Chicken Girls (S04E04) “The Stench”

“The Stench” smells like another good episode,  doesn’t it?  It is!

The entire school is on the hunt for a foul odor. A stench, stank, funk.  Something’s rotten in Attaway!  

Of course, there is the on going coming of age, boy-girl stuff and it’s…  curiosity

Ezra and Rhyme,  are still in that  “about last night” mode  and whatever happened in Florida over the summer.  

The cuteness of Luna and…

The stench stayed with him the longest. Long after the incident and long after the ceremony, past his middle years, and into his senior years. The stench never left. The ceremony itself wasn't significant or particularly memorable - it took place in a room that was austere and drafty, full of benches that creaked and moaned when the solemn people filing in took their seats. Musty scents filled the air, mingling with the individual smells of each individual in the tiny space; a waft of Chanel here, frivolous sprinkles of lavender elsewhere, fighting amongst each other to take over the entire room. Everyone stared nervously at the coffin in the front. It lay there on the hastily decorated table, small and rectangular and black. There was no priest in the front with a Bible, nor was there any mother or father or relatives weeping and clinging to each other in despair. The silence in the room was so heavy that it felt like everyone was being dragged underwater and held there against their will. People huddled together, nonchalant expressions carved into their faces. After a few uncomfortably heavy moments, a baby's cry pierced the air, and the spell was broken. Whispers and soft murmurs danced around the spectators as they threw furtive, curious looks at the lonely coffin. "...sure he'd been murdered..." "We shouldn't have sacrificed a child..." "...the man will leave our children now..." "...what a pity..." It wasn't until after the soft voices of the people had worn off, and everyone returned to staring at anything but the coffin, that he spoke. "What was the child's name?" No one answered.

- - - - -

The stench made its insidious presence known the very next day. It clung to everything in his life, refusing to be forgotten. It enveloped the plants, attached itself to his clothing, hung off the furniture, and even took the honorary seat next to him in his brand new Porsche. His superior didn't seem to notice the smell, even though it covered every single inch of the case report he turned in that morning. Most of all thought, it lurked in the pores of his son's skin. So much so that he no longer looked forward to hugging the boy after a long day of work, and avoided the disapproving yet awkward glances his wife threw his way. He spent hours in the shower, scrubbing at his own skin until it was raw and bleeding.  Still, the scent did not leave him. It kept him awake in the middle of the night, sleeping in the space between him and his wife. It shared his pillow, blankets, and everything else that had once offered him comfort. He couldn't escape it at work, and it had infested his home. The stench was like a parasite, attaching itself to his life and sucking everything out of it. Every single night, he forced his eyes shut in the hopes that in the morning, the smell would disappear. Yet somehow, every morning when he awoke, he felt the heaviness of the stench even deeper within himself, until at last, he was sure that it had embedded itself into his skeleton. Eventually, he stopped fighting the smell, allowing it to overcome his surroundings. Some years later, he even learned to live with it. Letting such a sinister presence lurk in his life, however, did not come without its consequences. Interestingly, it did not bother him when the divorce papers landed on his front step. He welcomed the solitude of a house without his wife and son, who didn't understand his obsession with the stench. It was as if they were blind to the darkness that had surrounded him. He did not even feel the loss when his friends and acquaintances trickled slowly out of his life, which had become a ship with a million holes. The stench though... The stench never left. It accompanied him for years and years. It was not until he impulsively quit his job and sat in his kitchen staring at the empty refrigerator that he decided he could take it no more. He had to figure out how to get rid of the stench before it drove him insane.

- - - - - -

He barely missed the house - over the years, its sign had deteriorated into a piece of rotten wood nailed to the door, which was covered in cobwebs. Despite old age, however, the place hadn't changed much. It stood silent and still next to an old oak tree, looking as sinister as ever. As he slowly approached the structure, the irony of the situation almost made him laugh. Years ago, everyone had avoided this house like the plague - and yet here he was, almost welcoming its existence and walking towards it of his own will. "I thought you'd come." He glanced up sharply, nearly stumbling on a pile of torn roots when he noticed the gnarly old man standing in the shadows of the overhang on the weathered porch. The man looked vaguely familiar, but like all the other things in his life lately, he could no longer place the other person's existence with any of his faded out memories. The stench had overwhelmed him. "And you are?" He inquired, making sure to keep his gaze even when he clambered up the creaky stairs to face the old man. "You really don't remember me," the man wondered aloud, seemingly amused. "Then why are you here? No one has come here in a long time." "This house cursed me with something the last time I was here. I need to get rid off... a stench." The old man narrowed his steely blue eyes, his bushy eyebrows making him appear more menacing than his skinny figure warranted. "You ain't ever gonna get rid of it," he said simply. "You know what I'm talking about!" It had been decades, and not one person had understood the smell that plagued his life. And yet here, all along, there was someone who knew. He should have felt rage, at how close he had been to someone who understood, but instead, all he felt was intense relief. "You know," he repeated, this time more confidently. He was surprised when the old man started laughing uproariously. "Oh my friend, I been livin' on this stinkin' land a whole damn long time, and yer the first one who hasn't e'er head of the stench!" "What is this stench, exactly? Please help me. It's taken my entire life from me, and it all started with that horrible funeral years and years ago of that little boy." The man beckoned towards him then, his eyes softening with sympathy. "I r'mber that one... the funeral that shouldn't've been. What'd they do now... killed the child, that was it, am I right?" "Yes," he replied, "because of that man. The man that was kidnapping all the children. So they decided that if we left him the bastard child, he would leave us alone... and he did." "But you wor left with the nasty smell," his companion finished. "It be the stench of regret, boy." "Why me thought? All I did was attend the funeral. I took no part in their decision to kill the child." "You wor the only one wi' an ounce of respect fer that child, and that's why the stench preyed on you," the elderly man explained. "You can bleach and juice yer stuff with lemons, burn everything out of yer life, and you still ain't gonna get rid of it." "But why?" "Don'tcha feel disconcerted about the bastard child? He was like a shadow that appeared 'n disappeared, until some damn people found some use fer him and threw 'im out like trash. The stench is a real sneaky thing now, it crawls into yer conscience and sits there for eternity cos of one little tiny moment of regret that ya feel. An' don't tell me ya don't regret nothin', boy." "If the bastard child hadn't died, so many other would've. His death saved every other child in town. There is nothing to regret." Yet even as he said it, he couldn't help but twitch at his own lie. It made sense now, the restless way with which he lived after the funeral, the way the stench clung the strongest to his own child, the way the stench forced its way into every nook and cranny in his life.  The old man quirked his lips up in a gruesome smile, revealing yellowing and aged teeth. "Like be a funny thing, huh? Some folks never give a shit and live on in peace forever, like a blessing. The ones that do show some compassion spend an eternity bein' caught down by these things. Regret, despair, the wondering of what could've been, if somethin' had been done. Ignorance is bliss they say now, ain't it? Well it shore is. Bliss indeed." "This smell then... I can't ever be rid of it?" The man shook his head and waved his hands. "Oh no. Ye can get rid 'o anything now. But here's the thing. Would you live like them," he pointed absently towards the city, "pretendin' nothing ever happened and no dirty deed had ever been done, or ye live like now, miserable but true? They avoid this land like the plague, friend, cos they know it's out to get'em. Lookin' at all this where everything happened is just gonna break their glass world made of perfection. What's werth more to you now, eh?" He remembered then. The boy's name had been Samuel. Samuel the bastard child.

- - - - -

Some years later, he followed the scent down an old worn path, all the way until it stopped at an awkward ditch in the road. There was no symbolic reference to the lives that Samuel had saved, or flowers of gratitude. He reckoned that most people had forgotten what the ditch was anyway. No one remembered the cattle that had been left out on the road to rot under the torrid sun. He managed to sit down with his legs crossed - a difficult feat in his old age - and stared at the empty hold in front of him for a while, until it seemed that he had forgotten what he'd gone there for.  "For what it's worthy," he finally said, so quiet and delicately that he could barely hear himself over the sounds of the city, "I'm sorry for what happened to you. I've spent my whole life living a well-served apology to you. And now my life is almost gone." "But I don't regret it at all, Samuel. I have never regretted feeling regret because of what happened to you." As expected, no one responded. Nothing responded. However, he had lived with the stench for so long that he did not even notice when it finally left.