A Funky Dresser

Leave it on the curb, or donate it. I don't care.

Maddie almost dropped the can of varnish when her phone buzzed.

"Nix. Hi."

"Hey, birthday girl. I'm gonna be there in five – you decent?"

"Just gotta get my shoes on."

The mirror sitting atop the vanity Maddie had spent the weekend sanding and finishing belied her words: she saw a mop of dark hair a-frizz, a flushed face a-smudge, and the pits of her work shirt were dark with honest sweat.

Nicky laughed. "Drop the paintbrush, Mads! It's not that serious."

"Of course not. It's only my career. Not like it's some yard sale or something."

"I am going to be there in exactly four minutes, and before your cake and ice cream you are going to eat those words, babe," Nicky warned. "Now – cue the frantic rush to wash that ass."

Maddie rushed through the house and down the hallway to her little rented room, ignoring the critical looks from the harpies she lived with. Becca and Annemarie were far from her ideal roommates but she'd thrown her lot in with the sorority sisters because they hadn't objected to Maddie commandeering the dinky garage as a workspace.

"Salem! Shake a paw, baby," she told the black ball of fur curled up on her bed.

Her kitty gave her a long-suffering look, then surrendered the T-shirt he'd been using as a pillow. Maddie snagged a less thrashed pair of jeans than she currently wore from her closet and shucked her work gear. In the bathroom she hit the hot spots. She took a whiff – good enough, at least for a day outside.

The doorbell rang. She splashed water on her face, ran her fingers through her hair then ran back through the house, bisecting the meeting of the Royal Society of Uppity Bitches Becca was hosting in the living room and enduring all the snark such a grave transgression entailed.

"Hey babe," Nicky said when Maddie opened the door. "You look... well, it's good to see you.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. Nix dropped jaws without even making an effort – all long legs, golden locks, and dazzling smiles. Maddie restored furniture for a living and her hands were skilled at making things beautiful too, she just found it impractical to waste time doing it to herself.

"So, where are we going?" she asked as they got in Nicky's car.

"Didn't I tell you?"

"Tell me the super important, super secret birthday surprise you've been torturing me about for weeks? The one I put three clients on hold for? No, I think I'd remember."

"You work too hard," Nicky laughed. "It's really no big deal. We don't have to go, if you'd rather stay here and paint someone's chest of drawers."

"Don't be jealous, Arby's. I hear you have the meats."

"Look at Miss Entrepreneur, all sass and kicking my ass," Nicky said. "I happen to think your little wood shop of horrors is the shit, dearest, which is why I pried you out from under your rock – to help."

"Help how?"

"See, there's this guy–"

"Oh hell, Nix! I'm not going to meet some guy – like this!"

"I agree you fail the smell test, but we'll crack a window. I promise you he won't notice."

"I'm swooning already. Who is he?"

"Rey something. Some movie guy."

"A movie guy? What do we know him from?"

"I don't know him from anything, but you're into that weird shit so probably plenty."

"This just gets better and better. Are you trying to make me jump out the door?"

"We're only doing thirty, babe. Just stop, drop, and roll."

"That's if I'm on fire, Nix. Tell me who this weird shit movie guy you don't know is or I'm screaming 'kidnapper' the next time you stop."

"I honestly forgot his name. Wait, I remember," Nicky said. "It was something funny. Noring! Like he's not married. That's what it made me think of – no ring.”

"Rey Noring!" Maddie gaped.

"What, you've heard of him?"

"Rey Noring is only the most amazing, most edgy movie makeup artist of all time! He's famous!"

"He's not famous if only you know who he is."

Maddie couldn't deny that the master behind some of the most gut-churning, toe-curling B flicks to splash buckets of blood across her teenage years had never received the accolades she felt he deserved. Even on the message boards she haunted hers was the minority opinion, but only because most of Noring's detractors were boors.

"He's famously obscure."

"Riiight. His name would have gone down in history, except no one knew it."

"He – wait, Nix, what the hell? Rey Noring is dead."

"How did that happen?"

"I think his wife shot him or something."

"Oof – should've stuck with the no ring thing," Nicky said. "Anyways, I already knew that."

"You already knew the guy you're taking me to meet is freaking deceased?"

"Not meet him, Mads. Just to get some of his stuff."

"What, like grave robbing?"

"I believe they stopped burying people with all their shit back in the dark ages, you fiend. Not that it would stop us – even the pharaohs got burgled. Oh, look, here we are."

Maddie saw a hand written paper sign taped to a light pole outside her window: 'Estate Sale Today Only.'

"Gee, fancy place," Nicky said. "All that obscurity must have really paid off. Excuse me sir, are you the valet?"

Maddie turned away as her friend mortified her. She yanked Nicky's arm, pulling her away. "Nix! That's just some burnt out homeless guy."

"He could be both. Sir?"

The ragged man sitting against the chain link fence wrapped in a stained sheet stared right through them, his eyes glazed and his face corpse white. He barely breathed, but as they scooted past him Maddie caught a whiff and almost gagged – way worse than her work sweat funk. The guy reeked like week old meat left out in the summer sun.

"I hope he doesn't steal my car," Nicky whispered as they approached the driveway where the property had been arranged. Less of an estate sale than a garage sale, Maddie thought, but since her bank account wouldn't stand up in a bidding war over some posh manor's leave-behinds maybe it wasn't the worst thing in the world her movie makeup hero had been as much of a household name as she was.

"It's a '96 Jetta. It's not worth the gas you put in the tank."

"Mean. That lady looks like she's running the show."

"Probably. She's the only one here."

They walked up to a frazzled woman with a thousand yard stare who sat in a folding chair minding a dented metal cash box. A cigarette hung forgotten from her lip and her face looked flushed. She only stirred when Nicky cleared her throat.

"Help you?" she rasped.

"Are you managing the estate?"

"Estate, that's a laugh," the woman scoffed. "It's my brother's place. His junk, if you ask me, but somebody's gotta pay the bills he left behind and some folks like this kitschy crap. Feel free to browse. The name's Janine."

"Does there happen to be any furniture, Janine?"

"In the garage, if anything's left. The good stuff already grew legs. My brother was a kook, but his wife had decent taste."

"His wife," Nicky mused. Maddie cringed, but Nix never shied away from a juicy morsel of gossip. "I heard she... well, you know."

"Tabloid schlock," Janine said, then broke off into a coughing fit. "Goddamn summer colds."

"So it's not true she murdered him?"

"Loved each other all night and day long, those two did, and never mind what the papers say.”

"So – what did happen?"

"It was my brother that spent his time with the ghouls, not me." Janine took a drag on her Pall Mall and slumped. "You find something you want to cart off, give a holler."

"I always heard Hollywood did strange things to people," Nicky said as they browsed rows of cardboard boxes filled with random household crap. "Too bad it didn't do them to her."

"Oh, be nice. She's in mourning."

"Yeah, she seemed crushed. Shit, Mads – if I'd've known it was only going to be your boy’s plates and pillowcases I wouldn't have dragged you out here. This is sad enough to make me start mourning, too."

Maddie laughed, but she couldn't deny she'd hoped for a lot more. "Maybe the studios kept all his props and models, his private notebooks and patented designs, the killer ideas he dreamed up but never got to pitch."

"That, or the early birds cleaned him out," Nicky opined. "You want to get lunch or something? Just being here is making me want to eat my feelings. Anything but Arby's, my treat."

"This was a big house. There should at least be some tables and chairs. Where's his furniture?"

"The old battleaxe said try the garage. You think Mr. Noring left his favorite long-lost niece a table you can spiff up and sell?"

"I hope so. Becca wants another two hundred a month for the garage even though I signed a year lease with her."

"That snooty bitch can't do that."

"Technically it's an illegal sublet, so that snooty bitch can throw me out if I make a stink."

"So, settle for the lesser of two screwings?"

"Like you said – even the pharaohs got robbed.”

They stepped into the crown jewel on the day's disappointment: a dusty cement chamber empty save for a rickety workbench, some piled boxes, and an antique dining room set. It didn't look like much but Maddie still hoped to unearth a treasure amongst the trash.

"This doesn't look too bad," she said as she knelt to inspect the table. "It's old, and nobody's given it much love in a long time, but with a few coats of stain – oof!"

"What oof – ooh!" Nicky gagged.

Maddie took shallow breaths from behind the crook of her arm, fighting the urge to chuck her guts. Her friend staggered to the far corner and grabbed a bucket sitting on top of a box buried in used drop cloths. Even once the sour smell of a spoiled refrigerator abated, Nicky's theatrical dry heaves threatened to send Maddie's gorge into a sympathetic death spiral.

"What..the hell's..that smell," Nicky wheezed.

"It's not going to come out of the wood, whatever it is," Maddie said. "I'm ready to call time of death – wait, what's that?"

Nicky looked down at the wooden foot sticking out from beneath the sheet draped over what Maddie had thought was just a cardboard box. They moved as far away from the rank table as the tiny space permitted, then whisked the sheet away.

"Well," Nicky said. "That... is the ugliest nightstand I've ever seen in my life."

The dresser stood tall enough to serve as a bedside table, a squat little rectangle with three oblong drawers. The wood had an odd greyish-green hue Maddie couldn't place. The whorls of the grain made it hard for her eye to follow the lines of the dresser's edges. A pair of knots, one offset at the front right corner and another on the top on the left, gave her the uncanny impression that the pallid little box had eyes.

"I think it's cute."

"Babe, you must still be brain dead from the fumes."

Maddie rolled the drawers out. All three creaked horribly, begging to be oiled. The bottom drawer looked as if someone had stained the interior crimson.

"Paint?" Nicky wondered.

"What if this was Rey Noring's makeup chest? Maybe his stage blood spilled."

"Sure. Mads, I don't think even you could make this hunk of junk worth your time."

"Challenge accepted." She tried to heft it, then grunted. "It must be oak. It weighs a ton. Give me a hand."

Nicky sighed, but she took hold around the open drawer well. "On three. One, two – ow!"

She jerked back and looked at her hand. "Shit, the damn thing bit me."

"Are you OK?"

A jagged scrape across Nicky's palm drooled a fat bead of blood. She sighed again and wrapped a scarf around it as Maddie ran a cautious finger along the inside of the dresser. She couldn't find any splinters or rough spots – the interior felt uncannily smooth, slick even. That would save her the trouble of sanding it.

"Let's try this again."

Nicky scowled. "I really don't like this thing."

"Come on. It's my birthday, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah. Cry if you want to."

Nicky pulled her weight. They lugged the dresser into the daylight and set it down beside Janine, again rousing the woman from a deep rumination.

"Good Lord – where'd you find that monstrosity?"

"In the garage, like you said. I think it's avant-garde."

"Some kind of garde, alright. I oughtta pay you just to haul it off."

"Deal. How much?"

Janine took a long drag. "I'll take ten bucks. No refunds."

Maddie paid, thrilled to get such a steal. Classically beautiful it was not, but the wood alone could be scrapped for twice that. Not that she had any intention of busting it up – the idea of making a home for something that belonged to her movie makeup hero, beloved by the masses or not, was growing on her.

As they loaded it into the back seat of the '96 Jetta no homeless valet had so much as peed on, Nicky paused.

"Hey, Mads – did you see the side here?"

"What about it?"

"Creepy, is all. Look, in the light."

The grain of the wood flowed in a peculiar pattern that reminded Maddie of nothing so much as one iconic image she'd know anywhere even if she hadn't minored in art history.

"Whoa. It looks like The Scream."

"So you see it too. Don't you think that's freaky?"

"Freaking awesome, more like."

"Rey Noring missed his match, shacking up with that wife of his instead of you."

"He had to have been in his sixties. He's been making movies since 1984."

"Well – at least they died together."

Maddie frowned. "What makes you think she's dead?"

"Why do you think people have estate sales? Besides," Nicky said, flicking her eyes back to the dresser. "It's hard to imagine she'd just up and leave all this behind."

Maddie looked in the rearview mirror. From where it lay she could only see one of those knotholes but for a moment she could have sworn it stared back at her. She found it hard to look away.

"Thanks for today, Nix. This means a lot."

"I could think of about a billion better birthday adventures, but I'm glad you had fun. Want me to drop you off?"

"No lunch?"

"Rain check." Nicky held up her bandaged hand. "I want to clean this up before I get some weird shit horror movie disease."

~

"What the hell is that?" Becca demanded, standing hands on hips in the middle of the kitchen as Maddie maneuvered the dresser on a hand truck from her workshop.

"It's a spaceship. You're in the way."

Becca glared, but she moved. "Why isn't that piece of garbage in the garage with all the rest of your junk?"

"Because I'm putting it in my room. Any more questions?"

"What's that goddamn smell," Annemarie asked, making faces and waving her hand in front of her nose when Maddie rolled past. "Oh God – is that thing full of moldy feet?"

Maddie had worked up quite a sweat getting this beast through the door but she hardly thought it was worth making a federal case about it – unless you were the sort of person who got off on bitching about every little thing, no matter how petty.

She ignored the drama major, and her major drama, and rolled on to glory. She pulled the dresser behind her, careful not to scuff a wall lest the world end. Once she rounded the bend she brought the dresser into her room and slumped on the bed.

"Women can be absolute devils, Salem baby. You're lucky the shelter snipped your goods. Ignorance is bliss."

Salem looked at the newest addition to their room. He growled, then hopped up on the bed. Maddie scooped him up and set him in her lap.

"It does smell a little funky, doesn't it?"

Maddie could only detect it every now and then – a vague mustiness, like a room in need of airing out. She wasn't surprised, given that the dresser probably languished under those drop cloths for years. She'd give it a thorough scrub and hit it with a fresh coat of varnish once she cleared out a few projects from her garage. Till then she could make do with a scented candle and an open window.

"See, schmoo? All better," Maddie told her roomie. The breeze from beyond her screen wafted lavender around their crackerbox living space. Salem sneezed, then curled up in the shirt she'd just discarded as if to remind Maddie that not all funks were created equal.

She put the candle in a saucer she'd been meaning to return to the kitchen and–

"Yow!" Maddie jerked her hand back, dropping the candle. Once she'd retrieved it and relit it, she inspected her hand. "Got me with a splinter, did you?"

She sucked blood from her punctured finger as she looked for the culprit. For a moment she could have sworn that the knothole on the corner of the dresser blinked, but it was only a trick of the flickering candlelight. She ran her fingers over it and frowned – nothing ragged about it. Like the interior, it had been expertly sanded. She could hardly tell it was wood at all.

"You were an ace at more than just makeup, Rey Noring," Maddie said. Some instinct told her he'd made this piece himself. "I'm definitely keeping you."

~

Maddie tapped her fingers on the table at the deli. Her impatience grew with every minute longer Nicky kept her waiting. Her friend had been adamant about taking her out for a birthday lunch, yet now Nix drifted dangerously close to no-show territory. Maddie sipped her iced tea and checked her phone for the millionth time.

She didn't love Nicky's choice of venues, she had to say. She'd already forgotten what this place was called, some cheesy name to go with the garish decor. Everything about it grated on her senses – too bright, too loud, too pungent, too clashing. The people in the booth next to her were talking on and on, adding to the general din which threatened to tip Maddie's annoyance into something much more consuming.

She hoped she wasn't getting a migraine. Ugh. Even when they had their mouths crammed full of food the sorority girls beside her wouldn't shut up. They just kept talking, laughing, smacking their lips...

Maddie slid to the other side of the booth, desperate to get a little distance from the yuck fest. Then she froze – what the hell? The red leather beneath her was warm. And damp. She could feel whatever grease coated the seat soaking into her clothes. Touching her skin.

Abruptly she was done with this whole debacle. She put her hands on the yellowing Formica table to lever herself up off the funky seat but it wiggled under her weight like a loose tooth. She toppled, spilling out of her booth and landing hard on the gritty linoleum.

"You need anything, give a holler," a passing waitress advised.

Maddie opened her mouth to ask – something – but the stench of rotting meat gagged her worse than the garage table had. The waitress seemed not to notice, even though she wore a string of fresh bloody sausages which stained her uniform blouse dark. A Pall Mall hung from her lip.

"The good stuff already grew legs," Janine chuckled. She unwound the dripping meat from around her shoulders and dropped several fat links on the floor in front of Maddie. "You want this monstrosity?"

"I–"

The pile of meat growled, then whined in pain. As Maddie backed away it mewled, then began to crawl across the dirty floor towards her. Thump. Splat. Whine. Thump. Splat. Whine.

"Ohmigod," Maddie gasped. She lurched to her feet–

–and fell out of bed, wrapped in her sheets. The hard knock against the wall on her way down jolted her from the vivid nightmare but she was gripped by nausea so strong she feared she might turn her bedroom into a vomitorium. She made it to the bathroom – barely.

Once she had unburdened her wrenched guts Maddie washed up. As she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror she flinched. "God, Nix. Maybe I have been working too hard."

Her eyes sat in darkened hollows. Her face seemed strikingly drawn and pale. Was she getting sick? She snorted. A healthy soul did not normally awaken with such a pressing need to hurl absent a prodigious night of drunken debauchery. She reached for the faucet–

"Ow! Oh, ew!" Her index finger throbbed. It had swollen like a Jimmy Dean sausage and when she flexed it pus oozed from her splinter puncture. She could have sworn she'd slathered it with antibiotics before she went to bed.

"Better late than never," she muttered. She found the tube in the medicine cabinet and frowned. Half empty? Becca or Annemarie must have gotten into her things, because she'd just bought this last week when a stray nail scraped the side of her hand.

She bandaged her finger. Maddie rearranged her work schedule, assuming this nasty little infection meant to nibble away at least a few of her productive days. She knew she had more jobs than she could handle as it was, but she couldn't deny she had the wild urge to put everything on hold so she could work on her Rey Noring dresser.

Her thoughts skittered out of her grasp. No, it was the middle of the night and right now all she wanted to do was cuddle with her kitty and go back to sleep.

– Thump. Splat. Whine–

Maddie shivered. What a horrible dream. She couldn't recall the substance, but as she padded back down the hall those sounds haunted her. What was–

–Thump. Splat. Whine–

Maddie felt her forehead. She blazed. Not just a sore hand but a full blown fever. Lovely.

"Salem," she whispered when she didn't find her baby abed. "Where's my schmoo?"

–Thump. Splat. Then the whine, but fainter. Weaker.

Maddie's skin crawled. Far too real to brush off as part of her growing suite of symptoms.

"Salem!"

Wood creaked. The skritch of claws. Out of the corner of her bleary eye something moved–

Maddie flipped on the light. For a moment the Rey Noring dresser defied her ability to focus. All she could see was The Scream. Then–

"Salem!"

Maddie fell to her knees beside the dresser. The middle drawer stood ajar. Her baby's black tail flicked madly through the gap, the only part of Salem visible as her kitty thrashed about inside. She yanked on the handle but the drawer stuck fast. Salem scrabbled around within – Thump! Thump! – and mewled just like the sausages in her dream. How long had he been trapped?

She braced her feet on the dresser and tweaked her back, but with a groan the drawer finally screeched open. Salem sprang loose, growling like a wild beast when she tried to scoop him up.

"Salem – yuck! Why's my baby all wet?" Maddie recoiled from his fur – slick, humid, and warm like that nasty booth seat. Her schmoo reeked, too, like he'd been rolling in the organic waste dumpster of the burger joint across the street..

"Bad kitty! I told you no midnight adventures," Maddie scolded.

Salem hissed, then scurried under the bed. He resisted all attempts to coax his naughty butt out and the stink only grew stronger. She saw her window was closed. Hadn't she left it open? She propped it wide for the breeze and went back to the bathroom to wash her hands.

Maddie crawled into bed alone. She curled up on her side. As her eyes closed, the last thing she saw was the side of her dresser. She smiled.

It really did look like The Scream. Freaking awesome.

~

Maddie tossed and turned. Her whole body ached and she felt sticky with less than honest sweat. Ugh. And Salem needed a bath in the worst way. Her little rapscallion's funk settled over her room like a rancid blanket. It even smothered her lavender candles.

She needed to get up, but she couldn't remember why. Was her phone buzzing? Shit, didn't she have to meet Nix–

Something peeled open like a flytrap rolling up. A gummed lid blinked away eons of sleep. Maddie felt... watched. She cracked an eye.

The knothole on the dresser fluttered. It rotated to stare at her. Blink.

Below the edge of her bed a dresser drawer creaked. Something slithered across the floor.

"Salem?"

A gentle tug on the edge of her comforter kept from drifting back to sleep. She wrinkled her nose.

"You're a stinky boy, schmoo. Give you a bath. Tomorrow. Let mommy sleep."

Another tug. Maddie yanked her comforter back before it slipped off. Another slither. Tug. Yank. Another blink.

Maddie snorted. Dressers didn't have eyes. She rolled over so she didn't have The Scream messing with her fevered mind. She'd been having enough bad dreams lately as it was.

But... she missed it, so she rolled back.

How long had she been in bed? She tried to count the days but her mind offered her only fragments. Nicky would know. Good ol' Nix. Maddie rolled back to grab her phone.

Blink. Blink. Slither. Tug.

Maddie ignored her irascible kitty and reached for her phone. She found it sitting on a mat of damp, wiry hair. The dresser really needed to be refinished. She put her back to The Scream, yanked her comforter back, and tried to focus on her screen.

Screen. Something scratched at the screen on her window. Salem must really be cruising for a bruising – she couldn't get her pet deposit back if her schmoo tore the place up.

Maddie couldn't read her texts but Nix had been speed dial number one since God invented phones. Her bestie must be sleeping for eons too – number one rang and rang and rang.

"Hello?"

"Nix–" Maddie had called for some reason, but she couldn't for the life of her remember what. "What?"

"Madeline?"

Maddie grunted. Only her mom called her that. Her mom and Nicky's mom. Such a mom thing to do, like calling Nicky 'Nicolette.' What was Nicky's mom's name?

"Nicky's mom. Is Nicky? There."

"Nicky is very, very sick, sweetheart," Nicky's mom said, slow and deliberate like she was speaking to a three year old. "Don't you remember?"

She wondered if Nicky's mom had been drinking. She wasn't making any sense.

"I'm the sick. One. Put Nix. The phone. On it. Please?"

Blink. Slither. Tug.

"Stop pulling!"

"Madelaine."

"My cat STINKS! I hate it!"

Nicky's mom sobbed. Salem licked Maddie's back and she screamed. She swatted her smelly kitty away but her hurt hand whacked into the Rey Noring dresser. She screamed again. She stared down at it, wondering if her fever was getting worse – all the way to her elbow her skin looked scabby and inflamed. Blood vessels ran like crooked black highways under translucent skin. Her arm smelled like her schmoo.

"Doctor tomorrow," she told her phone. "Tell Nix. No deli. Janine's there. Sausage bitch."

Maddie put her phone back on the dresser. The Scream grunted as she knocked her hurt hand into it again. The wood grain felt warm and gave like flesh. Her phone fell, rattled in the wooden drawer, then the dresser creaked. She heard her phone buzz but it sounded as if it came from far, far away. Then it stopped.

Tug. Salem licked her back again. His broad, smooth tongue left half her back slimy. Maddie wrapped herself up in her comforter and scooted further away. Being this far from the dresser made her uneasy, but she really needed her sleep if she was going to beat this fever and fix it up.

Her kitty tugged on her comforter so forcefully he nearly pulled Maddie right off the bed.

"Naughty schmoo," she muttered into her pillow. Her head throbbed.

Blink. Blink. Slither.

Someone cleared a phlegmy throat.

Blink.

~

Rey Noring's dresser really did stink.

Maddie didn't want to admit such a wonderful thing could smell so bad, but until she had a chance to refinish it she wanted a breather. She marveled that Annemarie hadn't already come knocking her door down with the health department and a SWAT team, as prone to overreactions as she was. And Becca–

Maddie's stomach rumbled. Something sour. When was the last time she ate? She had no appetite these days, but whether it was from her fever or that infernal smell she didn't know. She ought to have a nosh just for form's sake..

but first, the dresser.

Once the catty shrews were quiet Maddie rose. She was so sick of the snarky commentary. So sick.. had she been sick? She must have been, at least for a few days. She hadn't had the energy to keep up with her household chores. She vaguely recalled someone pounding on her door. Screaming. A big dramatic scene. Now it was quiet.

People got sick. Eat your heart out, bitches.

Her stomach rumbled again. Have to raid the fridge again. Hopefully something left. Becca and Annemarie were good for that much, at least.

But first things first.

Maddie shuffled down the hall with the hand truck. She dinged more than one wall, but she wasn't getting her deposit back anyways. She ignored the wave of dizziness that greyed her vision when she heaved the dresser up one handed.

Her splinter puncture had yet to fully heal. The flesh of her shoulder and the side of her neck suppurated now along with the rest. She could see her finger bones. Connected to the hand bones. Connected to the wrist bones.

Doctor tomorrow.

First things first.

~

Maddie lay on the concrete garage floor beside the Rey Noring dresser. She'd had to wedge it between all the other furniture crowding her workspace – all her clients, waiting for her to get over this silly little fever of hers. She needed to let them know she was a smidge behind schedule, only she hadn't seen her phone in eons.

Salem licked her foot. She hadn't seen her kitty in eons either. She lifted her head. Neckbones creaked.

"Baby wanna cuddle?" No answer. "Schmoo?"

All Maddie saw was The Scream, only it wasn't on the Rey Noring dresser. Or rather, not only on it. Her movie makeup hero had been some kind of master artisan. The dresser itself undulated around that existential shriek, making the visage appear alive. Maddie shrieked too, but only a croak ribbeted out of her ravaged throat.

Doctor tomorrow.

"S'lem." No answer. "No bath. Prom's. Jus' come. Mommy."

No answer.

Maddie ought to get up, but the cool concrete soothed her fevered flesh. Just a little nap, then back to bed.

Doctor tomorrow.

Blink. Blink. A heavy creak.

Really need to oil those drawers. First things first.

Something slithered.

Oil the drawers tomorrow. Then the doctor. Then birthday lunch with Nix.

Salem's tongue snaked around Maddie's ankle, tightening like a vise. Her ankle bones creaked like a drawer on a Rey Noring dresser. She giggled.

Tug. Maddie slid across the concrete. She murmured for her kitty to knock it off but he'd become quite the obstinate little schmoo as of late.

Tug. Maddie slid another few inches across the concrete. Her foot touched wood. Creak. Her foot touched something wet.

Salem nibbled her heel.

"Bad kitty. You bite too hard."

Salem kept being a very bad kitty, and smacking his lips like a no manners sorority bitch.

~

"Good heavens – what is that abominable smell," Alice Crow gasped, holding her hand over her nose and mouth.

"Probably spoiled food. The power's been off for weeks," said her maintenance man Jacques. He opened the refrigerator, then hastily closed it back up. "Oh yeah. The damn thing's full of sausages."

"Rebecca and her friend were such lovely young ladies," Alice lamented. "I never dreamed they'd end up being so irresponsible. It breaks my heart."

She'd rented to the two sorority sisters for a year and a half with nary a problem. Only over the summer had the girls become delinquent, as well as fallen behind in keeping up the property. Once they'd failed to return Alice's increasingly anxious calls she'd summoned Jacques to take the lock off the door.

Yet she still couldn't believe the abysmal state of her rental property.

"Looks like they skipped out at least a month ago," Jacques observed as they peered into the bedrooms.

These at least were cleaner than the kitchen, but the carpets were rank and the hallway walls had been smeared with grease and gouged all the way to the garage. A third room held the obvious signs of the girls violating Alice's strict no pets rule as well as her prohibition against sublets.

"What happened to the screen, I wonder?" She scowled at the shredded remains.

"Probably the cat." Jacques nudged the overflowing litter box. "My guess is the poor fella clawed his way out after he got tired of waiting for his mistress to fill up his food dish."

"I expect he's better off – anyone who would abandon their animal doesn't deserve to have one. But isn't it strange that they've left behind so much property? Even their computers…”

"You know they say technology is disposable these days." Jacques' eyes roamed the scene for a long moment. "Foul play, do you think?"

Alice considered. Perhaps the police ought to be notified... but an investigation could drag on for months, and all the while this property would sit empty as the kids were coming to town for the new semester looking for a rental. And the chances something truly untoward occurred here must be minimal. Ridiculous, really, to bother the law with such a trifle.

"To me it seems like immaturity run amok. These things happen."

"Ah, to be young again. Shall we check the garage?"

Alice frowned at the bizarre display they discovered: rows of bureaus, end tables, dressers, and vanities all done up in the same grotesque style. The knot holes were carved to resemble eyes, the interiors of the drawers painted red, and the wood stained a sickly green-grey. Whatever chemicals had been used in the process filled the garage with a stench that made Alice eager to return her breakfast.

"Freaky," Jacques said. He opened a drawer, then hissed. "Ow. Missed a splinter, looks like. What do you make of this?"

He indicated a table that had been carved to bear a striking resemblance to Edvard Munch's famous painting. For all the talent it must have taken to accomplish, it struck Alice as downright hideous.

"I'd sooner burn it than allow something so ugly in my home."

"This is thousands of dollars worth of furniture."

"Leave it on the curb, or donate it. I don't care. Just get it the hell out of here," Alice snapped, all of a sudden unnerved. "And for God's sake air this place out. It smells like something died in here."

Dressing table by Gaudi (1889): By Amadalvarez - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9580131