After impatiently waiting for about thirty seconds, Pepito decided that he was done standing around. He reached up for the door knob and turned it, surprised and yet not that it was unlocked, and pushed it open. Seeing Todd's discarded backpack, he knew he was in the right place. Overlooking the flung open basement door, he bolted upstairs, wasting no time. Although, having never been inside his friend's house, he was left to wander aimlessly.
He opened and shut several doors, one being to his parent's bedroom. He lingered in the doorway for a moment, actually, and just watched in disgust as his pathetic excuse for a mother lie unconscious on the bed. She had one leg all scrunched up while the other hung limply off the edge. One arm was curled to her chest and the other was lazily tossed above her head. Her mouth hung open with light traces of drool streaming down her face. And God, could she snore! It wasn't the constant, obnoxious kind that you could hear from a mile away. No, this was more like an exaggerated hiccup, plus the sound of a snore, with a hint of twitching. It was repulsive.
He noticed her pale white skin, contrasting Todd's slightly darker shade. Her hair appeared to be brown (the lack of care made it hard to tell), and it was in wretched knots. She wore a faded and dingy white nightgown with pink and yellow polka-dots and a purple bathrobe that loosely hugged her shoulders. Her toenails were outrageously grown out, teeth appeared to be stained yellow, and her face looked oily. And that was just what he could see from just outside of her room.
Shaking his head, he slammed the door, knowing full well that it would not wake her (not with the drugs she was on) and ran down to the other end of the hallway. He opened the last door on the left and was grateful to see that it was Todd's room. He saw some open drawers and some discarded clothing, but no sign of his friend. He checked the closet and under the bed, just to be absolutely safe, before running back downstairs.
It was then that the horror-movie style basement door caught his eye. Glancing around the living room and peeking into the kitchen, he immediately began to question why Todd would have wandered down there. He searched the depths of mind, trying to retrieve any helpful information. He recalled their conversations about school, his creepy neighbor, Pepito's work with his father, Devi... but none of that linked him with the basement.
He tried to think harder as he headed downstairs. His eyes scanned the room, but no one else was there. He paced back and forth, looking over everything for some sort of clue. And out of the corner of his eye, he saw a small opening behind the stairs. Walking over to it, he actually thought it was just a crawlspace.
"Todd hates small, dark spaces. But where else..."
Letting his words trail off, he figured he had nothing to lose. He got down on his hands and knees and began the crawl to... wherever. He felt around, having limited vision in the dark, and felt something wet and cold. Grunting in displeasure, he merely wiped it off on his shirt and kept going. When he finally reached the other side, his nose was hit with the same God-forsaken smell from earlier. It was like opening the door to the freezer and finding year-old expired food. The pure rotten and bacteria-infected smell sent him flying into a mini-coughing fit.
He looked around, hoping to either find Todd or not so he could get out. When he still saw no sign of his amigo, he almost decided to turn back. But some unknown shape caught his eye and he moved closer in order to find out what it was. Pulling his t-shirt up to cover his mouth and nose, he squinted and put his face right in front of the mysterious object. He was slightly surprised to see that it was a corpse. In fact, he would have been in complete shock had he not remembered that there was a tunnel linking Todd and Johnny's houses. It all started to make sense now.
He followed the row of dead bodies, impressed with the maniac's work. Some of these bodies were hardly recognizable! And it wasn't due to decomposition. And as he marveled over the deranged man's work, he came to another stopping point. This time, it was another crawlspace, which he assumed would lead him straight into Johnny's basement. He dropped to the ground again and crawled, being rather perplexed at the sight of light at the end.
Yes, when he popped out on the other side, the light was still on. His heart seemed to slow as he flicked his eyes about the room. This house had been abandoned for years, there's no logical reason for the light to still be on. In fact, shouldn't the power have been shut off?
He walked to the center of the floor, eyes glued to the wobbly and barely holding on staircase. The walls were stained and scratched, weathered and abused. The place looked like a scene from some cheesy horror film, a classic perhaps. He felt no fear because of his location, what worried him were the circumstances. His best friend... home practically all alone... basement door left open... light on at the end of a secret underground tunnel to a homicidal maniac's basement... Coincidence? Highly unlikely.
Braving the unstable steps, Pepito started climbing his way up, gripping the wall as he did so. Another wave of odor came rushing over him, but it wasn't as repulsive as the last. It didn't smell rotten or moldy, dusty or sickly. It was warm and smelled like a mixture of sweat and blood. Yes, lots of blood.
Shaking his head, he reached for the door knob and twisted it, stopping midway as a brief snippet of a flashback hit him. He vaguely remembered Todd going on about how he had lost Shmee somewhere in his basement. That was it! That was what he needed to remember! Todd lost Shmee while he was exploring the basement, so that's why the door was open and he was nowhere to be found! He peeked back at the room and saw a few ripped up body parts to said teddy-bear and knew he was in the right place.
But, realizing that that was a bad thing, Pepito quickly flung the door open and ran inside. He was moving so fast that he hadn't been watching where he was going and he ended up tripping over something. He fell ungraciously on face and found that his entire front side was now covered in something warm, wet, and heavy. He pushed himself up and tried to wipe himself off, preparing to wring the liquid from his clothes, but he stopped. The light from the door behind him illuminated the dark color that now stained him and he hurriedly flipped over and stared at the floor.
There, lying before him in tattered shambles, was Todd. His body was soaked with his own fluids, face buried into the floor. His clothes were torn, hair was a mess, and he had visible bruises on his exposed skin. Eyes widening and stinging with tears, Pepito flung himself at the corpse, hands tightly latched on to his former friend's shoulders. He knew - just knew - that this was why his father wouldn't tell him anything. By the time he had made that phone call, Todd had already been slaughtered.
He subconsciously dug his nails into his amigo's flesh, not caring about the slight desecration he was causing. For a moment, he wondered if his crazy neighbor had returned and did this. However, he stopped himself, knowing that it was untrue. He would have known if Johnny had come back, and even if he didn't, there's no way he could have done this. Pepito remembered all of the wild stories that Todd would tell him about Nny. All of the twisted and demented things that he had done or would say, but no matter what, Todd always regarded Johnny as a decent person.
He saved him from a child molester when he was six. The guy wished no harm upon his friend.
However, that meant that he still didn't know who or what did this. His narrowed eyes swept across the room, making sure that the attacker wasn't still hiding somewhere. The place was eerily quiet, but quiet all the same. It was just the two of them.
Shakily standing on his own two feet, Pepito caught a glimpse of the door in the corner and started walking towards it. He wasn't entirely sure about what he was doing, but he knew he couldn't stay here. The sight of his only real friend's body all mutilated like that would certainly cause him to go mad. He hated the idea of just leaving him, though, so he decided that he would come back later. Maybe he would drag him out and give him a proper funeral or at least take him to his father to have his body burned. His parents sure as Hell won't miss him.
Speaking of his father, he would have to have a firm and unfriendly talk with him later.
He cracked the other door open, finding a long, crooked, winding staircase that seemed to go on for eternity. He wondered how going from basement to basement led him a hundred miles underground, but decided not to ponder it any further. He would ascend to the surface, all the while thinking about his next course of action.
Should he go straight home and confront his father? Go on a savage hunt for the murderous fiend responsible for all of this? Try calling the police? He snickered at that last thought, already knowing that they were the most useless organisms to walk the face of the Earth. They were a joke and everybody knew it. Fuckers.
And, with that all in mind, he grabbed hold of the railing and began the long journey upstairs.
"A/N: So, I haven't updated in two months. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Hope you enjoyed."