Mattress Monsters (A Horror Story)
“Take this tennis racket, and go find the bat in that apartment.”
Hell no, I thought. “Why doesn’t Jerome do it?”
“Do you want to get the bat?” Brady asked Jerome.
“Hell nah, they got rabies you know what I’m sayin?”
“Well,” Brady turned back to me. “Looks like you’re up,” he smiled and walked away.
“How’d the bat even get in the apartment?” I shouted after him.
“Not sure, but it bit the guy’s roommate and he’s in the hospital so, you know, be faster than the bat!”
This was how I started my very first day of my very first job. I cautiously opened the front door of the apartment and Jerome shoved me in the rest of the way and closed the door behind me.
My adrenaline was thumping while I cautiously opened closets, and turned corners with the tennis racket at head height. I checked the whole apartment, twice, and found nothing. I went back outside and told Brady I couldn’t find a bat. He nodded his head, and called the remaining tenant over.
“Hey, okay we got rid of the bat, so you’re all good to go back in. I hope your roommate feels better!” Brady waved and walked away. I was in awe at this display of maintenance privilege and knew I had lots to learn. Man I loved that job.
Most days I worked on the same project as my best friend Jack. Jack and I were proud co-workers at Blue Maintenance, Inc.
We were ridiculous, know-it-all, 15 year old fools. We rounded out the company at a small five employees, complete with the brown work boots, jeans, and XXL work polos we were both swimming in. We worked almost exclusively with Jerome. Jerome got all of the yard work orders and anything else that required manual labor. We were the bottom of the Blue Maintenance, Inc. totem pole.
Jerome was an absolute freak. He stood at 6'2" and looked to be a built 275 lbs. He held whole sofas over his head and threw them like footballs. He carried mattresses four at a time. I once saw him kick a tree and split the trunk in two.
Blue Maintenance, Inc. maintained a large apartment complex near the University hospital and Med school, Vertigo Apartments. Based on the location, the rent rates Vertigo could set were astronomical, and people paid it.
Man they got ripped off.
The building itself was ugly and slanted. It was placed on a hill such that it stuck out and looked like it was moments away from sliding into the windy road it perched on.
The interior was straight from a horror hotel. The paint on the walls was peeling and discolored, the lights in the hallways flickered, and I was weighing the odds the carpet was older than my parents.
All of these seemed like things a maintenance company should take care of, I told Jerome at lunch one humid sunny Michigan summer day. We were parked in the work pickup truck, packed tight with three people, eating gas station sandwiches while the world’s weakest auto AC sputtered bursts of cool air.
“Nah,” Jerome said as he took half of his first sandwich in one bite. “He’s cheap! Know what I’m sayin?”
“So, he won’t pay for us to do those things?”
“Man he don’t wanna pay us, pay for paint, pay for nothin. Know what I’m sayin?”
Jerome spoke like he was using a radio but instead of “over” he’d use “Know what I’m sayin?” After a while Jack and I didn’t even hear it when he said it. Jack didn’t say much but nodded his head when he agreed with stuff. He was a bobble head as Jerome continued.
“We do the lawn, we do the weed whip, and we do the furniture! That’s it, we ain’t doin any more, know what I’m sayin?”
“Yes sir,” I replied as I picked a tomato out of my sandwich.
We got out of the truck and, armed with my weed whip, I waded into the moat of poison ivy that flowed downhill from the front door to the street. As I whacked away the debris beneath me, I couldn’t help but feel the Vertigo monstrosity staring down at me.
Vertigo Apartments were advertised as furnished which was quite the stretch. By “furnished,” the property manager, a short Asian man named Kim, meant “these maintenance guys put furniture I keep in the basement into your room-good luck.”
The furniture room in the basement was the stuff nightmares are made of. Jerome didn’t fuck with it. In fact, any ticket for “furnishing,” or the just as popular “de-furnishing,” a unit went straight to Jack and I.
It was approaching the move in season, where thousands of students flock to Ann Arbor to get ready for University of Michigan classes. This meant a lot of tenant turnover, particularly in the Vertigo Apartments, which meant a lot of furnishing and de-furnishing was in mine and Jack’s future. Worst yet, it meant a lot of time fishing around for demons in the furniture room.
The air hung low to the ground on the dark and stormy fall morning. Fog persisted through the rain, and my heavy boots made a big splash when I jumped out of the work truck. Jack followed, and Jerome yelled after us as we sauntered uphill to Vertigo.
“Hey! Come roll up this window! It’s raining I don’t even know why the window is down, know what I’m saying?”
Ah, right. Non-automatic windows. I sloshed downhill and opened the door to crank the window up.
“Y’all just do all the furniture today, ain’t no point doin yardwork in the rain, know what I’m sayin?”
“Yeah sure, wait where are you going?”
“Call me when you’re done and I’ll come get you, know what I’m sayin?”
I closed the door and he pulled off. I watched the truck until it’s red tail lights disappeared around the corner, then walked back to Vertigo. I tugged on the front door, but it was locked. Jack had the only key.
“The number of times I’ve told that kid to leave it unlocked and it’s like it just, it doesn’t compute!” I angrily muttered at myself as I tugged my hat down a bit lower and ran through the rain to the back parking lot.
I turned the corner into the parking lot and stopped dead in my tracks. The usually full lot was empty, not a single car, nor even bikes in the bike rack. I looked at the building, and each window was darkened. Surely if somebody was in their room they’d need a light on such a stormy day.
What are the odds nobody is home in this entire building?
I walked down a flight of stairs to the back door, which entered on the basement level as opposed to the front which opened onto the first floor stair’s landing. I entered the building and it was eerily chilly. I flicked the light switch on, but nothing. Power isn’t out though, I thought to myself, remembering the lit front door area. I felt my way through the hall and turned a corner to the main hallway, and thankfully there was some light.
The building was a large rectangle. There was a main hallway that ran through the middle of the building, flanked by apartments on each side, and each floor had the same layout stacked upon the floor below it. There was only one stair way (fire code violation?) that ran up all five floors, and the basement. The stairs swallowed the front door, and the genius architect for the place insisted that each floor be separated not by ten, neat, even stairs, but five stairs, an awkwardly small landing, and then another five stairs. Remember that detail because I’m going to tell you how we moved couches in that bitch. Elevator? You’re like fifty years ahead of yourself there, champ.
Anyways, I followed the cold brick and the dim light to the furniture room. I looked inside, and there Jack was thumbing through the work orders for the day.
“Dude! You have got to leave the front door unlocked like I showed you!”
“I didn’t come in the front I came in the back,” he answered without looking up from the papers. Oh, my bad. I silently apologized to Jack for the things I said to myself about him that he didn’t even hear.
“Yo, did you notice that like, nobody is here?” I asked.
“Yeah I thought it seemed really quiet in here. I don’t know, maybe they’re all coming in a week or something.”
“Yeah, one last vacation before school starts. Okay,” I exhaled in relief. “What are we doing first?”
“Dude we’ve got like three tickets for couches.”
“Do we even have three passable couches?” I asked and followed Jack to the couch section of the furniture room.
The furniture room was a massive room with low basement ceilings. The walls were cold, chipped and unpainted cinder block. The few lights that did work were pretty bright, but there were a lot of flashlight necessary pockets in the room.
A row of windows squatted against the ceiling on the building’s front wall. They rested on the ground outside, and allowed us in the basement to see no higher than ankle height. There should be more light falling into the furniture room considering the poison ivy deforestation project Jack and I had spent last week on. But, our cheap, creepy, scummy landlord Kim had the windows taped over with various pieces of junk mail and weekly Kroger savings magazines. It was like having shades for your windows, if you were a guy that butchered people with chainsaws.
There was a narrow walk way that served as the only path from the door to the back of the room. The pathway was ear marked by piles of broken furniture that stacked a foot short of the ceiling. SO MUCH FURNITURE. It was the land where furniture went to die. To provide a better visual, if the furniture was flood water, Jack and I would each have our heads pressed to the ceiling with limited oxygen left.
There was a method to our madness. Sure, the first time I saw the furniture room I thought it was a bad joke, a hidden camera reality show Hoarders in the Wild or something. However, as the furniture got moved around enough by Jack and I, some distinct regions developed within the room.
Here’s how it worked:
- Jack and I get a ticket with what furniture a room requested
- Jack and I take furniture from furniture room and put it in tenants unit
- Tenant files a ticket next day asking furniture get taken back
As Jack and I reached the couch section of the furniture room, we took inventory.
“Well this couch here has that one huge hole in the bottom…” I pointed at a drab gray couch crawling with syphyllis.
“What about that couch we took back from unit 204 last week? You think unit 310 will be okay with it?”
“Dude that’s like the biggest couch we have and you want to take it to the third floor?”
“Well it’s either that, the one without a bottom, or the one with the blood stain,” he kicked a soiled couch at the bottom of the couch pile.
“Yeah, we’re never going to get rid of the blood couch are we?”
“I wouldn’t sit on that thing if Kate Upton was on it!” Jack laughed and pointed at the single poster that hung on the wall of the furniture room, a scandalous bikini sports illustrated swimsuit shot of the supermodel.
“Alright well, let’s move this couch and get it over with,” I said with determination as I squatted to grab my end.
Now, remember the staircase we’re working with. Five stairs-landing-five stairs-first floor-five stairs-landing-five stairs-second floor-five stairs-landing-five stairs-third floor.
If you got tired reading that sentence imagine dragging a couch twice your weight over it. This was the uphill battle we faced on the stormy day in the empty Vertigo apartments.
We didn’t get very far with the first couch. In fact, we got stuck on the second landing. I was pushing the couch from the bottom, while Jack held the other end of the couch over his head on top of the landing.
“Just, c’mon, a little bit further…” Jack squeezed out.
“It’s like, stuck on something dude I think the railing went through the cushion!” I stopped pushing and it hung there. “See dude, it’s just hanging here!”
“IT’S NOT HANGING I’M JUST HOLDING IT!” Jack yelled in fury.
“LET IT GO!” I screamed back.
Jack let go of the couch, and indeed, it was suspended on the stair way.
“Yo dude I think the railing went through the cushion!” Jack yelled down the stairs at me as I wiped my forehead and rolled my eyes.
“Alright I’m just gonna hit it with all I’ve got and you catch it OK?” I took a few steps back, wound up, lowered my shoulder and hit the side of the couch like I was de-cleating a quarterback. The couch lunged forward, and I face planted on the stairs. Fearing the couch rolling over me and crushing my skull, I leapt back off the stairs and fell backwards, collapsing against the first floor wall.
The couch did not come down the stairs though, and I marveled at Jack’s arm strength. Then Jack stepped away from the couch, hands at his sides, and his jaw at his feet.
“Dog,” Jack started and paused. “We fucked up.”
I got up and wiggled my way up the stairs where I saw the couch halfway through the landing’s ceiling.
“Well that’s no good.” I agreed, as I curled the brim of my sweaty baseball cap.
“Yeah it is really in there. Like, a full cushion is in the ceiling.”
“I don’t know how to fix that, do you?” I asked Jack nervously.
“Not a chance. Damn it!” Jack kicked the couch in frustration. The couch immediately dislodged from the ceiling, fell to the stairs with a thunderous crash and rocketed back down the stairs, clear through the drywall at the bottom landing.
Face meet palm.
“Well, shit.” Jack said before we both started violently coughing from the asbestos that rained down from the ceiling. We walked back down to the couch at the bottom of the stairs, which also created some substantial damage.
“I know how to fix the ceiling!” Jack blurted out, and ran back towards the furniture room. I sighed and I tugged on the couch. Jack ran past me and up the stairs while I worked on the sword in the drywall. Once I freed the couch, I rotated it, and placed it right in front of the hole in the wall. It covered it beautifully. Finally, we found a home for a couch in this place.
“Yo! Check it out!” Jack cheered up the stairs.
As I walked up the stairs I picked pieces of cushion off the railing. There on the ceiling was no longer a hole, but rather Kate Upton and her beautiful cleavage.
“Alright, I’m done with the couches. What else is on the list?”
Jack and I found ourselves back in the furniture room, rustling through the Box Spring forest for semi-suitable bed frames for Units 112 and 213. Jack was digging through the furniture like he was looking for earthquake survivors. I heard a peculiar high pitched noise.
“Do you hear that? Is that an alarm or something?” I half-shouted at Jack over the pounding of the rain.
“Yeah, wait.” Jack pauses what he’s doing and we strain our ears to find the noise, but it was gone. “Nah, weird though I thought I heard something.” Jack then pulls out a box spring and the noise comes back, but louder, and almost more frantic. Jack freezes in place.
“Yeah…okay…I heard it again,” he whispered. He then violently pulled back on the box spring and the wails of dozens of rats filled the room, followed by our screams.
“DUDE FUCK!” I jumped back as dozens of rats crawled out of various holes in the box spring. Jack grabbed a nearby lead wrench and swung it over his head violently.
The rats did not go easily. They were some big mother fuckers. Stringy black hair, chipped teeth, and long flesh-pink tails.
Jack continued to shatter the wood inside the box spring with his half war cries half tennis serve noises.
“STOP! STOP!” I yelled and grabbed the occupied box spring and heaved it back into the box spring forest. I grabbed Jack’s hand and pulled him to the safety of the walkway. The remaining rats scattered and just on cue, we lost power.
Total darkness. Total silence. Neither Jack nor I breathed. This power outage suddenly felt intentional.
Mutant rats were down here, what else does this hell have in store for us?
Now, remember this is a story circa 2009. Sure, humans had iPhones for a couple of years but only the cool and rich and important and the savvy. Obviously Jack nor I had iPhones. Armed with just the screen light of a Motorola Razr and a Sidekick, we were desperate to find where we set down our flashlights.
I led the way down the walkway, Jack keeping a tight grip on the back of my shirt.
“I think, okay, the table we put all our stuff on should be — damn it!” I swore as I smoked my knee on a protruding end table. “Watch for that.”
“Watch for wha— ow damn it I just smoked my knee on that table!” Jack complained.
We made it to the flashlights. We turned them on and quickly scanned the room. Nobody, at least, nobody that isn’t hiding under furniture. I could smell Jack’s fear. Like seriously, he would fart up a storm when he got scared.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s uh, it’s probably just the storm. So, we’re gonna go, and we’re gonna find the circuit breakers for this place, and we’re gonna turn the lights back on and everything will be fine.” I tried reassuring us simultaneously.
“Now, where are the circuit breakers have you ever seen any in this place?”
“No man, I think they’re in that sketchy room that Kim calls an office down the hall.”
Of course they are. The one room in this entire building I haven’t somehow had the pleasure of entering. Occupied by the sketchiest enigma I’ve met in my brief 15 years.
“Alright well, let’s get to it.” I led Jack down the hall to the door. It was a solid, dark wood door that suddenly looked ominous as hell. “Get out your key man, open it.”
Jack tried the key, but it didn’t work. The skeleton key, the one that worked on every door in this place, didn’t work on Kim’s office.
“Dude, fuck it, it’s probably not in there,” Jack backed down.
“Oh c’mon man he probably has his own key because he doesn’t trust us with a key to his office.” I replied confidently.
“What if, this like, isn’t his office?”
“Of course it’s his office man, what you think the guy lives here? Fuck no that guy doesn’t live here, we’d see him way more, and besides that parking lot was empty! Nobody is here, now we gotta get these breakers back on.”
We heard what sounded like a lamp smashing against the floor echo from the furniture room and bounce around the halls of the basement.
“I don’t think we’re alone, man,” Jack said in a tone of doom that still rings in my ears.
It’s just the rats-dude fuck that get out of here!
While the voices in my head argued, I made a decision. I stepped back, braced my hands on Jack, and with all my might swung my heavy work boot and smashed the door open at the door frame. The door swung open and we dashed in, quickly closing it behind us.
As soon as I swung the flashlight around the room I knew that whatever terror was chasing us from the furniture room had nothing on this guy Kim.
He had the same squatting walls as the furniture room and had taped over them in the same way. The natural light was a relief from the power outage, even if it was through a creepy Toys-R-Us catalog filter. The opposite corners of the room were flanked with desks and a long collapsable table that ran along the length of the wall. The desks were covered in something that shimmered when my flashlight beam bounced over them.
Creepy as fuck but curiousity killed the cat after all, so I walked over to investigate.
Keys. So many hundreds of keys. Each in small stacks, two or three high, with about a quarter of an inch between each pile. Covering both desks and the long table. You know how they say anything in too big of a quantity is scary? This was a scary amount of keys.
“Man this dude is a fucking nut job,” Jack whispered from the side of the room.
I turned to see Jack digging through papers on a bookshelf. But it wasn’t a bookshelf, but rather an old refrigerator that wasn’t plugged in.
“Who the hell uses a fridge for shelves? What’s over there?” Jack asked.
“Keys,” I replied dryly.
“Keys?”
“Yeah man, like, hundreds of keys,” I said as Jack walked over.
“What are they for?” he asked me.
“Well I’d assume for all of the Vertigo rooms but this is way too many keys.”
“Does he own other properties? God, I hope he doesn’t put other people through hell as their land lord.”
Just then, it clicked. All of the frustration, fear, some other emotions I couldn’t quite make out, came together as one simple urge: vengeance.
“Well I hope he didn’t spend too much time on this,” I said before I flipped the table.
Hundreds of previously organized keys clattered like a tiny symphony on the concrete. Justice was served. First your ceiling, then your wall, and now your keys you’re finally catching yours you prick.
“What do you think is in here?” Jack asked as he pushed open the lone door in the room.
I wish he hadn’t.
“OH FUCK MAN!” Jack shouted as his knees buckled. I was legitimately speechless at the discovery.
There, alone in the room, was a single sheet-less deeply stained mattress. Like a gurney used for lethal injection, it sat there, intoxicating us with its secrets.
“I don’t…I don’t wanna do this anymore,” I stammered. We left Kim’s office immediately, and as I closed the cracked door, I could see directly into his little back death closet and the mattress was staring right back at me.
We tore down the hallway and flew past the furniture room. We turned the corner and attacked the stair’s landing with hands and feet, whatever was the fastest.
“HEY!”
A looming silhoutte shouted at us from the front door, blocking our path to freedom and daylight.
“Man, what the hell is Kate Upton doing on the ceiling? This ain’t gonna work you know what I’m saying? I mean, I can see this, and the power is out you know what I’m saying?”
Jack and I both hugged Jerome near the point of tears.
“Y’all boys fuckin around here playin in the dark get off of me, c’mon, time to eat you know what I’m sayin?”
The next day we learned how to drywall a ceiling. Brady nor Jerome were too pleased. But with the full power back on we had some questions to answer.
Jack and I snuck away to Kim’s office while the rest of the team ate lunch. The door, still broken, pushed open.
The office was empty. The tables, the keys, the fridge, the mattress-all, gone.
He cleared out.
He knows that we know.
But now nobody will ever believe us.
“Man I need a new job,” Jack lamented as we closed the door behind us and sauntered off the furniture room.
