where nearly all of the rooms were forbidden, and going out after dark and not coming home until near dawn? Regardless of all that, living in the Harlequin house was easy and she couldn’t think of anywhere better to live or work; there were no real problems.

“OH MY GOD!!!” Rosella screamed in shock, terror, and disgust as she stepped out into the backyard one morning. There, right in front of her, laid a bloody, mangled corpse.

“Sorry ‘bout that.” Sage apologized as he stepped out onto the patio. “I’d planned on getting this taken care of before you got out of the shower.”

“Wh-Who is it?!” Rosella gasped.

“Uhh, Ima—… Ima-something; she used to work here.”

Rosella stared at him accusingly, though frightened and thoroughly confused.

“… She got bit by a dog.” He offered as an explanation, before throwing a sheet over the body and dragging it out to the curb to be picked up by the garbage collectors later that morning.

The incident happened so quickly, and with such little clarification that Rosella eventually convinced herself that she had hallucinated it during a psychotic episode (never mind the provocation of said “episode”) and spent the next several months suppressing the memory of the experience.

Author’s Note: This is part of a series of short stories I’m calling the MEGALOPOLIS SHORT STORY PROJECT (MSSP). All of the MSSP stories serve to tie up loose ends (explain the back and side stories of minor characters ect.) in a novel I’m working on: The Boogieman Theory. Thank you for reading; reviews are, as always, more than welcome.