Flowers in a Dumpster Read Online Free PDF

packing and calling out to the others in the house, much the same scene that you experienced with us. There were two others, another elderly man and an elderly woman. We were dumbfounded, and they fed us some preposterous story before running out the door and leaving us alone in the house. Soon after they were gone, we discovered that the story was true.”
    “What are you talking about?” Al asked, approaching the doorway with the wariness of one approaching a lion’s den.
    Linda sighed. “We were unable to leave the house. When we would try to walk through the door, we were stopped by some invisible force, which I believe you have had a taste of yourself. The windows would not open nor break, and believe me we tried. The phones did not work. We would stand at the open door and yell at the top of our lungs, and no one heard or saw us. We were trapped in the house. The next morning, we discovered that our car—which had been parked in the drive out front—was gone. It simply vanished.
    “We’ve been here ever since; for two and a half years we have not set foot outside this house. Until today. Everyday fresh food would be in the refrigerator and cupboards, appearing as mysteriously as our car disappeared. No new clothes appeared, though. We had to make do with what was already in the closets here.”
    “Okay, I see,” Steve said. “You’ve been trapped in the house for two and a half years. Why are you suddenly able to leave now?”
    Fred stepped up next to his wife. “Are you dense or what? Can’t you figure that one out? The three people who were here when we first set foot inside the house told us that we would be stuck here until someone else came along and entered the house of his own free will. Once that happened, we would be free to go and the new arrivals would be the prisoners, at least until someone else came along and walked through the door.”
    Steve and Al were silent for some time.
    Steve, as usual, was the first to speak. “So you’re saying—”
    “I’m sorry,” Linda said for the third time. “By simply stepping through the door, you’ve freed us, but you have inadvertently imprisoned yourselves. Like I said, I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but the house demands its prisoners.”
    “Help us then,” Steve said. “You know what’s going on here, so get help.”
    “We can’t.”
    Fred hugged his wife and said, “We were told that if we tried to rescue those who came after us, great misfortune would befall us.”
    “Great misfortune,” Steve repeated. “That’s a vague pronouncement.”
    “We can’t risk it,” Fred said, his wife and daughter both crying in his arms. “We’ve had enough misfortune for one lifetime.”
    “And us?” Al said.
    “Your misfortune is only beginning.”
    Without another word, Fred led his wife down the steps and toward the street. Steve called out to them, but they did not stop and they did not look back. They turned right at the street, and walked on until they were out of sight.
    “Is this some kind of sick joke?” Al asked in a strained voice. “They’re fucking with us, right?”
    Steve held his hand out to the open doorway. “I don’t know. Feel this.”
    Al reached out. His fingers reached the doorway but would go no farther. Steve knew what he felt. Some force, not hard like a wall, but solid and spongy, like the feel of one of those gel wrist pads that came with some mouse pads. There was some give but no penetrating it.
    “What is this?” Al asked.
    Instead of answering, Steve placed both hands open-palmed against the invisible blockade and pressed as hard as he could.
    “This is crazy,” Steve said, panting. “I can’t get through it.”
    Al strode into the living room. “This can’t be. It can’t be.”
    Al picked up the wooden rocker and swung it into the bay window. It shattered into a thousand fragments—the rocker, not the window. The window remained intact, not even a crack.
    Steve placed a hand on Al’s