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Sunday, April 3, 2011

My Horrible Basement

P1012

I had to go to the basement today.

We live in a 100-year-old house. It is in decent shape overall, but the basement is horrible. Half the area looks just as I am sure it did when the house was built: fucking creepy.

The other half has clearly been used by previous owners and renters, but not for a decade at least. And all of it is awful. It is dark. Insulation hangs down, ripped from where it was stapled under the floorboards. An old carpet covers the clay floor. Remarkably, it isn't moldy. It does, however, exist in a permanent state of squishiness. "Squishiness" is a cute word for a terrible state.

I went down there to store some things we don't use but can't easily throw out. Once in the basement I realized the duct that feeds the main A/C vent needed to be re-attached. I got some tape--I actually use duct tape on ducts, sometimes--and a flashlight.

I climbed up on an old folding chair to secure the duct to the vent.

In that moment I was sure every crawling thing in the basement was skittering down my bare neck. I imagined hundreds of baby black widows on my shoulders, looking for their biting spots. In my mind, vicious, mutant rats who emigrated from Chernobyl were preparing to shred my ankles.

And then. And. Then.

I was done.

I scrambled down from the folding chair, sweeping imagined crawling things from my legs, neck and shoulders.

As I stumbled across the stone seen in the photo above, which lays just inside the basement entrance, I realized some previous tenant had most likely laid it there as a warning.

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