There, that was the last of it. She poured the bleach down the sink, the bottle giving a few asthmatic wheezes as she emptied it. She hoped that would do it, but it had been a couple of weeks since moving in and she still couldn’t get rid of the smell.
It had intruded on her notice by degrees, the olfactory equivalent of seeing something in the corner of the eye. Just a whiff every now and then as she walked past the kitchen door, or in the hall, or the bathroom. The suggestion of overripe cabbage, or a piece of fish left too long or spoiled meat. She had tried white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, down the plugholes but that didn’t do anything. She graduated to bleach which seemed to work, at least at first. She had checked the kitchen, the fridge, the most obvious culprits for rotting food, then the oven, which she scrubbed so thoroughly she broke through the baked-on crust to the shine of metal. She thought that had solved it, but over the next few days, the smell had grown more persistent, evolving from a faint hint to a definite statement. The smell evoked childhood memories – the dead mouse found under the stairs; a bird, lying broken among its scattered feathers; a sheep in the fields near the house, that announced its presence on the wind long before the encounter with its wretched woollen carcass, the cavernous stomach putrid with ooze…
Stop. Stop it. ‘Your thoughts are just that: thoughts. Change the narrative,’ Victoria had said, at therapy. Easier said than done Victoria, when the flat stank of rotting things.
—
Mags sucked air into her lungs as she lugged the shopping up the dimly lit stairs, her fingers garrotted by the bags. The bottles of bleach and drain cleaner weighed a tonne. And fuuck, she was so unfit, she should really join a gym. But there wasn’t enough money, especially since the cost of everything had gone up so much and anyway, when would she get time, between the bar work and the day job?
‘Ooof, shit,’ she tripped on a bit of loose carpet, that idiot landlord still hadn’t replaced the lights out here. It was pitch black and a death trap, she ought to complain again, but he hadn’t answered her last few calls, and she’d already left several messages. She arrived panting at the door and as she put the bags down, with a grateful sigh, she felt the trepidation mount. She’d been deliberately avoiding thinking about it all the way up the stairs, but now here she was. She paused, waiting. What if it was still there? What if the bleach and air fresheners hadn’t worked? She squashed the panic – ‘change the narrative’: what if they had?
She jammed the key in the door and picking up the bags, kicked it open and stopped, inhaling. The sweet fragrance of Blossom and Breeze Febreze swept over her, and she sighed in relief. It was ok, it was gone. The multiple bottles of bleach had done it. She dumped the bags in the kitchen and put the milk in the fridge. A cup of tea before Anne got here and she’d put the flowers in the vase, and…what was that? She took a breath, no it was ok, she could only smell the Febreze, except….wait, was that….? A sudden whiff of rancid meat assailed her. No…no, no, no. She groaned, please no. She sniffed deeply, in case she’d conjured it into being through some olfactory hallucination, but it was still there. How was that possible, when she’d put bleach everywhere? But the smell of putrefaction was unmistakeable.
She grabbed bottles of drain cleaner from the bags, she’d bought plenty and she would put it down the plugholes, before Anne got here.
The worst of it was the odour didn’t seem to come from any particular direction. She had focussed on the drains because what else could it be? But underneath the logic, there was the fear that she would never find the source and meantime, she had poured what felt like gallons of bleach down them.
She remembered that mouse, the one at home. There had been that same smell in their house, in the living room, her father and brother searching under the couch, the chairs and in the corners, unable to find the cause, but all three of them repelled by the sense of ‘wrongness’ that came with the stench of death, a sick undercurrent that lodged in their throats. They all knew the unambiguous smell of dead things, they lived in the country, after all. She had held her jumper over her mouth and tried to take shallow, tentative breaths. Eventually, her father had pulled open the door to the understairs cupboard and they had all stepped back as the intensified fetor had surged out. Piles of old newspapers and documents in cardboard boxes had been hauled into the room, eventually unearthing the corpse of a mouse, squashed flat by the weight of papers. She had been amazed that this tiny mouse, its body so small it would have fit into her hand, had filled a room with its overpowering reek, allowing them no rest until they had unearthed it.
Now she squirted a generous glug of cleaner down the kitchen sink, then opened the door to the bathroom. The smell was definitely worse in here, she was sure of it, and she stood over the sink, breathing deeply before pouring the cleaner in. She repeated the movement over the bath and choked as an acrid smell of decomposition assaulted her, the bitterness making her eyes blur. The odour was thick and viscid, coating her skin and fouling her clothes. She scratched at her hands, rubbing viciously to try and remove the filthy layer and she imagined the germs sinking into her pores. She ran the tap until it was as hot as possible and stuck her hands under, ignoring the pain as her hands turned red.
She was cleaner now and could consider the problem. There must be something down there, stuck in the u-bend, something that the bleach and drain cleaner couldn’t resolve, plus it would explain why the bath took so long to drain. That was it, it had to be, it made sense, if something was stuck there, mouldering away. She ran to the bedroom, returning with a wire coat hanger, which she eagerly sacrificed to make a hook, and held her breath as she fished around in the plughole. She felt resistance and wriggled the wire until it caught, and pulled, and gave a low snarl as she felt it drop off the hook. She manoeuvred the wire some more, until it snagged, and she pulled cautiously upward, holding her breath against the smell and the danger of losing the hold on it. Al-most there… with a resisting slurp, the hole birthed a long clot of slimy hair. It was revolting, a tangled mess of scuzzy froth, but…with something solid at the centre. She examined it, what was it? A stick? She didn’t want to look any closer, but curiosity and desperation compelled her. She laid toilet paper on the seat lid and dropped the hairy clump onto it. She didn’t want to… touch it. She found an old pencil and a screwdriver and teased it slowly apart, the hair soft and scummy, but there was something solid in there. The hairs parted and she hooked the item out; a small bone.
What could that be from? (Or who? her mind whispered. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself). Probably just an animal bone, or maybe some old chicken bones from a roast dinner, that for some reason were disposed of here. She shivered; the more she looked at it, the more she saw it as a finger bone. A small one, like a child’s. Why was it so dark? It was almost black. It sat on the lid, glistening wetly under its film of grey soap.
Before she could think anymore, she lifted the lid and dropped bone and hair into the toilet with a loud plop and flushed it away. She sloshed bleach after it and squeezed the rest of the cleaner down the bath with vicious satisfaction. That would do it. That should do it.
The doorbell rang, and she jumped. She’d lost track of time. It would be Anne, ‘Come in, its open!’
Anne walked in, holding the obligatory bottle of wine, her cashmere clad form elegant as always, and stopped dead on the threshold, ‘Jesus Christ, I can’t see! My eyes are burning! How much bloody bleach have you used?’
Mags came out of the bathroom, her face drawn in worry, ‘I have to Anne, can’t you smell that?’
‘Smell? I think my nasal hairs have just dissolved. Let’s open some windows before we die.’
She pushed past Mags and thrust open the bathroom window before closing the door on the overpowering reek and taking refuge in the living room. She flung herself onto the sofa, but gave a surreptitious glance at Mags’s face, ‘Ok, spill, what is it?’
Mags came in hesitantly, and sat on the edge of a chair, her body stiff. ‘Can you smell anything? I mean something other than the bleach?’
‘Like…?’ Anne kept her tone light.
‘Like. Like…somethings gone…off.’
Anne performed an exaggerated inhale through her nose. ‘No, nothing. Except ammonia. And air fresheners,’ She raised her eyebrows at the three air fresheners on the windowsill of the room.
Mags was silent and Anne saw the scratches on her hands and wrists. A trickle of foreboding started in Anne’s stomach; please don’t let this be anything major. Not like last year. She looked around the room, and said with an extra bright smile, ‘I like it here, it’s so large and airy. And there’s no bad smell here. And you’ve put those paintings up! I love them.’
Mags smiled, but it was an uncertain, short-lived thing. ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? You bought them for me.’ She saw Anne’s face drop, ‘Sorry, that sounded rude. I love them too. Let me get some glasses.’ She left the room and Anne chewed her lip. No need for panic – yet. Anyone would be upset if they thought their flat smelled. She sniffed again, but all she could detect were wafts of ammonia with an undercurrent of lemon, maybe a polish?
She relaxed as Mags brought in the glasses, a drink or two would help them both.
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