Putting things off was becoming a forte of mine. I could measure my mental decline by watching that spot get bigger and bigger, a dark ring eating through the white paint and bulging drywall, pushing the baseboard over the tile floor.
I should have reported it to someone, and I’m sure the landlord legally would have had to clean it. Doing that would have required me to live somewhere else though, and I wasn’t in a place for all that.
The first time I saw it, the spot was a dull speckled gray, only about the size of my hand. It looked gross, to be sure, but it was a landlord problem. Besides, my other bathroom was fine. A couple weeks later, when I was feeling somewhat energetic, I went to take pictures to advertise for a new roommate. In that time, it had increased to the size of a dinner plate, and had become a deep black in the center. I was concerned, adding it to my mental list of things I should do but took no steps to complete. The fact that I couldn’t get a good picture of the bathroom actually derailed my whole effort at posting for a roommate.
Things had gotten worse than I like to admit very quickly after I graduated college. I didn’t try to get into any labs as an undergrad, which was a mistake I already regretted. When graduation rolled around, I had no plans. A BS from UCSB was a pretty good degree, but with no connections and a bad job market, I’d sent out a few applications and got zero responses. My roommate Kevin graduated and moved out, leaving me in the townhouse with my cat, Walter.
Instead of applying for jobs, I would do a different build in Elden Ring. Instead of cleaning the house, I would binge a new show. Every now and then, I would take a picture of the spot, watching it get incrementally larger, telling myself I would call the landlord. Instead, I closed the door and ignored it, along with all of my other problems.
The smell was my first warning that this… spot was something more sinister than black mold. I was in the living room, on my old blue futon (which was damaged from two of Kevin’s friends having pretty intense sex on it one night) when I noticed a stench.
It smelled like something dead, but with another foul aroma permeating it. My nose wrinkled when I noticed it, getting up from the couch immediately. Walter begrudgingly hopped off of my lap onto the carpeted floor, whipping his black tail in annoyance.
To say that I was bad at cleaning was an understatement. I hadn’t vacuumed in months. But I never left anything around that would rot. The sink was clean, the garbage disposal was clean, if the trash stank I would take it out. I changed the litter box regularly. What was it? I sniffed, moving around the room.
There’s something primal about tracking by smell. It’s a bit of a lost art for humans, something we try to leave to other animals. In this case, I had little choice in the matter. My nose took me to the empty side of the house, following a scent that was sour but also sulfuric. I had already formed a hypothesis before opening the bathroom door.
I flicked on the light.
The mold spot had grown. It looked almost hairy now, next to the shower curtain, and satellite dark splotches were popping up on the other wall and ceiling. In a futile gesture, I covered my mouth with my hand, as if it could offer a degree of protection. Walter slipped in between my legs, and ignoring the mold spot, began to avidly sniff at the cabinet under the sink. I shooed him back out the door, earning a meow of protest.
I was reaching for the cabinet when I heard something moving inside of it. Freezing in place, I held my breath. It was a sort of scraping sound, so faint I could barely make it out. Hovering with a turned ear, it came back. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. It happened every few seconds, regularly.
Part of me wanted to leave. Part of me wanted to get some sort of weapon and come back. Instead, curiosity got the best of me, and I opened the white cabinet door.
There was something dark, pressed into the plywood where the pipe went down. Turning on my phone flashlight, I gasped. What I had thought was a scratching noise was the belabored breathing of a very, very sick rat. It lay on its side, with all four legs sticking out limply. The tiny brown chest heaved up and down, desperately clinging to life. It seemed to have some kind of wounds on it. Next to it were two other rats, already dead. They had spots of black mold on them.
It’s impossible to say whether pity or disgust was prominent in my mind, but I took action. Thanks to Covid, I had N95’s lying around, and put one on, as well as a pair of nitrile gloves. I put the dead rats in a trash bag, and the living one into a freezer bag. I double bagged that, and put the rat in the freezer to kill it. I don’t know if that was the best way, but it was the best I could think of. I sprayed bleach solution under the sink and also on the mold spots, turned the fan on, and left.
I washed the hell out of my hands and took a shower in my bathroom, scrubbing myself all over. Somewhat rattled by the ordeal, I drank a couple of beers, watched some of Chernobyl, and fell asleep on the couch.
My intention was to call the landlord the next morning, but I got an email from an environmental assessment company asking if I could do a phone call sometime that day, and it distracted me. The call went pretty well, and they set up an interview. That small success was excuse enough for me not to address the mold problem for another day. I hoped that I could stop burning through the small savings I had, and actually get an income. I had gotten lucky buying Bitcoin about ten years back, but I’d spent most of it already.
I was giving Walter dinner when he hissed and swiped at me. Before I knew it, blood was dripping from two small gashes on my hand by my little finger. I might have been angry if I wasn’t in shock; Walter never acted like that. I told him he was a bad kitty firmly, then went to wash my hand.
As I gently cleaned the cuts with soap and warm water, I noticed something. Right next to my wrist bone, the part you can’t really see normally, there was a black spot. I scrubbed at it reflexively, thinking of the mold in the bathroom.
Thinking of the mold on the rats.
Panicking, I just scrubbed harder and harder. Eventually, the little circle began to fade, and then disappear. After a couple minutes there was only pink, exfoliated skin. Had I gotten something on my hand, and not noticed? Sharpie, or some kind of food? Nothing seemed to fit what I had seen.
Except the mold.
Again, I told myself I would call the next day. Get this taken care of. It didn’t matter if I would have to find somewhere else to go for a few weeks. It wasn’t safe to live like this. I took another shower, drank more beers, and tried to watch a show to calm down.
Little by little, a headache began to bother me. I poured the rest of my beer down the sink, and got a glass of water. It was almost midnight, I didn’t need another. On the futon, I wrapped myself in a blanket and settled back in, trying to relax. I was cold, and went to get another blanket from a cupboard. Before I got there, I checked the thermostat, which was at 75.
Instead of getting a blanket, I got my thermometer. My temperature was 99.9. Not terrible, but definitely not normal. My heart was beating a bit fast, and I clocked my pulse between 90-100 BPM. I was definitely sick, and I was really hoping that it wasn’t from the mold. I’d never looked up what that stuff does to you, but I figured I would rather have a cold, or even the flu.
It occurred to me to go to urgent care, but it was the middle of the night, and I was so tired. If I didn’t feel better by morning, I would go then. Bringing a glass of water, I put it on my night stand and tucked myself in. Walter approached timidly, but I called out his name and he hopped on the bed, sitting on my stomach and purring. Pretty soon, I was asleep.
I awoke in confusion, with the lights still on. Walter was hissing loudly and I flinched a bit, worried he might swipe at me. Instead, he was facing the bedroom door. I told him to hush, and he let out an angry growl, but did go quiet. My headache was definitely worse, and I rested my head back on the pillow.
I heard something, or thought I did. It was hard to tell, since it sounded like me or Walter shifting in the sheets. Holding perfectly still, I heard it again, more clearly. It was a dull, distant sound, just loud enough to be perceptible. Walter’s ears tilted to listen, his head held statue still, pointed at the doorway.
It came again, faint but undeniable.
I sat up in bed, and listened. There it was, but what was it? Maybe being sick was making me paranoid. Regardless, I didn’t think I could go back to sleep without finding out. I stood, and tentatively walked to the door, toward the dark hallway. Pausing, I could hear it more clearly.
Closer to it now, an unwelcome thought came into my mind. This sound, which kept happening at regular intervals, reminded me of the rat. Struggling for breath. But this was much louder.
I tiptoed down the hall, taking one barefoot step at a time on the carpet, completely silent. When I reached the hall to the other bedroom, to the other bathroom, I could hear it, over and over. A sort of scraping. Instead of going toward the sound, I snuck into the kitchen.
My dad had bought me a knife set, which fit into a wooden block. They were still very sharp, since I never cooked. I looked at the handles, from the small paring knife up to the largest butcher knife. Picking a handle, I drew the blade out ever so slowly. The boning knife. Its tip came to an acute point, making it the best for stabbing, rather than slashing.
I made my way back to the hallway, knife in my trembling hand. I could hear the sound, a sort of grinding, rattling noise. My foot went out, pressing into the carpet. Then the other foot. Step by step, I approached the closed bathroom door, not daring to turn on the hall light. In the darkness, the sound got louder, more clear. I still couldn’t tell what it was, what it could possibly come from. My heart pounded in my aching skull, and I blinked over and over to try and see better in the dark.
The small brass handle was before me. I could hear the sound well now, even though it was muffled in a way. It might have been coming through the wall, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps a raccoon or other animal was digging at something outside, there was no way to tell. If I was going to find out, I had to open the door.
I can’t tell you why, but I swung the door open like I was going to stab an intruder. Knife clutched in my sweaty palm, I stood completely still, looking at an empty, moldy bathroom.
There was nothing there. I flipped on the light, and saw that the mold had gotten much worse, causing lumps in the wall, where flaps of paint hung limply. The sound stopped, as I stood frozen for what must have been a full minute, not hearing anything at all. I checked under the sink, still seeing nothing. At some point, I realized that I didn’t want to be in this room, breathing the mold. I was about to turn and leave, when I saw something, dark and moving.
I yelped. It scared the hell out of Walter, who had crept in the open doorway behind me. Letting out a sigh of relief, I closed the bathroom door, but left the light on. Walter sniffed under the door for a minute, but followed me back to bed. The headache was bad, so I took some painkillers for that and the fever. I put the knife on my nightstand by the water, lay back down in bed, and closed my eyes.
It was only when I heard Walter howling that I realized I had fallen asleep. If you’ve ever heard a bad cat fight at night, it sounded like that: visceral, intense. If it wasn’t coming from inside my house, I wouldn’t have known Walter could even make such a noise.
I grabbed the knife, and sprinted down the dark hallway. There was no doubt in my mind where I had to go. When I turned the corner, a deep terror washed over me.
The dark hallway was illuminated, by the light of the bathroom. The door was open. I heard another cry, sounding somehow more distant, and ran up to the doorway, shaking with adrenaline, brandishing the knife in front of me.
There was nothing there. No intruder, no Walter. Instead, there was a hole in the drywall, a hole that had partially caved in the tile flooring, completely covered in black mold, leading downward into the ground. In the soft, moldy paint, I could see claw marks where Walter had been pulled in.