She couldn’t even do the remainder of her side job. She just dumped the leftover flyers and made her way back to the Factory. The Garbage Woman was still busy, but the Girl made her way to her house from memory. Upon reaching her destination, she approached one of the spare warehouses that still had space in it. She rummaged through her bag, pulled out a crowbar, and pried open the hinges of the door.
She’d worry about how the Garbage Woman would react later. What was needed was rest. She chose a singular spot at a fair distance from all the junky objects. She took the mat out of her bag, covered herself with some blankets and lay down on the floor. For the first few hours, she felt fine. Then, in the middle of her nap, she heard her name being called.
She always hated her name, and hearing it in this desolate place came as a complete surprise. She opened her eyes, and looked around in the dimly lit place. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t anyone to be seen. She dismissed her experience as an auditory hallucination and closed her eyes again. Then, half an hour later, she heard her name again. This time, the surroundings were now noticeably closer to her than before, even though she hadn’t changed positions much.
She looked back at the entrance, and was surprised to see it was much further off in the distance than it was before. She couldn’t have simply tossed and turned this far - her mat was still in the same place as it was before. She picked up her belongings and moved closer to the entrance. But then she felt an uncomfortable prickling behind her neck as she heard her name mentioned a third time with greater intensity. That was all the incentive she needed to do a marathon sprint.
Technically, she waddled her way out of there in a hurry, but that doesn’t sound very exciting, does it. (DOES it?)
She didn’t stop until she was a fair distance outside, away from the once innocuous warehouse. Puffing and panting on half-bent knees, she dared to look back at the entrance. Nothing seemed to have followed her. Regaining her breath, she warily crept back and peeked inside the dank place she just escaped. All the objects were back in their prospective places. She hardly had time to comprehend what just happened when a hand suddenly slapped on her back.
“There you are. I’ve been looking for you!” Turning her head, she was half shocked, half relieved. It was the Garbage Woman with a stern expression on her face.
“Oh, hello there! How was your day?” she sheepishly asked, hoping to deflect attention away from the damage done to the door. “So uh... did you find enough replacement rags?”
“Yes,” the Garbage Woman said, bullishly brushing by the Girl and bringing out a replacement lock to replace the broken lock. “Now I’ll have to find three more locks to make up for this one.” Her securing done, the Garbage Woman patted the Girl down, both to make sure she was still in one piece and wasn’t carrying any contraband. “First things first, are you alright?”
“A little tired, but otherwise fine.”
She grunted with affirmation, making a body motion to follow her. The two of them made their way through the maze leading to her house inside the warehouse. Once inside amidst all the mess, the Garbage Woman turned to confront the Girl. “What were you thinking? You don’t go traipsing on my property without my permission. You could’ve seriously hurt yourself.”
“I wouldn’t have touched your stuff!”
“You know that and I know that, but my stuff doesn’t know that.”
Inwardly, the Girl had wondered why the Garbage Woman wasn’t worried about her “valuables” being stolen, even if most of it was junk. Now she understood. Whatever it was in that warehouse she narrowly avoided was, that was an effective security system right there.
“I was really tired. And there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. I took shelter the only way I knew how.”
“You could’ve holed up in a safer location than this.”
“I don’t know very many people here. The closest thing I had to a friendly face was meeting a Gloved Man carrying an old woman with a Baby Face. Have you heard of them?” She mentioned these people while traveling around, without much success, and didn’t expect the Garbage Woman to know much either.
“No, I haven’t but finding them couldn’t hurt. What do you know about them?”
“Not much. Just that he was transporting her to the National Historical Society.”
“The N.H...” she trailed off, then suddenly said, “That reminds me of something! Wait here, I’ll be back! Don’t open the closet door while I’m gone!”
And with that, the Garbage Woman left in a rush, leaving the Girl all alone. She hadn’t intended to touch anything in her absence, but now being told not to do so filled her with temptation too alluring to avoid. She looked at the door in the nearby distance, wondering just what was behind there. Probably more junk if the remainder of the place was any indication. She wouldn’t be surprised if behind the door was her personal brick collection. She looked up at where the door was connected, and saw that it was a load-bearing platform. Any attempt to dislodge it would probably cause the whole infrastructure to cave in on itself.
Not wanting to risk temptation, she lightly tapped the doorknob, and rather than tempt fate, she decided to back away. She couldn’t get into much trouble that way. There wasn’t much around for her to occupy her time, and she still felt tired, and wanted to take another nap.
The only problem was that she couldn’t find a Stuffed Animal within this mess, and didn’t want to risk moving anything around trying to find them. She looked at the shelf where the creepy serial killer dolls rested and remarked, “I’m surprised you haven’t gone to the trouble to knock me off yet.”
One of them rolled their eyes behind the back of their head and in a high-pitched voice, said, “I’M AFRAID TO MOVE.”
She had no memory of passing out, but more than five minutes must have passed when the Garbage Woman suddenly returned.
“Sorry for the delay. I had to go to one of my first warehouses, and got distracted while going down memory lane, but finally found what I was looking for.”
The Girl stared in wonderment. Clutched in the Garbage Woman’s hand was a single piece of paper. Somehow, she’d managed to find that single slightly dusty item amongst the huge piles of incomprehensible junks in her collection.
“How did you find that amidst all your...?”
“It’s nothing special. If I had a better memory, I wouldn’t have to keep all this stuff.”
The Girl looked at the poster. It was faded away from the effects of time, but still clearly showed an announcement for the foundation of the N.H.S., better known as the National Hysterical Society.
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