3818

3818 was sinister. People who walked past it averted their eyes from it as if they were in a nightmare; wanting desperately to know what horrors lay in wait inside, yet the primeval terror in the pit of their stomach fought to maintain reason and control of the ghoulish curiosity. Sedimentary junk littered the lawn like rusty Jenga. The smell resembled rotting artichokes and cat urine. The elderly hermit refused to talk to people, showing them the middle finger when they asked him to do something about the eyesore of the block. His entire body matched his house: ramshackle, tumbledown, teetering. The mailman refused to put mail in his box at the front door and left it under the windshield wiper blade on a van that no longer had tires. The impatient neighborhood caviled and walked around in a tight-lipped rage, waiting for the crusty sourpuss to die. He held onto life as dearly as anyone else, however, living in his beloved squalor that concealed the body of his wife, dead for seven years now, mouldering in the basement.