Hebe shuffled into her new and empty home, out of the rain. She kicked off her heavy boots by the door. Her precious, little black cat Milo pranced over to her legs, rubbing against them. Hebe smiled and leaned down to pet him on the back.
He purred and pranced towards the kitchen. The house was dark inside and boxes lay everywhere. Hebe had just recently had the power fixed and turned on, and she smiled as she flicked the light switch on and light flooded the room.
It would take another few days to get her furniture in, and she would have to eat dinner on the fold out table again tonight. She sighed. Hearing Milo's drawn out meow from the kitchen made her giggle. "Okay, kitty. I'll fill up your bowl."
She stepped into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Besides some Chinese takeout, milk, cokes, and Milo's food - it was empty. She pulled out the small can of slimy cat food and peeled back the lid.
Milo meowed again as if he were impatient. Hebe just shook her head at him and scooped the food out into his bowl. "You're gonna have to go on a diet, Lo." The cat kept eating - food coating his whiskers.
Hebe had had a long day at the university, and her hunger pains seemed as urgent as Milo's were. She decided on heating up the Chinese takeout in the fridge and eating it for dinner. Once she had finished, she was content and drowsy.
"Thank God tomorrow is Saturday," she exhaled as she plopped down on the couch in the den - one of the only pieces of furniture in the house. Milo jumped onto the couch with her, curling up into a ball of fur by her right side. "We have some work to do tomorrow, Milo. I better tear down the rest of that wallpaper you ripped up in the master bedroom," she eyed him accusingly.
The cat simply nudged her shoulder and curled up even more. "I didn't like the wallpaper anyway," she nestled his furry head, "I think I'll re-paint it with that periwinkle once I tear all the paper off."
She realized through the steady, even purrs that Milo had fallen asleep. The digital clock that sat on the hardwood floor beside her read 9:04 p.m.. She stared at it until her vision blurred and she fell asleep.
The next morning, she woke with hot rays of sun shining through the blinds onto her face. She rubbed her tired eyes and sat up. The clock read 8:24 a.m.. Standing up from the couch, she stretched her aching bones.
After taking a cold shower, she made herself a breakfast consisting of a pop-tart and a glass of milk. The can of periwinkle paint and the paintbrushes and scrapers sat in the corner of the kitchen. She looked at them grudgingly.
She hadn't wanted to spend her Saturday peeling wallpaper and painting, but it came with having a new home and a cat that always tears things up. She picked up what she needed from the corner and made her way to the master bedroom down the hall.
The bedroom was large - with two bay windows and old, worn hardwood floors. The wallpaper that had been put up - by whoever owned the house before - was an ugly choice, with small pink and blue flowers and pinstripe yellow lines.
Hebe had just started pulling at the loose wallpaper when she heard Milo's familiar meow. He stood in front of the spot on the wall that he had chosen to scratch at. She watched amusingly as he extending one of his black paws to the paper and began pawing it again.
He pawed at it and pawed at it, and meowed playfully. And then he hissed, and his scratching became more urgent. Hebe frowned, "Okay Freddy Krueger, enough with the claws. Come on," she picked him up and sat him outside of the door, "remind me to get you a scratch post." She laughed and shut the door until it was just slightly ajar.
"Okay," she said to herself, "now to get back to what I was doing..."
She had scraped and pulled and ripped for almost an hour and had one wall left before she could finally start painting. She found it easy to pull at the paper on this wall, as Milo had already ripped it open.
The paper gave, and a large sheet of it was pulled from the wall. Hebe's eyebrows knitted together when - instead of plain white wall - she saw brown lines etched beneath the wallpaper.
They looked like letters, as if someone had written something. Since all she could see was the bottom of the letters, she ripped off another large sheet of paper. She could make out a few words now, "If he hasn't" was written on the now exposed wall.
She could clearly see more letters peeking out around the wallpaper, so she pulled some more. Another word appeared: "Covered".
Hebe was puzzled. She wanted to see more - to see the full sentence that had been written on the wall. Another piece was shed by her hands, and this time it read "Under".
Frustrated and curious as to what lay beneath, Hebe tore desperately at the paper again and again until the sentence formed in front of her.
She looked at it in awe, dropping the paper that had been crumpled in her fists. The wall now read, in faded brown letters, "If he hasn't covered this up, I'm under the floorboards."
She gulped. Scraping noises came from beside her, and she looked down to find Milo scratching away at the hardwood floor.
