Mary Lingom was out of her house for the first time in three months for a doctor appointment. She had a bad hip and it was very painful for her to walk. But, she was hoping to talk to her doctor about that during her appointment.

  So, she wasn't there to see the man enter her small and run down house from the back door. The back door hadn't locked for years. Her grandsons had shown her how easy it was to jerk the knob hard to get it to open. But, the last time her son had tried to replace the doorknob, it had made the door too hard for her to open and close and she had made him put the old doorknob back.

  It wasn't like anyone was going to break into her home, she thought. She knew all the neighbors. She had been living in her house since the 1960s, after all. Nothing bad ever happened in her neighborhood or in the town of Middlely at all. She would be fine.

  The man came into the kitchen, the first room off the back door. It was an old kitchen. Mary's eyesight was bad, so she couldn't see the grime building up around the edges of the old cracked porcelain sink, or the way that most of the cabinet doors hung slightly askew on their ancient hinges. She also couldn't see the tiny mouse droppings left on all the corners of the counters.

  "Hm," the man said, frowning at the droppings.

  He opened the cabinet under the sink. There was a single mousetrap under the U-bend of the sink with a mouse corpse trapped beneath the arm that was so old that it looked like it made out of papier-maché and matchsticks.

  He closed the cabinet door with a grimace.

  Moving to the front of the house, the man entered her living room. The shag carpet under his feet was so matted down and dirty that it looked more like dirt than fiber. The living room was one of the biggest rooms in a relatively small house, but it held only an ancient television set and a recliner and a fold out table. Every other square foot of the living room was stuffed with newspapers.

  Newspapers completely covered the old brown couch shoved against the far wall. They crowded around the front window with the curtains pulled tight. They were stacked tall in the corners and covered the coffee and end tables so completely that it was impossible to tell there were any tables there at all. Someone had obviously dug a little path between the recliner, the kitchen and the hallway on the other side of the room. Otherwise, it was a sea of black and white print, with thick cobwebs festooning every shadowed corner.

  From the far corner of the room, there was a faint squeaking noise and the sound of little feet skittering across paper.

  The man put his hands on his hips and his frown grew even deeper. "This is a fire hazard," he said to no one.

  Then, he turned sideways to shuffle through the tiny path to the back hallway.

  The hallway was small and dark and smelled of must and damp. The man reached out to a nearby light switch and flipped it, but nothing happened. The dusty light fixture on the ceiling didn't even buzz.

  Humming, he turned into the first bedroom. This must have been the master bedroom, but like the living room, it was packed to the gills with so much clutter it was hard to see the real dimensions of the room.

  It looked like the bedroom was mostly clothing, but the man could also see magazines, letters, paper folders, plastic tubs, yarn, and paperback books tossed into piles in just about every conceivable location. There was a narrow path that led from the door to the bed, where a small space had been cleared and lined with stained felt blankets and lumpy pillows. It was like a little grandma shaped nest.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Oh no," the man breathed, looking around the room. He was looking a little overwhelmed and haunted around the eyes, but he kept going.

  The next door in the hallway led to a small pink and white tiled bathroom. It felt a bit like the man had stepped into the 1960s. The tub and the sink and the toilet were pastel pink porcelain. The sink was held up with narrow, dented chrome legs. The tile was white with a few black tile borders to accent the edges. There was a fuzzy faux fur toilet seat cover that didn't quite match the pink of the toilet, and there were bath mats of another shade of pink that were turning gray in the center from all the dirty feet that had walked over them.

  The sink dripped. The tub dripped. The toilet was running. Pink mold edged all the drains.

  The man lifted the toilet lid. There was a black ring of mold around the inside. He closed it again, then lifted the tank lid. He pressed the rubber plunger over the drain at the bottom of the tank, and the tank finally began to refill. He tested the chain from the knob to the plunger and found it rusted almost completely solid.

  His frown got deeper.

  Finally, the man moved on to the final room in the house, the back bedroom.

  He tried the door, but it didn't move. The doorknob turned easily, but the door was wedged tight against the jam. The smell was worse the closer the man got to the door, as he pressed his shoulder against it and pulled hard. A thrill of fear went through him as his mind already raced ahead to what he might find inside.

  The reality was worse than he could have guessed.

  The door finally popped open with a rasp of wood against wood, and the sight revealed was the stuff of nightmares.

  "Oh no..." the man breathed.

  The room had obviously been a child's bedroom at one time. There was a single bed pushed against the wall, a desk against the opposite wall, a dresser covered in stickers and scratches. Sports pennants were tacked up on the wall above the bed and a few curling distorted posters still clung to the faded floral wallpaper.

  But all of that was subsumed with black.

  "Oh god," the man moaned, covering his mouth with his hand as he leaned into the room further.

  Every surface was absolutely covered in black mold. It grew on the faded flannel blankets on the bed, over the worn blue carpeting, fuzzed the edges of curling wallpaper. Looking up, the culprit became quite clear.

  "How...?" the man asked no one, at a complete loss to how this could have happened.

  Because when he tilted his head to look up, the entire ceiling of the room was gone, collapsed into a pile of plaster in the center of the room. Water still steadily dripped from the underside of the roof into the bedroom below, adding fuel to an already flourishing mold infestation.

  To add insult to injury, the man could see the knob and tube wiring in the attic through the hole in the ceiling.

  "Wow," the man breathed, stepping back out into the hallway. "Just. Wow."

  When Mary Lingom returned to her home a few hours later, it was dancing with flames.

  "Oh my god!" her son shouted as he pulled his car to a screeching halt and jumped out of the car. He immediately had his ear to his phone, calling 911. Judging by the ring of neighbors standing on her overgrown lawn, it was probably unnecessary. She could already hear the sound of sirens in the distance coming closer.

  Haltingly, pain dragging at her as it did every day and night, Mary climbed out of her son's car. She held tight to the vehicle as she hobbled around the side to get a better look.

  That house, which was now covered in bright orange flames, had been her home since she had first been married. She had been barely more than a girl when she had married her husband, Sterling. The house had been his gift to her, her realm, her small kingdom that she ruled over for the time that she was a wife and mother.

  Even now in her old age, as she moved from wife to widow and from mother to grandmother, it had been hers. It had been hard to care for it, and harder to do what she knew needed to be done, but she had still loved that house. It had been hers, completely and unquestionably. She didn't have many things that were only hers.

  A man came up to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

  He was handsome and he had a kind face. He eyes were big and brown. He looked both familiar, like she saw him every day, and like a complete stranger.

  His expression was sad and his hand was warm on her narrow bony shoulder.

  "I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Lingom," the man said solemnly. "But, it's for the best. The house was a total loss. Even I couldn't have fixed it."