The Hoarding Bug

The basement in this house always felt... wrong!

The air hung thick with a damp, metallic smell, as if rust were spreading through the walls like a disease.

The ceiling dipped low, swollen with old pipes and the concrete walls always made sure that the feeling of claustrophobia was always looming in the corners of the mind. Even the bare bulbs flickered as though they regretted being awake, as the scrawny moths that lived rent free in there, weakly flew around it!

The floor was a maze of old, dusty, boxes, christmas lights and decorations awaiting every December, the toolcase that would always disappear whenever you would need it, the old VHS player along with many vhs cartoons, the old PS2 ... and plenty of other things left too long in the dark and partially swallowed by it. The far corner, the one closest to the foundation, was always the coldest, as if a draft seeped in from someplace that didn’t exist on any blueprint. It was untill one day, a feeling of nostalgia hit you and went down there to look for that one old box containing what you were looking for... that you heard something... clicking... behind you... This wasn't the usual scuttling of insects... ... this was larger, deliberate... ...maybe a rat? (...)

No, the sound was too weird, like someone crackling their knuckles in slow rhythmic sequence!

As the lights flickered before turning on, the flashing light made your spine clench!

She was on the ground, half-hidden behind a stack of mildewed boxes, her posture crooked, her silhouette distorted. Her body was humanoid, but her skin... was wrong, the limbs were wrong...too long, jointed subtly backward, and she shifted her weight with the fluid stiffness of an insect testing its legs. Smooth plates of chitinous armor overlapped some places where skin should have been, catching the light's beam with a dull brown sheen. Her torso was incredibly broad-hipped, with a MASSIVE posterior and with two large breasts hanging with a warped imitation of human curves that seemed learned rather than natural.

AND SHE STARED DIRECTLY AT YOU!

The ground around her was piled with things that didn't belong to the basement. A Cracked snow globe. A phone charger you tought you'd lost. Children's toys, newspapers, a broom. The collection of hoarded objects was placed in a circle and covered in dense, transparent liquid!

She shifted a step closer, the clicking intensifying. Something like a soft hiss escaped her mandibles, not aggressive but expectant. (...) After a long, suffocating moment, she backed away and vanished behind some boxes with unnatural speed, leaving only the echo of chitin brushing concrete. (...) The following days were somehow ...worse... ... the morning after you had found some dusty three-toed footprints with sharp indentations around the basement door. Things had started disappearing from upstairs now, pens, keys, a half-finished sandwich. Even the Stop Sign outside your house was gone now! Anytime you dared delving again in the basement she would always be staring at you... from the darkness... before sneaking away, and the objects were all gathered in circles on the concrete ground of the underground, in a puddle of transparent liquid. She wasn't living in your basement... she claimed it!

See disappears for hours, gathering more objects to expand her hoard. Sometimes it seemed like she disappeared and you couldn't find her anywhere ... but as the days went by, she stopped running away anytime you were getting closer. Instead.. remaining perfectly still, only moving her antennas at every movement you were making. She never speaks... ...She just... watches...

She never attempted to communicate. But you felt her attention like a physical weight on your neck. Her hoard started to change. There were now rudimental drawings of human shapes done with a chalk on the ground. Some depicted a person sleeping, other depicted two individuals hugging, one of them was depicted with insect-like limbs.

Some nights ago she left something outside your door. A broken glass shard, with a wet, transparent fluid all across it. In the reflection you could see yourself, your reflection look stretched...

Was it a gift? Was it a proposal? Each day she was bringing something new on your door, a dead moth, a button, a chewed pen, all smeared in thicc saliva. Untill today... when you found right next to your drawer... ... a brown strand of silky hair, smeared in saliva! When you descended the stairs, you felt heavy, uneven, frantic breathing coming from downstairs. When you reached the living room she was sitting with her tall, crooked form, in the couch of your living room. Her eyes had changed, wide... glimmering. She emited a low hiss when you made the last step, sinking softly a pair of her hands in the flesh of her own large breasts, and adjusted the spilling chitinous flesh of her thighs on the couch; her hips were so wide when sitting like a human being, that her torso looked like it sunk in the middle of a gigantic spill of insectoid flesh. Another pair of hands reached towards you... invitingly... posessively...

Seems like her hoard could be soon complete... And there will be only ONE object missing...