As Far As You Know
Teasers
Scent of Power
She would be willing to bet her next ten paychecks that four out of every five regular human beings living in South Bend could identify the odor within three seconds or less if it could be caught and bottled. Seven days a week, Shyla put on her navy blue polyester pants, her short sleeve dress shirt and clip on tie, and no matter how many times she ran her clothes through the washer, the smell remained. On this morning when she opened the closet (she had a separate closet for her other clothes) the smell assaulted her. The odorous funk of it all was enough to make her snap, but somehow she carried on.
She was a shift manager at the Wendy’s next to the University Park Mall and the exact odor which plagued her also permeated the uniforms of the dozen or so other poor slobs who worked for the Dave Thomas legacy here. It was the thing that she hated most about her life. Not the chronic headaches, the roach-infested apartment, or the crushing fatigue she felt when she woke up almost every day for the past few years. Not even the hours of her life spent trying to maintain the schedule, when the only reliable employees were the developmentally disabled and senior citizens. That said a lot.
No, the worst thing, bar none, was that smell.
She dreamed that night she was lying dead in a coffin. And she wasn’t alone. The faint yet inescapable odor of liquefying muscles, bloating skin, bursting bowels and rancid brain juice had filled the coffin to keep her company. The stench was crawling in the fibers of her funeral dress like bed bugs. Death was no escape. Mourners passing her casket suddenly gasped and covered their noses with their hands. Shyla awakened in a sweat. She sat up straight. A gas emanated from under the closet door, floated at her in an olfactorous assault. It was The Smell. The dream, the closet, her whole life hung there before her.
The vanilla pine tree air freshener hanging on the rear-view mirror served to mock her. Sealed in the car was the next level of The Smell, to insure that Shyla not only thought about the coming ordeal, but felt it.
The sun was just about to rise over the mall as Shyla pulled into the parking lot. The morning shift’s two most regular employees had already arrived and were waiting at the back door. Tasha loved working the front counter. Her bridge club friends and fellow mall-walkers hobbled in for their decaffeinated coffee every day between seven and eight. Robert, the university grad, was the other opener – the grill opener. He had his eye on Shyla’s position. He spent all day nit-picking the actions of each manager, aspiring to leave behind the brown polyester pants for navy blue ones – a change which indicated that you were doing more than just flipping burgers.
“Morning Robert, Tasha,” Shyla said as she put the key into the back door.
“It’s 6:07, Shyla.”
Shyla ignored the comment and opened the door. She had the feeling Robert wasn’t done complaining.
She was stopped in her tracks as the open door spit out The Smell. No different than usual, yet disturbingly out of place. And it was warm inside, like the heat had been left on all night. Shyla looked at Robert and Tasha knowing something was not right.
“Mr. Darwood didn’t follow the checklist. The fryers were probably left on,” Robert said with a smug grin.
Shyla ignored him and stepped inside. She was met with resistance. The air was thick with malice. It suddenly felt like she was walking into the midst of an angry mob; no, not a mob, a pack of wild animals, ready to pounce on anything walking through the door.
“Wait you two - stay outside for a minute,” Shyla warned.
The shake and sundae machines were smashed. The burger heat lamps for the drive-through were broken, and the glass covered the counter top in a layer of stained crystals. Darwood, the evening manager was four feet off the floor. His eyes were wide open, yet there was little sign of life. The only thing keeping him from falling was the power cord from the mangled exhaust fan encircling his neck. His shoes had been removed, and his ankles had been slashed to the bone so his blood could drain out. Shyla looked up and saw the entire night crew dangling from the ceiling. Gasping in shock, she let in a mouthful of air that tasted like rotten meat, mildew, maggots and those little flying beetles that congregated on the outside of the back door as soon as the weather warmed in the spring.
Shyla wanted to gag, but she closed her mouth. The Smell had morphed into a real shape, a creature birthed into the world by the hanging corpses, shattered fast food equipment, and the pans that had been placed underneath the bodies to catch the red blood that dripped from them still. It wasn’t just in her mind. For years she believed that the smell itself was alive. Now she knew it was true. Shyla could see it -- her -- a crack-crazed female body builder with a tangle of greasy black hair and a mouth like a rabid junkyard dog, advancing toward her from across the room.
The raw, unbridled rage emanating from that blood-splashed figure brought tears to Shyla’s eyes and sapped the strength from her knees. Shyla felt a well of vomit building inside but fear kept her mouth shut. She dimly heard that Tasha was screaming, but the sound could not easily travel through the thick greasy cloud of anger.
“Shyla, run!” Despite Robert’s desperate shout, the warning traveled across the kitchen as a whisper, muffled by the solidifying sense of hopelessness. He had been trying to back away from the open doorway, but the fear turned his legs to jelly and he collapsed on the ground right after Tasha, who had feinted. The terrible figure advanced on Shyla like an unstoppable force of nature and reached one bloody hand towards her mouth, forcing the slick, filthy nails in over her tongue. The taste was abominable as the oily soft fluid seemed to fill Shyla’s mouth, and it was only a few seconds before the sludge twisted like a screw down her throat, melting as the heat of her vomit met it. Shyla stepped backward as she retched, staining her navy blue polyester pants.
“The Sabbat burned down my home, and I have nowhere else to go,” the bloody woman said as Shyla reeled and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You will close down this restaurant for the day and take this garbage,” she gestured vaguely at Shyla’s deceased coworkers, “to the landfill. And make sure you aren’t followed on the way back. Then you will stand watch while I sleep.”
Shyla fought to regain control of her voice. “But…but Tasha, and Robert…”
“I will deal with them. Get to work cleaning up this mess. When it gets light, I don’t want anyone walking by seeing your friends.”
Were they her friends? They were her coworkers, and perhaps these unfortunates could have been Shyla’s friends if circumstances had been different. Shyla bowed her head, and said, “Yes, my love,” in a small voice. She walked to the maintenance closet to get a broom, trying not to listen to the last, choking screams of Robert behind her. Everywhere, Rachel’s smell hung in the air. Shyla began to resign herself to the fact that if she waded through the stench long enough, she might eventually cease to feel it flow around her like an earthworm feels the ground.
The dream had been a prophetic one, she realized. Shyla would be buried in The Smell, and buried soon.
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