A thing to be gotten rid of

No wonder they’d found that damned couch on the side of the road. Neither of them noticed it at first, because it wasn’t really very strong, but it got to the point where they were both dreaming about getting away from the smell. They couldn’t figure out what exactly it was, but guessing became part of their daily interactions.

Ran out to buy milk, bread. Back by four. Think somehow a squirrel got in there, died, then rotted?

“Babe, just wanted to call and say gotta stay late tonight. Maybe the family cat used it as a litter box?”

They seemed to like the ideas involving animals best. Because what human thing, shy of a rotting corpse could cause a smell like this? And it wasn’t just that it was foul. The real problem was the way it had permeated the entire apartment, slowly, like it was coming from a long distance and gradually crept closer and closer.

When the smell first became noticeable, they couldn’t decide where it was coming from. Because it seemed to be coming from everywhere. Everywhere.

They got rid of the damn thing. They got rid of everything and did without what they couldn’t afford to replace. Yet the smell stayed. It was in the walls. Like rotting corpses in that Kevin Bacon movie. That movie was only one corpse, though, wasn’t it? And not quite rotting. Bricked in, a wall that needed to be torn down. Like the smell.

“You could call it subtle if it didn’t drive you out of your mind.” She once overheard him explaining the ways of that smell on the phone to his mother, making no sense but perfect sense at the same moment.

They couldn’t afford to move. They left the windows open even though it was the beginning of winter and the snow got in when it fell.

And then it was three months later; she was still looking for a way to disguise the smell. They had tried vanilla room sprays, lavender plants, pine deodorizers, apple cinnamon potpourri. They had spent hours scrubbing the walls on various weekends. Nothing seemed to help.

“We could wear strings of garlic,” he suggested one night lying next to her in bed.

“It’s not a vampire. It’s not trying to suck the blood from our bodies.” She was half asleep.

“I wish I could suck the blood from my nose. Maybe it would fall off.”

“I like your nose.”

“I used to like it too.”

The sound of his voice caught her so close to the edge of sleep that when he spoke next, she felt like she was falling. “I’ve decided it was raccoons. A pair of them had a litter of little raccoons and left the gross stuff behind on the couch.”

She thought about laughing but just stared up at the ceiling, wondering if perhaps the smell had somehow sunken into the cracks she found there.