I’m afraid.

Shortly after I made this post about the state of our dry cleaning, the bag disappeared. I didn’t want to ask any questions about it, hoping against hope that maybe Ed decided to finally take the items in and they would be cleaned and returned to me in the form of gloriously clean and pressed plastic-covered delights on paper hangers.

It’s been over two months now, and the bag has not yet resurfaced. I’m having nightmares about what could have happened to it – thrown in a ditch somewhere for hookers to enjoy; given to hobos to use as a sex rag; traded at the market for a handful of magic beans – but deep down, I know the answer. I know what happened to my dry cleaning.

Do you remember the book Flowers in the Attic? Do you remember the scene near the end, after Cory died and the escape of the remaining three, where Cathy has triumphantly returned to the house to look down upon her former tormentors? Do you remember how she sensed – and smelled – something horrible and evil in the house and knew that that her mother didn’t take Cory to the hospital as promised but rather left him to die and rot in a hidden room under the stairs?

One of these days, I’m going to catch a whiff of something unpleasant and I’ll know – just know – that Ed didn’t take the dry cleaning bag to work at all – he just stashed it out of sight in the hopes that I’ll never discover his horrible, selfish, evil deed – but it’ll be too late, and the wheels of revenge will be unstoppable in the incredulous and unintentionally hilarious final chapter.

Then, in the fashion of all VC Andrews books, it’ll be revealed that Ed is actually my long lost uncle who is actually my mother’s true love and – gasp! – my father! My beauty and artistic talent will see me through my incredibly privileged yet cruel life, but the vicious cycle will be unending as I will inevitably end up falling in love with my twin brother and we have to move to a haunted house in another city where no ones knows our deep, dark family secret .. or do they??

I just want my sweaters cleaned; I don’t have time for this much drama.