Kiss of A Titan
Chapter 6

Two more doors, and he was halfway done crossing to the other side through the hallway but he suddenly stopped when he arrived at the middle of his journey and took a peek into the room by the left only to discover aunt inside getting the bed ready for Nora to sleep off the nap she had been sleeping the entire time. He ignored her and tiptoed further away from the door.

Then he continued his way without stopping and he cautiously made it to the end of the corridor where he beckoned to me that he had found the staircase that possibly led to the attic. Seeing that he arrived there safely, I climbed the little stairs in front of me carefully carrying the bags towards the corridor but left the bags near the doorstep of the first room before sneaking past the room where aunt was till I eventually joined Tom who was a bit relieved to see me. "Great. Now that we've made it, let's go see how the attic looked like", He ran on the stairs upwards in excitement before I could stop him from making too much noise.

I followed behind when nobody got attracted to his trampling harder than ever on the stairs as he went in first into the attic only to get highly disappointed by what we both saw when we arrived inside the interior of the attic. I wasn't only the one that got taken aback by the collective pieces of old furniture and miscellaneous items crowding every little bit of space we could have used to move freely inside the tight spaced room heavily occupied with a bunch of abandoned materials scattered on top each in disarray and there were larger cobwebs attached to the four edges of the slant wall near the ceilings sheltering the entire mess of things which off course had dust covering the body of every old items in the room especially an old wardrobe that was barely closed after it was kept at the far end of the room by the previous owners of the house.

Tom was by far devastated to see the huge mess lying in total disassemblement and he wasn't happy with what he saw, even I couldn't imagine what went wrong with my speculation.

"I...I'm sorry, Tom. I didn't know that this was gonna happen", I said as soon as I was able to gather pieces of my mind that had stopped working for some time.

"This is terrifying. I knew it was going to be like this. It's going to take a whole week to clean up this mess", "Fifteen days maybe", "Fifteen days? That's over half of the month already!" he exclaimed in sharp surprise.

"Hey, we can't help it. The previous owners probably left a heap of mess in here on purpose", "Are you saying that they had no room to keep this all this junk?" he questioned.

"Just saying. I have no idea if the other rooms were not good enough to keep this stuff. But from the look of this, they definitely had other intentions", "Intentions like what?" Tom asked curiously.

"You saw it right, that those rooms we came across were empty except for the attic", "Yes, we both saw it. I guess they kept the whole stuff hidden in here and left the rooms empty as if it was a new one", "Maybe aunt knew about this" I said in doubt of the fact that there was something amiss.

"How can you tell?"

"Because no one buys a new house only to find bunch of old stuffs hidden in the apartments", "I don't understand", "You won't because you're too young to know this. The estate agent in charge of this property must have known that this house was used before we moved in today and aunt..." I deduced.

"Might have known as well", "Exactly, that's my point. She could have known this unless she was cheated by the dealer", I explained folding my hands and rested myself against the wall at the entrance of the attic.

"Maybe she indeed was cheated. Mom can be gullible at times when it comes to buying stuff from people", "Which explains the dust in the house and the old pictures we saw way back", I said to myself but Tom kept quiet ruminating deeply about the whole scenario. Then I continued, "I don't really know for sure but I think it's better to ask aunt herself to find out if she knew about this the whole time", "That would be probably be the best solution to solve this situation, I think" We took a slight pause and peered around the attic searching with our eyes, something that wasn't there amongst the rubbles of old cartons compressed underneath the old furniture. I shook my head in dejection and wanted to leave badly. I felt more betrayed by my earlier opinion about the whole house and didn't know what to say at this point when it was lucid to us both that the house had been fairly used before we had come.

"Let's get going then. We've seen quite enough", I ordered and we were about to leave when a fat furry rat bolted out of the old cartons when Tom's feet accidentally hit a carton of old kitchen utensils.

"Ah! It's a rat! Get it away from me!" he screamed loudly in frightful dread of the incoming rodent that suddenly thrust itself into another rat hole close by. It had disappeared but Tom had scurried past me and he was long gone, running down the stairs in complete fear of the already disappeared rodent. I barely could stop him from squeezing himself past me and I ran after him when he left even though Tom had already climbed downstairs. "Tom! It's gone! Stop running. You'll only get into trouble!" I shouted as I went after him and soon heard someone tumbling down the stairs accompanied by the sound of someone groaning in pain.

Before I got to the scene of the accident, aunt whom I presumed must have heard Tom screaming in the attic while back, had left Nora alone in the room to see what was happening in the cubicle much closer to the corrugated rooftop than any other room in the apartment and she hadn't gone far ahead to the staircase that led to the attic when Tom encountered a problem in his frantic flight from the upper room. His leg inevitably missed a step on his way down the stairs and then, he tumbled twice before landing on the smooth floorboard.

Then he began clenching his ankle that must have consequently twisted as a result of his uncontrollable speed to avoid some repugnant creature whom aunt already knew he was afraid of after she found him groaning in pain first. We all knew Tom had a phobia for rodents especially rats and squirrels and has always kept him from places where he would not encounter one anywhere outside our former house particularly the park where trees are prevalent and the appearance of tree animals like squirrels and chipmunks are mostly borne.

I found him hurt with superficial bruises on his left when I left the attic but my aunt suddenly appeared out of nowhere and got him first before I did.

"Oh, what happened, Tom?" she questioned as she flung herself over him and grasped his knees, searching for places where the injuries on his legs were obviously bleeding but not too much blood flowed out of the wound after she had turned his legs over.

"Nothing, Mom, I only slipped and...fell from the steps", "You are fond of getting yourself, aren't you?", "It...was an accident.

"I have told you countless times to stop running down the stairs", "Sorry, Mom...ouch, that hurts!", Tom squealed in pain when his mom's fingers found the bleeding sore on his knee.

"Well, you deserve it. Where's Rosalie by the way? Wasn't she with you when you fell down?" she inquired, still looking at the wound. Tom couldn't say where I was but he soon saw me watching from the stairs above. He didn't mention to aunt anything about my whereabouts nor could he utter any word since he was in anguish and I could see tears of agony gathering in his eyes. Aunt seemed to have forgotten about me since her attention to stop the bleeding had taken control of her as she crouched in front of her son trying to figure out how severely he got damaged from the fall earlier.

"I'm right here, aunt", I said with guilt in my throat after much silence had elapsed. She turned around as soon as she heard me and gave me a disheartened look. I wanted to hide myself from the guilt which was staring hard at my face in spite of the fact that I truly wasn't responsible for Tom's accident but there was nothing I could do to convince aunt that I wasn't the culprit.

"You were standing there the whole time and poor Tom got himself injured", "Mom, it isn't her fault", Tom pleaded in my defense as he wept. "Yes, it is. I blame her for it even though I know you did this on your own",

"Mom, please don't be too hard on her. This only happened because I was scared", "Scared of what?"

"A rat we saw in the attic."

At that moment of Tom revealing the truth, aunt became furious and she clearly showed that she was angry. Tom could barely look at her in the face and I as well, who was coming down the stairs, felt more nervous about getting to where she was. She frowned and stopped massaging his bruised flesh covering his inner fibular with her arms before glaring at me from whence she was at Tom's feet.

I felt like a cold mouse shivering from a cold in a sewer after getting wet by the rain as her eyes met mine and I didn't know when I glued myself to the wall as though it would cloak me with its concrete. Deep down, I realized that she was mad that we didn't lend her a helping hand while she was getting most of our stuff ready in the rooms like we ought to have done since we just moved in.

"I thought you guys have been getting your things ready in the empty rooms but you two have been fooling around the whole time I was with Nora", "Aunt, let me explain. I..."

"I don't want to hear anything from you, Rosalie. You really disappointed me this time. I thought you would help me get things ready before the dustman comes but you have been playing with Tom. I'm sure it was his lazy idea to roam around the house looking for things to play with", "He's innocent, aunt. I'm the one to blame since it was my idea", "Really? You just have to screw up big time. I can't believe you let me down when I thought you could still handle some responsibility", "I've been trying, aunt", "It's not good enough. Now Tom got himself injured and you didn't even come to help", "I...." I couldn't speak and suddenly became bereft of words. Her words had weakened my confidence drastically and sentenced me guilty without having to listen to my defense which seemed rather unfair to all of us. I didn't realize how mad she was about leaving the whole packing thing to herself and it was then that it dawned on me that we had spent a lot of unnecessary time exploring the house for the attic which of course we would eventually come to discover as time progresses during our stay here in the apartment.

My earlier intention to ask her about the kind of deal she made with the house estate agents who showed her this only available house in Houston had vanished from my mind completely and was now replaced by a guilty conscience that had wrought me grief like a murderous criminal.

With enough will that I had left inside of me to climb down the stairs, I slowly went down till I met aunt right there tending to Tom's wounds and I couldn't even look at her in the face. Then I decided to leave them alone and continue to unpack our things into the house starting with the first luggage I left by the door of the first room in this part of the second corridor.

The luggage belonged to Tom and I wasn't sure which of the room's aunt would want it to be kept but I chose to put the bags in the same room my aunt kept the other bags. After keeping the bags in an empty closet that was already there situated near the window, I left the room careful enough not to wake up Nora from her slumber because I didn't want another situation to arise from disturbing the young kid which would attract more wrath from aunt who was already furious with me neglecting my duties while playing around with Tom.