 There comes a moment in life when everything balances on the razor's edge of a single seemingly inconsequential choice. Mine came when I tried the key one last time. Not a day goes by that I don't think how much different things would be if I'd just given up and walked away. I'd still be here with my wife and children. I would still be sane. I would still be human. But no, I'm a dutiful son, so I tried the key one last time. After the better part of ten minutes jiggling and twisting the key in the lock, the tumblers finally aligned. The deadbolt thunked over and the door to Uncle Ricky's apartment swung open. It seems so unfair that we never understand the gravity of these choices until long after we've made them. Uncle Ricky was my mom's younger brother and the undisputed black sheep of the family. He was something of a drifter, never staying any place or with anyone for very long. I never really knew him all that well. Most of what I did know came from hushed conversations between my parents that I'd overheard as a child. Mom said he'd never gotten over the trauma of losing his twin brother. Dad said he was a bum. Never the truth, we never saw much of Uncle Ricky. Even when he'd moved to the next town over from us a few years back, he'd occasionally pop in for a holiday dinner, staying only long enough to eat before making excuses and hustling out the door. We didn't even know he was in the hospital until they called mom and asked what to do with the body. Since my mom was his only surviving relative, she became executor of his estate. She's getting on in years herself and had her hands full taking care of my dad during his chemo, so cleaning out Uncle Ricky's apartment fell to me. Everything had to be cleared out and the key returned to the landlord before the weekend, otherwise he'd charge her another month's rent. With dad being sick, their finances were pretty tight. She asked me to handle it. If you find a photo album, I'd like to have it. Mom had told me, sitting beside dad's hospital bed, patting his hand. But everything else can go to goodwill. If you see anything you want, you go right ahead and keep it. Oh, and call Pete. I'm sure Pete will help you. Yeah, right. Of course. I didn't say that out loud. Pete was my younger brother and I suspect mom's favorite. If I called Pete and asked for help, he'd be all like, yeah sure, no problem. You can count on me. And then the day of, I'd get a text that said, sorry, bro, something came up. It wouldn't be the first time. Besides, Uncle Ricky was almost always broke. How much stuff could he have? I figured I would spend the afternoon, three or four hours tops, bagging up clothes and loading any decent pieces of furniture into my truck for the trip to the secondhand store. Everything else would get tossed in the dumpster and I'd be home in time to tuck my kids into bed. An optimistic illusion was shattered when I looked through the doorway. Turns out Uncle Ricky was a hoarder. The apartment was a two room tenement over a laundromat. And when I say two room, I don't mean two bedroom. It was on the square, one of the cedars sections of town, about half the shops at street level were either boarded up or had their windows soaked over. Most of the landlords had agreements with the state to provide low cost housing for parolees while they were still under supervision, which was convenient because the square was within walking distance of the courthouse, county jail, and the probation office. A narrow staircase beside the laundromat took me up to a dimly lit second floor hallway. The floorboards were warped paint flaked from the walls. I passed two apartments with laminated notices taped to the doors, warning everyone that a registered sex offender lived inside. At the end of the hallway was number five, Uncle Ricky's place. Uncle Ricky was not a registered sex offender. Other than writing some bad checks and a couple of drunk and disorderly arrest, he'd never been in any real trouble with the law, at least as far as I knew. This apparently was all he could afford. Just inside the door was a short entryway. To the right was a kitchenette, the sink overflowing with crusty dishes, the countertop littered with empty soup cans, potato chip bags, and jars of instant coffee. Whatever Uncle Ricky had been cooking a week ago when he'd started having chest pains was still on the stove. Flies buzzed around the greasy pot. There was a pool of water on the floor under the refrigerator. Apparently the power was off and the freezer had defrosted. To the left was a small bathroom with a rust stained tub and a chipped seafoam green sink with a leaky faucet. Cartons of off-brand soap, toothpaste, and shampoo were stacked on every flat surface. Mildew blackened the grout between the tiles. The lid to the toilet tank had cracked in half and was held together with duct tape. Beyond the entryway, a narrow path had been carved through the clutter leading to a sagging and threadbare sofa. The rest of the apartment was buried four feet deep with boxes, bags, bins, and totes of junk. I cursed so loud and so long at the sight of it, I'm pretty sure I frightened the sex offender across the hall. There was nothing to do except roll up my sleeves and get to work. At first, I went through everything on the off chance there might be something of value. Most of it was garbage, literal garbage, plastic bags full of plastic bags. Others were packed with rags, frayed extension cords, empty food packages, crushed soda cans, and worse. I found bins of concert teas for bands no one has ever heard of and stacks of stationery from a motel chain that had been out of business since I was in junior high. There were boxes filled with VHS cassettes of 80s era children's cartoons that would have been a copyright lawyer's dream come true if anyone had ever actually watched them. In one tote, I found two dozen unopened blister packs of wanderlady action figures. Yes, that's how it was spelled on the package. From the look of things, wanderlady got her superpowers after encountering a radioactive cosmetic surgeon. There were eight bags of plastic ferns, totes filled with paperback books that had their covers torn off, a cardboard box of bright red teddy bears, each holding a heart with an obscene limerick embroidered on it. Six Betamax decks, two laserdisc players, a crate full of as seen on TV elastic headbands with a cell phone holder, a box of bridal veils in every color except white, and more, so much more. This was the sort of stuff vendors marked down by 90% on the last day of the flea market just so they wouldn't have to schlep it all home. By the time I finished with the front room, it was laid and getting dark. With no power to the apartment, I had to use the flashlight app on my cell phone. One of those headband holders actually came in handy. As I started on the back room, I wasn't as thorough as I'd been earlier. Keeping an eye out for the photo album Mom Wanted, I just took a cursory glance into each bag and box before dragging it to the pile by the door. Tomorrow, I take a personal day from work, come back with the U-Haul, and cart all this crap to a landfill. If I hurried, there was probably enough juice in my phone for me to get everything out of the bedroom. My phone was chirping its low battery warning. When I found the closet, I thought I was almost done, no telling what was hidden behind that door. The closet was empty, though, except for a wooden trunk shoved up against the back wall under a set of shelves. It was about the size of a foot locker and looked valuable. The wood, obviously something exotic like teak or mahogany, was polished to a luster. The hardware was a luminous brass, as were the two bands that encircled it. It had to be worth a couple hundred dollars, maybe even a grand if it was as old as it looked. That would help Mom and Dad a little with our hospital bills and seemed like a good place to store a photo album. I pulled it out of the closet, hoping to end the day with a win. It was heavy. I really had to put my back into it, but I managed to drag it clear and pop the catches, just as my cell phone started chirping urgently. Mom's photo album wasn't in there. What I found instead were jars filled with yellow liquid and, well, pieces of what I couldn't tell, but some of them looked like they belonged inside a human. That's when my phone died. That's mine, thank you, said a voice behind me. I spun around, tripped over the trunk, and landed on my ass in the closet. Silhouetted by the streetlights, filtering through the battered mini blinds, was a figure tall and gaunt. He seemed to be wearing a long coat in what looked like an old-fashioned bowler derby. Beyond that, I couldn't make out any details. Who are you? I stammered. What do you want? Let's just say I was an associate of your uncles. I have come to collect what rightfully belongs to me. His voice was low and full of menace, like the growl of a rabid animal. It penetrated to my core, rattling my spine. Malice radiated from him, the way heat radiates from a furnace. I don't mind saying, I was scared. You may have this. He said, tossing something to the floor between my feet. We'll call it a trade. Then he closed the trunk, fastened the catches, and snatched it up by the handles like it weighed nothing. He turned on his heel and was gone. I sat in the dark until the thudding of his footsteps on the hallway's warped floorboards faded away. I don't think I even realized that I'd scooped up whatever he'd traded for the trunk until I was back down on the street. It was the photo album mom wanted. I flipped through the pages, seeing old pictures of my grandparents, my mom, and Uncle Ricky. There were also photos of my Uncle Ronnie, Ricky's twin brother, who died in a freak accident when I was two. After driving straight home, I managed to crawl into bed without waking my wife. By the next morning, the events of the night before had lost some of their impact. I did take a personal day, but instead of renting a U-Haul and lugging all that junk out myself, I hired a couple of guys off Craigslist to do it for me. It cost four hundred bucks, but I wasn't about to go back into that apartment. The events had lost some of their impact, but not all of it. I never told anyone what happened. Instead, I rationalized it, came up with plausible explanations. For a while, I had myself half convinced that the trunk in those jars were an old horror movie prop. Uncle Ricky had probably bought them from the guy in the bowler, Derby, with one of his bad checks. With all the other weird junk I'd found in the apartment, it didn't seem too far-fetched. A few weeks passed, and I'd almost put the whole thing out of my mind when Stacey, my wife, asked me to bring the Christmas decorations down from the attic. She's the type that likes to start hanging lights and mistletoe while the Thanksgiving leftovers are still cooling off in the fridge. It was up in the attic that I found it, that teak or mahogany trunk with the brass hardware. My heart lurched painfully against my ribs when I saw it, sitting there under the eaves. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help myself. I had to open it. The trunk was empty, except for a note written on stationery from an out-of-business motel chain. To my new friend, it began, This is my special trunk. You may have possession of it for a time, but make no mistake, it belongs to me. Take exceptional care of it. Soon, you will begin to experience some, shall we say, unique cravings. Indulge them, resisting as pointless. I will see to it that you're able to pursue your newfound appetites without interference. In return, all I ask is that you set aside a few choice morsels for me. Place them in jars and store the jars in this trunk. I will collect them periodically at my leisure. Now, I'm not so naive as to think you will eagerly enter into this agreement. I expect you will attempt to find a way out. Others have tried, none have succeeded. I'm sure you'll try to test the limits as well, but have a care. I do not possess an overabundance of patience and have been known to deal rather harshly with those who disappoint me. For this reason, I've taken the liberty of removing a photo album from your home. This will assist me in deciding who to punish if you should fail to live up to my expectations. But enough unpleasantness, I look forward to a long and satisfactory relationship. Sincerely, you're associate. PS, your children are absolutely beautiful. I resisted the cravings as long as I could, but he was right. It was pointless. The first time I gave in to my newfound appetites, I was so horrified by what I'd done by how much I'd enjoyed it that I waited until everyone was in bed and I tried to hang myself in the garage. The man in the bowler derby cut me down almost as soon as the step ladder tipped from under my feet. While I knelt on the floor gasping for air, he tossed a stuffed animal onto the oil stained cement before me. It was Rudy Petuti, an elephant plushie that was my daughter's favorite. She never slept without it. This is a warning, the bowler derby man said. The only one I will ever give you. I live in an apartment, much like Uncle Ricky's now. It's in a different town, much further away, but I guess every place has some place like this. I just couldn't stay with Stacey and the kids, not after what I've become. Even if I wanted to, even deep in the grip of my appetites, I know I'd never hurt them. Bowler Derby Man wouldn't allow that. They're his leverage to keep me in line. It just seemed so obscene. Holding my children with hands that have done would mine have done. I couldn't stand the thought of my family living with a monster, even if that monster is me. So here I am, in a dark and drafty apartment, listening to the drip of a leaky kitchen faucet, obsessing over the teak or mahogany trunk with brass hardware in the back of my closet. It's half full. I've been busy. Sometimes, when the guilt starts to gnaw on my brain, it helps me to write. Maybe collecting junk was what helped Uncle Ricky, but for me, pecking out words on a keyboard is the only thing that takes the edge off. Most of what I post is fiction, but tonight, I'm going to tell the truth. I'm not supposed to talk about Bowler Derby Man, but I'm pretty sure he'll let this slide. After all, you'll probably all think this is just another story.