The Odor Stalker

She's Been Here

Nan came home at two in the morning. When she opened the door the first thing she smelled in her apartment was the ripe odor of something rotten. She dropped her purse by the door and walked in looking around her small space trying to find the source of that smell. It was a mixture of old cabbage, sweaty socks, and weeks old milk. She frantically pulled things out of her refrigerator, out of the pantry, and turned her living room upside down. But she couldn’t find anything. She walked into the next room and over-turned her drawers, ripped her bathroom apart, threw everything into the bathtub, and still nothing. The smell was getting stronger so she thought she must be getting closer but there was no real direction where it was coming from.

She saved her room for last. Her little efficiency apartment had only the one bedroom, a square box that she had managed to turn into a cozy nest. But the smell was the worst in there. She looked under her bed, she pulled her dresser from the wall, she emptied out her small closet, and still she could not find where the horrid smell was coming from. She sat down in the middle of her shambled room, and began to cry. Her apartment was now thoroughly a wreck. And the smell was still wafting through the air even though she had opened every window and the front door still stood wide open.

After nearly half an hour in which she added the salt from her tears to the mix of clothes, accessories, shoes, boxes, and papers strewn all over the floor she crawled over to her night table and pulled the phone down. She punched the first number on the speed dial and waited while the clicks and rings connected her.

“Hello?” said a sleepy voice.

“She was here, Fred.” Nan sobbed into the phone.

A sigh. Then, “What do you mean?” he asked.

I came home and the minute I opened my door there was this horrible smell that hit me in the face. I know she was here.”

“You’re just being paranoid again.” Fred said irritated at Nan for calling him and waking him up.