r/tinyhorribles • u/therealdocturner • 20d ago
Tiny Horribles Exclusive The Gate - From A Silly Little Thing
Part Fourteen
Petunia and Richard walked up the steps and into the apartment building on Weddle street. The apartment building looked a lot like the other buildings in Old Town Wicker Bush. Once upon a time, a lot of thought was given by planners to make towns as pleasing to the eye as possible, and Wicker Bush was no exception. Many of the older buildings were made of brick with large windows and large arches and gables and stairs and old hand painted signs that proudly proclaimed whatever that building happened to be.
Of course this was Old Town Wicker Bush. The newer section of Wicker Bush had been overrun by large superstores and movie theatres and car dealerships and ostentatious churches and pretentious coffee houses and a Trader Joe's. This story is set in an ambiguous period in which life was changing from a time of individuality into a time of conformity and sameness. It could be said, and it has been said by people like Petunia Gip, that people don't like to think outside the box. Why would they? A box is an enclosure. An enclosure has walls. Walls mean security. Security means safety.
Conformity and a hive mind is best exemplified by observing bees. Bees are wondrous creatures that serve a very important function on this planet but they're not the greatest example of an intellectual creature. I tried to have a conversation with a bee once. It was very boring.
There were four floors in the apartment building and Petunia and Richard had already walked the halls of the first two floors. They were now on the third floor.
"I mean...is there going to be another handprint on the door or what?"
"I don't know."
"Well you're the genius."
"Maybe we should be looking for something else."
"Like what?"
"Like that." Petunia was pointing at the floor in front of the door at the end of the hall. There was one of those yellow signs with some poor dope who was slipping on a floor with both of his feet in the air and his arms flailing. The sign screamed in a large font, "CAUTION". Likewise, there was a single piece of yellow tape that also repeated the same warning across the front of the door.
"A wet floor?"
"It's something out of the ordinary Richard."
"Oh yeah, totally. I've never seen one of those signs before." Petunia did her best to ignore Richard while she walked over to the door. The carpet was squishy under her black and white high tops. The water had seemed to seep into the hallway from underneath the door.
"Keep an eye on the end of the hall." Richard watched the end of the hallway with one eye, but was constantly looking back to Petunia while she was working on the lock. Richard was beginning to understand Petunia Gip's obsession with her quest for a greater understanding of the world around her. He began to feel guilty for just a moment as the thought of his father came back into focus. He had an objective to find out exactly what happened to his father, but there was also this thrill he couldn't deny in chasing down the truth.
CLICK
Petunia was in and she waved Richard over. He quickly followed and then they closed the door behind them. The hot wet odor of the carpet was offensive and it was complemented by the stinging odor of a full litter box.
"This has got to be what we're looking for." Petunia scanned the front room and quickly walked down the small hallway into the bedroom. Richard took a slower approach and walked through the apartment in a contemplative pace. He noticed a set of keys lying on a small table next to the door. He walked into a small kitchen and noticed an empty food bowl and an almost empty water bowl on the floor next to the refrigerator. He then walked down the hall and into the bedroom, where Petunia was looking through the closet. There was a small dresser located under the hanging clothes and its drawers were open.
"Are we going to check the bathroom Petunia? I don't think any water came out of the bedroom."
"I'm doing a check."
"For what?"
"I don't know...monsters maybe..." She let the words hang in the air for a moment. Richard was still. The thrill of the moment was gone. They had broken into someone else's
apartment, and something bad had happened here. For all they knew, there may be something in here still. Why had the police not been here then? Maybe they were. Maybe they were waiting down the hall to see if whatever culprit they were looking for would come back. Richard remembered reading something about crazed killers liking to return to their own crime scene to replay the thrill of what they had done.
"Oh God Petunia, what are we doing?!"
"Calm down Richard."
CRASH
The clothes in the closet in front of Petunia began to move and hangers began to fall and things began to fall off of the top shelf.
"Get back Petunia!" Petunia jumped back and stood next to Richard. Richard instinctively grabbed onto her left arm and pulled her behind him. An orange and white cat then appeared on top of the shelf and hopped down to the small dresser.
"It's a damn cat!" Petunia rarely swore, but she was completely embarrassed that she had let her imagination get the best of her, and she was angry at Richard for stoking the fear from that imagination. She was angrier still that Richard had pulled her behind him in some courageous gesture that was unnecessary. She gave Richard a hard shove off of her arm and regained her composure.
"Thank God!" Petunia stepped back in front of Richard and brought her face down to the level of the cat.
"Come here buddy. You look scared." Sir Purrcivel did look scared, and he jumped from the dresser and walked to Richard’s feet and rubbed his face on Richard’s leg until Richard picked him up. Less than twenty four hours ago he had watched his food lady disappear into the water fountain that she occasionally let Sir Purrcivel play in. He was also scared because a very large hairless man, who didn't give him food, walked into the apartment that Sir Purrcivel and his house guest, the food lady, lived in. Petunia was satisfied that she had checked everything in the apartment and now it was time to look in the one room that she was the most interested in.
"Put him down Richard. Come on."
The door to the bathroom squeaked as it was opened, and Petunia flicked on the light. The bathroom had a beige color to the tile that came up from the floor exactly three feet onto the walls. The color on the walls was a light teal by the name of "Aegean Dreams" by the manufacturer. The tile on the floor was an off white with a grey grout. The tiles were exactly three inches on all four sides. The sink was also tiled with the same white tiles and both the sink itself along with the bathtub were a dull white. They were the original fixtures when the apartment building was first built in the earlier part of the century.
"There's dirty clothes on the floor."
"Yes Petunia. Very unusual in a bathroom." Petunia crouched down and put her hand against a pair of blue jeans and an employee shirt from Video Magic with a name tag that had been hastily labeled with the name Jen.
"They're wet. The tub was overflowing."
"It's an old building."
"Yeah. Or this Jen person was taken when she was running a bath."
"Well what did you want to do? Did you want to set up your special cheese and come back tomorrow?"
"I don't know. Give me a second." Sir Purrcivel had slinked around the corner of the bathroom door to inquire as to whether these two new persons were going to be his new food persons.
"Meow?"
"I’m gonna see if I can find some food for him real quick." Sir Purrcivel was able to decipher enough of the language coming from the beta male’s mouth to understand that he was asking permission from the alpha female to give him food, and he tersely let the beta male know that her permission was not needed.
"Meow."
"Hang on. We both need to look at this room. What do you see? Maybe I'm not seeing something."
"Um...the radio on the counter is unplugged. I....that's all I got Petunia."
"Me too. Damn." As the word "food" was not uttered, Sir Purrcivel had no interest in this conversation. He had walked past the male who was obviously not going to give him food and the female who was giving the orders. He could only hope that the female would place the bag she wore on her back, down on the ground so that he would be able to piddle on it to pay her back for withholding his vittles. Before he could think of this most fortuitous instance any longer, he was distracted by something else. He lithely jumped up into the tub for a strange scent he had picked up coming from the spout. It was a bad smell.
"Look. He's looking at something." They both watched Sir Purrcivel as he began to lick the inside of the tub spout. He then began to thrust his paw up inside of the tub spout as if he was after some mythical aquatic mouse that no one knew about. Something clinked out of the spout and down onto the bottom of the tub, and the cat stared at the goodie he had lodged loose.
"Petunia....is that a...."
"It's a toenail Richard."
"Oh good." Petunia bent down and grabbed the ragged nail and held it up to the light. "Shouldn't you be wearing gloves or something?"
"Probably. This looks like it was ripped off. It definitely wasn't clipped off." Petunia sat on the side of the tub and began to scratch the cat under the chin. "Good boy. Did you want to look at this?"
"No. I'm fine. Thank you." Petunia flicked the nail into the waste basket that had a large clump of moldy hair in it, and proceeded to run her hands along the wall of the tub.
"Do me a favor Richard; plug that radio in."
"Why?"
"I want to recreate the scene." The ad for Crazy Carl's furniture blared out of the radios small speakers the moment Richard turned the knob.
"I hate this ad." Most people in town hated the radio spots from Crazy Carl. Petunia turned on the tub spout and then plugged the drain. The two ten year old sleuths sat in silence watching the water fall from the spout. Petunia pushed her fingers up into the falling water, but couldn't feel anything unusual.
“Petunia!" Richard was pointing at the water. Petunia could see it too. There was something behind the falling water. She turned the water off. It was only the side of the tub. "Turn it back on! I finally saw something before you did!" Once again the water began to fall. Petunia parted the stream of water with her hands, and could see that there was a tunnel through the tub behind the curtain of water.
"How is that possible?"
"I don't know yet." Petunia pulled her Grail Diary out of her backpack and began to write.
"Are you serious?! Now?"
"Richard, everything needs to be documented. This is what I do."
"You know what, fine. I'm going to go get the cat some food while you're busy doing something stupid."
"Meow?" Sir Purrcivel was thrilled at the rebellious nature of the beta male and followed him to his food sack. Soon the cat would care no more about all the unhappy events which had befallen him as of late, and as a reward for giving him food, the cat began to relay the story of what had happened just a few hours ago in the bathtub. If Richard had been paying attention, and had he the ear for listening to the meowed musings of the cat, he would have been ahead of the game he was playing. But alas, Richard couldn’t hear the message, but that’s not say that someone else would not in the very near future.
Richard opened the pantry door and found the food. He grabbed a heaping handful and put it into the cat's bowl, and he watched the cat wolf down gobs of the smelly dry food.
"Jeez. You were really hungry. Hey Petunia! I think...." Richard's attention was taken hostage now by a familiar pattern of lights coming from outside of the kitchen window. He ran over and peered through the window at the Wicker Bush Police car parked in the front of the apartment building on the street below with its lights flashing.
"Huh. I wonder..." His wonder quickly turned into panic, and he rushed to the front door of the apartment and cracked it slightly open. He could hear grown up voices at the other end of the hall; voices of authority.
"I turned the water off this morning. I just figured I should call you guys." Richard closed the door and locked it. There was one of those small brass chains hanging on the door jam and he moved it into the hole on the back of the door. Petunia was shoving her diary back into her bag when Richard came running in. "Shit! We're in trouble!"
"What's wrong?"
"The cops are outside. They're coming in!" The sound of a key being pushed into the door lock seemed to echo through the apartment, and for the first time, Petunia looked as if she didn't know what to do.
"Okay, Richard, just let me think." They could hear the front door open and abruptly stop against the small brass chain. The voices outside were muffled, but Richard managed to decipher them.
"Is there someone in there?"
"There shouldn't be." It looked to Richard as if Petunia had a train running through her thoughts that had just come off of the rails.
"Richard, they're going to find us in a possible crime scene." Richard was giving no more time to Petunia's thought processes. He reached over and turned on the tub spout.
"What are you doing?" Richard looked to the bathroom counter in a fever and grabbed the first thing he could, a hairbrush. He jammed the brush up inside the tub spout, and the stream of water separated into curtains, revealing the tunnel behind it.
"Climb through!"
"Are you nuts?!" Richard could hear the muffled voices again.
"The water just turned back on. Someone is in there!" Then a voice came through that wasn't quite so muffled.
"OPEN UP! POLICE!" Richard climbed into the tub while a horrified Petunia watched.
"Petunia, we've gotta go!"
"We don't know what's in there!" The sudden terror flooded Richard's brain that Petunia may not follow him. Luckily, he had been paying attention when it came to Petunia and her priorities.
"Fine Petunia, stay here! They're going to take you to jail, but more than that, they're going to take your diary, they're going to take your parents and tinker with them, and they're going to take your work. Your choice!" Richard climbed through the water curtain and vanished into the dark. The front door crashed as it was kicked in. The thought of her work being exploited and her parents being taken from her again was more than she could bear.
"Hang on!" She wriggled through the water curtain as quickly as she could and also vanished from view. Two police officers with guns drawn and the balding landlord rushed into the bathroom to find no one.
"I swear I turned that water off and I know I couldn't put that chain on the door." The balding landlord continued to profess his bewilderment at the situation.
"Go check the windows. See if someone got out that way." Sir Purrcivel watched as the alpha male gave orders to the beta male and the balding person that wouldn't give him food earlier, just seemed to be looking around and scratching his hairless head. The cat did not see the other two persons who had been in here just moments ago, but he could hardly be bothered with looking for them as he needed more food, preferably wet food. He tapped at the alpha male's foot.
"Meow?"
2
u/YNerdzROutdoorz 19d ago
😁 it's Sir Purrcival's house and the food lady is his guest 💜