The Family

There was blood everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

This tiny box room completely splattered, from the top to the bottom, wall to wall.

This must have been here all night, it’s all congealed and drying and gross…

How the hell did they get it all on the ceiling?

I’d been employed by The Family just coming up to a month now. If I were to give my job a title, it would be something along the lines of ‘trusted fixer’. So far, I’d fixed up everything and anything, from mess and clutter to relationship breakdowns to crime scenes to baking disasters. This was definitely the worst thing I’d ever seen, purely because I didn’t even know where to start. It’s worth noting that I’ve never cleaned or been a family counsellor or even committed a crime before. Yet here I was. I have to say though, I was enjoying my work. No day was ever the same, and the family really do treat me well. I get meals cooked by their chef, and he cooks me anything. I once just asked him to make me something that would make me laugh, and he made a phallic shaped pizza- complete with a garlic sauce dribbling down it. All the staff and children were super fun to be around, we all had a lot in common, and had the same sense of humour. I’ve certainly never worked in such an environment, which constantly made me question whether this was too good to be true.

The parents are a little eccentric, but friendly and most importantly, they pay me well above any wage I’d ever received. I even had my own cottage, with no bills to pay. The money I was earning is going to set me up for the rest of my life. I really think this could be too good to be true.

The Family had contacted me directly, I was adamant they had got the wrong number. I was already working a full-time job at a dog rescue centre, and had not been looking to leave any time soon. They asked a lot of questions about my previous work with dogs. What was slightly odd though, was that I had never been left in charge of the dogs here. But, oh my god, did I have to clean up after them, the hair, the slobber, the mud, the hair. The hair which I am definitely now just rubbing into the walls along with bleach and hot soapy water. Which was not making any difference.

I may have previously mentioned, but I am not a cleaner, and I hate cleaning. I’m pretty sure I ruined a fur rug when I tried to clean up a red wine stain, at least I think it was a wine stain. Come to think of it, they sure do spill a lot of red wine. And why were there so many white rugs in this house, so ridiculously impractical. Even this box room has a shaggy white rug and painted white walls, and here I am just smearing the blood everywhere, praying no one walks in and sees my lack of cleaning skills. I took a deep breath, to try and work out what I should be doing. I’m not sure even Mrs Hinch would any tips on how to deal with this. I automatically regretted that deep breath, the strong metallic smell hit the back of my throat made me gag. Why on earth did I have a fry up for breakfast, today of all days.

Maybe I’ll just google it… “How to remove gallons of smeared blood from white walls and fur rugs”. Okie dokie, according to the results, I have royally fucked it. “Don’t use bleach, treat stains as soon as possible, rinse under cold water…” Great, just great. Where would one find a jet wash around here?