Kiss of A Titan

It didn't take quite long for my aunt to return to the house with the plumber in her car after I was done cleaning up the table. Aunt showed the man around the house as soon as she came back while the kids and I took some of the house accessories into the house.

As soon as we were done getting the things ready, I left the kids to see how aunt and the plumber were getting along during their tour around the house and found them in a serious discussion behind the house near the bushy garden. "What do you mean by the blueprint of this house?" she asked folding her hands as she peered at the man whose brown leather jacket seems to cover his entire torso.. I stood aloof as I listened to their conversation and stopped walking towards them so as not to intrude rudely.

"Without it, I cannot detect the way the pipe was fixed when this house was built", "So you are saying I need to get the blueprint of this house?", "Unfortunately, yes. Without it, I can't do the work", "I'll think about it but first, is there any place you can look around the house that might be accessible to the pipes?", "Well....Let's say, if the house have a basement, I think I could start of from here", "A basement?", "Is there any?"

"I'm not sure. I don't know if the house has one because we just moved in yesterday", "Then let's find out", "How are you gonna find it when you haven't been to this house?", "All houses in this area were constructed the same way, so it's possible to find the basement if there's any", "My children nor I didn't see one the day arrived or last night", "You guys probably might be too busy with the moving thing that you must have skipped it", he replied and suddenly caught sight of me. He saw me standing near the window of the kitchen from the outside and took his eyes back to the woman standing next to him after he had seen enough.

"So, let's go inside to see for ourselves", "Right behind you......" he said and paused as he surveyed the grassy garden with his eyes which got aunt wondering what he was looking for. She looked around and saw only the grass crowding the garden including the statues and there was nothing of much significance in her eyes that could have caused him to hesitate.

"Then we should take a look inside", "Lead the way", he rejoined and combed his hair with his fingers as he followed aunt, heading back to where I was waiting for them to return. I joined them to enter the house and I was surprised that my aunt didn't say anything as we all went into the sitting room.

"What's he looking for?" I asked aunt not to convince him to turn things upside down with every bit of energy he could usher out of his muscles

"A basement", "There should be a hatch somewhere", he said after he overheard us talking to each other. We both ignored him and continued our conversation "Rosalie, Where are the kids?" Aunt whispered to me as soon as we stood by the door allowing the man to do what want to do, scouring the house for the basement.

"They are in one of the rooms upstairs", "Did they get to eat what I cooked for lunch?", "Umm... they did eat but not everything. Some leftovers of the bacon are still where you kept them. Besides that....", "Is there anything else?", "Well...we have some pizza left in the kitchen", "Pizza? How did you...?". "It's still hot and I left it in the kitchen for you to eat", I retorted, giving her no room for more interrogations. She was dumbstruck and couldn't speak. Then we both heard her stomach rumbling which got us laughing while the man was confused as to why we were laughing but he didn't ask and moved on with his search on the floorboard.

"Fine, I've heard you. I'll take some and eat but we discuss later how you got pizza without telling me", She said and walked straight to the kitchen to grab what was left for her to eat.

As for me, I stood by the door, watching the man as he scoured the floor with his hands checking for a possible trapdoor in the living room. He seemed to know his way around the house even though it was his first time coming to our place. For five minutes, he was getting no result and seemed to have lost his will to continue searching but it was not until his fingers somehow stumbled across what looked like the trapdoor he had been looking for. "Found it", he exclaimed with delight as soon as he found the trapdoor erected with the wall.

"Where did you find it?" I asked and rushed over to meet him kneeling down before the basement which was fixed with the wall in such a way that it was difficult to tell if there was a basement or not.

"It was here all along at the bottom of the stairs", By the time, aunt came rushing out of the kitchen cleaning bits of bacon stew from her lips, he was already breaking the door open for us to see the stairs which led into the basement. "Bet you guys didn't see it here, huh?", Aunt cleared her throat before she could respond to his pride driven discovery.

"Like I said before, we just moved in here yesterday. It's only natural for us not to know where the basement is", "Apart from the attic which was quite very obvious for anyone to see if you stand outside", I added cleverly. Aunt shifted a bit closer to him and peered inside while I stood behind them.

"It looks so dark and spooky", "Of course, it does. From the look of this stuff, this door probably hasn't been open up for decades", Aunt glanced at me, recalling what we discovered earlier and judging by her looks, she hadn't told him that some family had lived in the house before we did and returned her gaze at him.

"I guess you could say that", "Do you have a torch or something I could use to see inside?", "You want to go inside?",

I interrupted my aunt from answering her question.

"Of course, why do you think I was looking for it in the first place?" he answered, still looking deeper into the cellar as though he could see through the darkness which seemed to envelope his vision.

"Sorry, I got the wrong idea", "As for the torch, lucky for you, I bought two torches today", "Then it must be my lucky day. I can see a bit of sunlight inside", "That means there must be a window of some sort in there", "Absolutely", "Rosalie, please go bring the torches", "Yes, aunt", I responded and went straight back to the living room to get the torches my aunt requested for. I returned back in a jiffy and gave one of the torches to the man who received it without complaining. "Thanks. And now it's time for me to go down", he said as he took it from my hand. Aunt took the other and followed behind him, climbing down the cellar that remarkably swallowed them whole the moment they made a first step to climb down the stairs despite the fact that it was narrow and small when looked upon from the outside.

He quickly turned on the flashlight as soon as he was getting deeper into the darkness and aunt switched hers as well only for the light to reveal a lot of cracks on the dusty roof above us along with some bigger cobwebs that ran to the bottom on certain corners of the roof.

As for me, I followed behind even though my aunt might not support the idea of me joining them down the basement and sneezed twice the moment I took a step to descend down the stairs where there was barely enough light for me to see the next step but thanks to the fluorescent light beaming. They both stopped climbing and turned around to look at me when I sneezed the third time.

"Sorry about that", I said apologetically and sniffed before wiping my nose clean. Aunt didn't say much even when the man resumed his descent down the wooden stairs without bothering too much of the dust around all three of us. She gave me a warring look and shrugged before pointing the torchlight at my face.

"Just be careful with the steps", she said and removed the beaming light. Then she joined him as well to climb down. The stairs creaked noisily as we went down with the dogged man in front of us.

"You ladies, better watch out for the stairs. They aren't strong enough to withstand heavy pressure judging by the length of years of this basement was abandoned", he advised as he kept pointing the torchlight at every angle on the roof as he ventured downstairs without even being scared of the unknown. Halfway down the last row of stairs, Aunt and I began to hear squeaky noises of rodents scurrying here and there but he seemed unafraid of them and went further down without slightest fear of the unknown unfolding right in front of him.

"Where the hell is that noise coming from?", I was irritated at the noise.

"From the bottom I guess", "This place is now inhabited by rats so I'm not surprised we hear such noises", "It's the welcoming party and they already know someone's coming", Aunt replied as we approached the final end of our descent down the stairs.

"Surely, that's true", "And thanks to their squeaking, we can tell that we are almost at the bottom", he commented and looked further down with the torchlight which ended at a colliding point with the faint rays of the sun radiating from into a fairly dark room from the left angle of the underground cubicle.

"There's our cue", he said to himself and went further down whilst we trailed behind him to the part where the stairs ended which swallowed us deeper into another room whereby every item in the fairly dark room looked highly compacted against one another.

We followed behind him as he went further to explore the corners of the cellar which wasn't much of a bit compressed like the attic Tom and I saw the previous day and he didn't know when his black sneakers stepped on something repulsive lying on the dirty floor on his path.

"Damn! Shit", he cursed as he realized that he had stepped on rat excreta a short distance away from where he was standing near one of the wooden pillars that supported the house from underneath. His outburst caught our attention from where we were peering at the surroundings.

"You alright?", "I'm fine,, Just some rotten rat poop got stuck under my shoe", "Oops, Sorry", "Thanks. Damn those rodents", he replied, spitting at the rotten smell that issued forth from the dung and went about rummaging through the stuff with his flashlight, probably searching for something that was related to the pipe.