✅She's my best friend (CADE)

21

The grass outside Cat’s house was longer than Jade had ever seen it before. The mailbox was once again overflowing, and the minute she started walking towards the door, Jade was overwhelmed by one of the most putrid odours she had ever smelled. Robbie clearly thoughts so too. From behind her, Jade could hear him gagging and heaving.

‘Ugh, what is this place? Jade, why did you bring me here?’

‘It’s her house’ Jade said, ‘her old house. Now shut up for a second, I want to see if anyone is home.’

Jade tried to ring the doorbell, but it was clearly disconnected from the power, so she instead knocked gingerly. ‘Hello?’ No response. She knocked again, a little harder this time and again, nothing. Jade tried her luck with the doorknob, and much to her relief, the door was unlocked.

‘Oh my god’

If Jade had thought the smell had been bad outside, it was ten times worse on the inside. Turning on the hallway light gave her a pretty good indication as to why. Just in the front foyer, Jade could see how dirty the house was. It was covered in cobwebs and grime. The place clearly hadn’t been vacuumed for months. Years, maybe, and if this was just the hallway, there was surely far worse still to come.

‘Cat?’

Nobody was responding. This house could have easily been abandoned. After all, Jade had been led here only by a hunch. Either that, or Cat was somewhere in this house too engrossed in whatever she was doing to respond. Jade wasn’t sure which outcome she wanted more in that moment. Jade turned to Robbie who was holding his breath in the doorway and trying his best not to look at the ceiling. When Jade looked up herself, she soon realised why. It was packed full of spiders.

‘Come on’ Jade said, ‘we have to search the house to find out if she’s here.’

‘You want me’ Robbie clarified, ‘to go further into this house?’

Jade rolled her eyes, but dragged Robbie in with her anyway. Broken furniture was littered everywhere. Jade and Robbie had to dodge and duck around broken pieces of wood and glass to get to the living room. When they got into the room, they saw the state it was in. What had once been the sofa was now just a mess of foam. The television was unplugged, and when they got to the kitchen, Jade and Robbie soon realised that wasn’t the only thing.

What must have been months' worth of stewing rotting food escaped from the kitchen fridge, making the room a perfect breeding ground for cockroaches and rats.

‘God, Jade, we have to...’

‘Yeah, we’ll go upstairs.’

Jade and Robbie left the kitchen as quickly as they could, which wasn’t very fast because of all the rubble they had to wade through, but they eventually got back to the hallway and headed upstairs. Even though the smell was better on the staircase, it certainly wasn’t a visual improvement. Robbie seemed to wrestle to find the best place to put his head. The ceiling was no good because of the spiders, but the floor wasn’t an improvement; The staircase itself was bloodstained and broken. Robbie settled for barely opening his eyes at all and he almost bowled Jade over twice on their way up.

‘Cat, it’s me Jade!’

‘Nothing’ Robbie said. ‘Maybe we should just cut our losses and find a new place to -’

A faint rustling noise sounded from their left.

‘Shut up a second’ Jade said.

When everything was silent, Jade heard the faintest flapping noise coming from what only could have been Cat’s hands. Robbie turned to Robbie before she followed the noise.