Filth

©2003 Mari Miller-Lamb
All rights reserved.

She can't remember when she last took a shower, which is okay because dirt provides insulation against the cold. She feels comforting layers of grease, grime, and bodily excretions enveloping her with warm, familiar smells. Her smells don't cause her to sneeze like that piss-vinegar cologne the man wears. That man who passes her every day on his way to the subway, whose nose wrinkles in disgust as she huddles against the top of the stairs. She asks him for money in her most mucousy garbled voice. She knows he will refuse, yet it gives her pleasure to know that his morning is made more disgusting by one such as her. But it will get even more disgusting soon.

He hates her. Wishes she would get hit by a bus. On good days she smells like feet and menstrual blood. On bad days those smells combine with that of a shit-clogged toilet. She is nothing but a piece of garbage herself. Sometimes he showers for a full thirty minutes to wipe the memory of her scent from his brain.

Today she has a present for him. It's still warm from her body. She waits for him—and there he is! She lunges and he stumbles back as her urine—her first urine of the day, thus the most potent—hits him full in the face. It stings his eyes and for a moment he wonders if she's thrown acid. No—only piss.

"Goddamnit!" he rages and searches for her—to beat, to kill to maim—but she has disappeared. People pass on their way to work. No one has seen—but now he smells. God, how he smells! The odor of urine permeates his three-piece suit. He gags. He notices people are giving him a wide berth—their upper lips curl as they catch a whiff of Eau de Homeless Woman combined with Polo Sport. There is nothing for it but to go home and change—scrub the reek from his skin.

At home, he makes the water as hot as he can stand it and scrubs himself raw. He towels himself off and takes a deep breath—clean—he smells ... not clean. Dirty, in fact. He reeks and it's not just urine—now he smells like sweat-stained socks and crusty underwear. He showers again, using more soap. He steps out of the shower and ... he still smells. The odor wafts from him in waves, its putrid essence hitting him like punches. He can't go out smelling like this! He showers again and again—but each time he steps out, it's worse than before—now he smells like a pile of vomit.

He keeps scrubbing. There's nothing else he can do. But now he's scrubbing harder, and the soap and washcloth aren't enough to remove the reek. He starts using his nails, thinking to scrape the dead skin off because, of course, that's where the odor resides. He scratches and scratches, his nails peel strips of flaky skin away from his body where it clogs the drain in a sodden white mass ... but it's not enough. Now the smell of burning flesh combined with rotting fish accompanies him as he runs to the kitchen where he grabs a knife, a nice long sharp one, the big kitchen knife used for carving meat. He digs the blade into his skin, ignoring the blood and the pain and shaves off a layer of muscle from his bicep. Blood flows from his arm but it smells like polluted cow manure and the smell strengthens.

He can't breathe. Gasping, he carves off another chunk, this time excavating tissue from his thigh where it falls to the floor with a sickening plop. It lays there, white against the dark linoleum, reeking of worm-infested corpses. There's nothing else to do except keep trying, because this smell will surely kill him...

Three weeks later the neighbors call the cops because the odor emanating from the apartment is so bad. Not surprisingly, they find a rotting corpse in the kitchen, its stench permeating the apartment. One of the cops, a rookie, vomits in the corner.

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