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Rated: E · Short Story · Career · #2298012
An old woman is being evicted from her hoarded home.
Myrtle Armentrout


My job is hard on me emotionally and I am not a weak man. I have been to war and survived. I have been married to the same woman for thirty years. Trust me, I am not a weak man.

In a nutshell? I kick people out of their homes in Esther Falls, Nebraska. I know. It seems like that would be a very dull eight-hour day.

“How many people in a small town would get kicked out of their homes?” might be the question on the tip of your tongue.

Not that many, but each one is a heartbreak.

Take Myrtle Armentrout. Please.

All kidding aside, Myrtle lives at 244 Hampton Road in a hoarded house. I have been sent out many times to warn her. I am here, this time, to evict her.

I asked her to show me the deed to her home--to make sure Myrtle owns it.

“It’s around here somewhere,” she said and disappeared into the bowels of the hoard.

I can hear things crashing down, tchotchkes breaking. Myrtle is swearing up a storm.

I held my breath as long as possible but now, I am ready to vomit.

“Myrtle, how you doin’?”

“It’s around here somewhere,” she says again, from somewhere in the hoard.

I will vomit if I don’t leave soon.

“You keep lookin'. I’ll just be outside.”

I fight my way to the front door and plant myself on a broken slow cooker on the stoop while I wait for poor old Myrtle Armentrout to seal her doom unwittingly.

As I said, my job is hard on me emotionally and I am not a weak man.


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