Desperate for work, I took a high-paying cleaning job at a mansion with strange instructions — no owners, just a key under the doormat.
But when I stepped inside, my stomach dropped. The place was wrecked, almost on purpose. And just as unease crept in… the front door unlocked.
I never thought I’d find myself mopping filth off someone else’s floor. But life has a way of throwing curveballs when you least expect them.
One minute you’re sitting in your corner office, crunching numbers and planning your kids’ college funds. The next? You’re staring at an email that might as well say “Game Over.”
“We regret to inform you that effective immediately, the company is ceasing all operations.”
I read those words 20 times, my coffee going cold beside my keyboard.
14 years of loyalty, gone in a single paragraph. The company was bankrupt. No severance. No warning. Not even a goodbye handshake.
I immediately applied for every job opening in my field that I could find. My husband Jerry kept saying things like, “Something better will come along,” and “Everything happens for a reason.”
But watching our bank account drain while rejection emails flooded my inbox? That hits differently. Each night, I’d lie awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering how we’d gotten here.
“You know,” Jerry said one evening, trying to sound casual as he sorted through another stack of bills, “my mom keeps offering to help.”
I sat up straighter, my jaw clenching. “We are NOT taking money from Brenda.”
“Monica, come on. She means well.”
“Does she?” I shot back. “Like when she told everyone at our wedding that you could have done better? Or when she sent me that article about working mothers and childhood development? No, she just wants to rub salt in my wounds.”
Jerry sighed, but didn’t argue. He knew as well as I did that his mother had never approved of me.
In her eyes, I was just the accountant who’d stolen her precious son away from the society girls she’d picked out for him.
Soon, I couldn’t sleep. The sound of bills sliding through our mail slot made my stomach clench. Our youngest needed new shoes. The car payment was coming up. I couldn’t wait for a successful job application anymore. I needed money, fast.
“I’m going to join an online platform that advertises services,” I told Jerry one morning, my hands wrapped around a cup of cheap coffee. “For cleaning.”
He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Monica, you don’t have to—”
“We need the money,” I cut in. “And work is work, right? So long as it helps pay the bills, what does it matter if I’m cleaning up homes or balancing books?”
The words felt hollow, but I filled in the application to join the cleaning service anyway.
The minute I got a notification that my application for cleaning work was successful, I sighed and put my head in my hands. I truly didn’t mind the work, it was just… this wasn’t how I pictured my life turning out.
Thirty minutes later, my phone pinged.
“Mansion cleaning needed. One-time job. $800.”
I blinked at the screen. $800 for one day’s work?
The message went on to explain that the keys would be under the doormat, and I wouldn’t need to meet the owners.
Something about that made my skin prickle, but desperation has a way of drowning out common sense.
“I’ll take it,” I replied. The cleaning service sent me the address within seconds.
The house looked normal enough from the outside. Massive, sure, but well-maintained with neat hedges and fresh paint.
I lifted the doormat and took the key. But when I unlocked the door, the exorbitant price I was offered suddenly made sense.
The stench hit me first. Rotting food mixed with something worse, something that reminded me of the time our fridge died during a summer vacation. Then my eyes adjusted to the dim light, and I nearly dropped my cleaning supplies.
It looked like a war zone. There was garbage everywhere, torn bags spilling their contents across marble floors. Clothes lay scattered across the floor, heavily stained, some ripped like they’d been torn apart by angry hands.
Even the walls hadn’t been spared: there were smears of what looked like ketchup and mustard creating bizarre abstract patterns. In the kitchen, dishes towered in precarious stacks, fuzzy with mold.
“What the hell?” I whispered. “How… what sort of people live like this?”
This wasn’t a normal, casual sort of messy, it was more like something out of a reality show.
But $800 is $800. I pulled on my gloves, tied a bandana around my nose and mouth, and got to work.
With each piece of garbage I picked up, and each plate I scrubbed, I thought about Jerry and the kids. About how this money would help keep us afloat just a little longer.
Hours passed in a blur of scrubbing and sweating. And the longer I worked, the more I started to notice signs this disgusting mess had been created on purpose.
