Last night at about 8pm, I went to the basement with the intention of taking some measurements and prepping for today.

Today is the first Friday I have had off and free all summer and I have great plans to make it a productive, useful day.

But before we get into my TO DO list, you need to understand some things about the basement.

1. I do not like it. At all.
The basement, in general, gives me the heebie-jeebies. It’s dark and smells kinda musty. There are cobwebs in every corner and junk from last summer’s renovation lurking in piles – the perfect place for rodents of unusual size to lurk about waiting kill me. It’s basically the fire swamp with less vegetation.

And if not rodents of unusual size, then there’s probably a giant spider or maybe even a giant python eating an alligator {BTW – have you heard about Mega Python vs. Gatoroid?! Which would be funny if it wasn’t happening in my basement}.

Anyway, the grossness down there seriously skeeves me out.

Now picture all that grossness at night. It’s dark.

I head down with my trusty tape measure and keys.

Unlock the first door to the basement.

All is normal.

Unlock the apartment door {which is about 6′ down the hall}.

With my right hand, I reach across my body and flip on the light switch right inside the kitchen on the left wall.

GIANT EFFING SPIDER chillin’ in a web right near my left foot.

Gross.

No biggie. He’s hanging out in his web. Not crawling to attack my toes. Deep breath. It’s cool.

Take one step into the apartment toward the other light switch.

Look at the stark white wall in front of me.

COVERED with big, black, buzzing flies.

They’re flying. Towards me.

Out the door apartment door past me.

Back into the apartment from behind me because the front door is closed.

Like this –

I kid you not.

OMG YOU GUYS!

So completely gross. GA-ROOOOSS.

I could not shut the door fast enough!

Locked it behind me and sat on the safety of my couch for the rest of the night. The image of those little black dots crawling and buzzing all over the white walls etched into my brain.

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It’s now 11:30am and I’ve been awake since 6:30.

Trying to muster the courage and gumption to grab the shop vac and face the swarm.

They’re just flies, I’ve been telling myself. They can’t hurt me. They don’t even bite for goodness sake! They’re gross but that’s all they are; gross.

And yet I’m still lying here.

Because I know that if there are THAT many flies down there, something is dead and rotting.

Flies come from maggots. Maggots come from eggs that are laid in rotting decomposing organic material.

Probably just trash.

But what if there’s a dead mouse? Or bird. Or rat. Or body.

Probably not a body.

But what if there’s a body?!

OMG omg omg omg omg.

But that’s silly.

It’s probably just a sandwich. An old, dead, rotting, moldy, sandwich.

Not that I remember ever leaving food down there.

I don’t even remember the last time I was down there.

And last night doesn’t even count cause I only took 1 step inside.

Crap.

C’mon Carrie. Pull it together.

That basement isn’t going to renovate itself. Dead body or not.