Bad Jobs: Babysitting: Don't Go Downstairs in the Hall House

I WAS IN MY EARLY TEENS, I think, and I had a summer babysitting job about a mile away from where I lived. I had to get there at 6 or 7 in the morning and stay until one of the parents got home from work in the late afternoon.

This was a two person job, taking care of Child One and Child Two, boys, eight and ten, and Child Three and Child Four, 2 year old twin girls. But my friend from school, who suggested I partner with her for this summer-long babysitting job, went on vacation or something so I was on my own.

I immediately had to make a pact with myself to not go downstairs in the Hall* House. This decision made immediately after having to go hunting for Child Two.

Now I was never told to make sure to feed the family dog. As a result, I assumed that the task of filling the dog's food dish was taken care of before I got to Hall House and after I left. On this particular day, however, I was told to make sure one of the boys fed the dog.

According to Child One, it was Child Two's turn to do this chore. But Child Two had disappeared. When I found him, he was downstairs lying on the couch and watching The Price is Right or something.

"It's time go feed the --" I started to say. I walked closer into the room and stopped dead. "Oh," I said in staccato. Child Two had found his parents' back massager, but he was most definitely not rubbing knots out from between his shoulder blades. I turned on my heels and went back up stairs. I mentally signed my pact in blood to never again go downstairs.

"But it's HIS turn," Child Two protested when I told him he had to feed the dog.

"He's busy with something else right now," I said. "Just go feed your dog, please."

"But there's no food left," Child Two said.

"What? Well is there a spare bag somewhere?" I asked. And then he said something about how there hadn't been any dog food for days and I flew into a blind fury. Did they forget to buy dog food while they were out buying their new Buick? I tried to pin down exactly when the dog ate last, and why did they run out of dog food? But none of this was feeding the dog, so I called my mom and asked her to bring over some of our dog's food as fast as she could.

After that situation was handled, I made the mistake of asking if there were any other animals I should know about. There were gerbils downstairs. I would have to break my pact.

This time, instead of the downstairs living room, I was in Child One and Two's bedroom. And if the downstairs as a whole was an outer ring of hell, I knew by the smell of urine emanating from their bedroom, that I was quickly winding my way to the center-most ring.

I entered the bedroom, covered my nose and mouth with my hand, then peered down at the floor into a glass gerbil cage.

I became thickly enshrouded with the stench of urine. I assumed it was coming from the bare mattresses on the bunk bed; they must have been moist to their cores with urine. The smell was so pungent, the air so heavy, that I imagined if I stayed in there for too long, the odor would settle on me like dust and turn my clothes, skin, and hair a slight yellow.

As I hunched frantically over the cage. It was clear that long ago this cage had been the sight of a magnificent massacre, one spurred by starvation. I knew it had happened long ago, because the cage no longer had the stench of death. In fact, with a fresh layer of wood chips on top, it was the best smelling thing in the room.

With the aid of some utensil, I dug through a ridiculous amount of wood chips. Tears of frustration began to roll down my face as I started to find clumps of short, soft gray hair. I don't remember how long I had been babysitting these kids, but I was sure as hell nobody told me there were gerbils to feed. But then, of course, I guess there hadn't been any gerbils to feed for some time.

"Wood chips are not food!" I cried out, mostly to myself at first. Then I looked up at the ceiling, like Heston looked up at the heavens, and bellowed for everyone to hear. "Wood chips are not food!"

The remains of the gerbils that I encountered first, near the top, were probably the animals who lived the longest, but had also been the maddest. They had desperately climbed to the top of the carcasses of their dead relatives -- of which there were many -- cannibalizing them as they hiked to the peak of the wood chips, only to find they were still inches out of reach of escaping their glass cage. There were so many wood chips in the cage that I came to the conclusion that Child One or Two figured gerbils loved to eat wood chips.

There was nothing I could do. I decided to get out of that room before I asphyxiated.

*Name Changed