Sunday, August 25, 2019

REEK

It was an odd morning. I caught a bus into town. I had a job interview and nerves were getting the better of me. I shuffled in my seat, my fellow passenger moving to one side to avoid any awkward physical contact. He stunk like a dead slug so I was glad he moved over.

The windows were steamed up with rank morning breath and I could just see outside that the sky was overcast and somehow darkening. It looked apprehensive, dug-in, like a worried wolverine. I felt the same way as we trundled into the bus station.

The job interview was with a large new factory in town. I was one of a several hundred poor sods stood around, hands stuffed in our pockets, tightly wound as if waiting to be gutted on a slab.

I'd heard on the grapevine this brand new meat processing outfit had interviewed thousands of people across the country but no-one had started yet. A new boss was coming from miles away and then everyone would be set on they said.

It was important for me this job. My wife expected me to get it and we needed the money. I'd been made redundent from my last one - a cheese factory - but that was months ago and the pay-out had dried up. Bills were reddening, irksome heralds of something worse.

I tried to look attentive when the interviewer called me in.

"Mr.Strils?"

I shook her hand with feigned gusto and I think she sensed my desperation. She could have offered to lobotomise me and I would have still said yes to the position.

"I'm Miss. Tritus," she rasped and signalled for me to sit down.

She smelt odd though, with a strange and very unpleasant tangy niff, as if an old stinking fridge had been pried open for the first time in years. There was a very discernible whiff of corruption, of infected wounds and bottled pee. It put me  completely off, that sickening fragrance and I didn't hear her ask me a question.

"Sorry, could you repeat that Miss" I blustered desperately reaching for the glass of water on the table. I was suddenly thirsty as hell as bile rose in my throat. I really wished I didn't have my hyper-sensitive sense of smell at that moment. I needed to focus.

"We are looking for people with a strong stomach, less than average eyesight and a weak sense of smell."

"Oh. Right!" I gulped.

"I think I have all of those," I lied.

I lied specifically about my sense of smell. It had been a pain since I'd first smelt my brother's wet bed when we were kids.

It was as pushy as an iron my smell ability and I had an over-active sense of every pong going. It drove my wife crazy. I was suffering unusually today too as my interviewer really stank the place out.

"And I see you have worked with meat before. Did you handle a lot of flesh?"

"I was more on the admin side really. Buying and selling choice cuts for the mincing machines."

"Excellent Strils. We'll need plenty of mince when the ships arrive."

"Ships?"

"Did I say ships? Silly me. I meant chips! We shall be selling mince pies and chips as a new line in our outlets. New management are on their way. They"ll land tomorrow. They're brimming with new ideas and very hungry for success. Its an exciting ....."

The woman cut herself short as if she'd been told something secret and terrible like a death in her family.

"Already?" She mumbled.

"Pardon?" I said.

Before she had chance to say more an alarm sounded across the factory. My interviewer looked annoyed.

"The interview's over young man. Youv'e got what we're looking for I think. We'll be coming for you Strils ... sooner than I thought."

Her voice faded as she jostled me out of her office, her foul sceptic musk nearly overpowering me. As I left she patted my shoulder. I felt as though I'd been marked by a rabid fox.

The alarm was louder in the corridors and people, mostly countless interviewees, shambled along looking for the exit like lambs in a pen.

Outside there was an eerie quiet as the alarm trailed off. We stood in the street like refugees, unsure of what was happening. We trailed out of the gates rubbing our noses. It really had stunk like nothing on Earth.

I grabbed a coffee and caught the 485 home. My wife and I lived by the edge of town on the heathland, in a small cottage I'd inherited from my Aunt. It was a lovely spot, surrounded by heather and pheasants. Our Baskerville Hall we joked. Minus the hound. I was glad to smell country air again.

Alighting the bus I noticed the frogs hopping across the road, seemingly in a hurry. The heather pool was now strangely silent. What on earth had spooked them I wondered? Looking up I did notice how odd the clouds were. Pierced as if knives had passed through them. The distant meat plant glowed.

My family had left that day to visit relatives in Borth. I was alone in the house waiting to hear about the plant job.

No word. Evening came like an unwelcome visitor: vast, smokey and ominous. I could sense the petrichor before the rain turned up. It drenched the heath and battered the roof of the cottage. It was other-worldly.

I used the toilet and lit a match as my parents had. The smell. I went to bed and listened to the storm fuming outside. I could sense its unusual size and muscle as it lashed the moor like something landing, something vast and ghastly.

My curtains were open and the window ajar as I stared apprehensively out of the window into the raging squalls. I dozed off reluctantly around 10pm.

I awoke sneezing and sensed it immediately, something foul approaching across the heath.

I could smell it, a billious reek of necrotic meat and weeks-old piss and I recognised it immediately.

It was Miss. Tritus!

Coming to offer me a job? At this hour?

I could hardly think straight as that familiar stench enveloped my nose and got stronger and stronger.

She was near the house now, at the gate. I was suddenly frightened and I leapt out of bed, ran downstairs in the dark and grabbed the axe next to the fire as a precaution. I got back into bed and waited.

Maybe I didn't get the job after all.

Before she could tell me Miss. Tritus sloughed off her skin and entered the house as a monster-sized snail, slurping along the floor in undulations, leaving a slick trail of scum and slobber.

Her probosci fingered up the wall of the stairs as she homed in on her mark from the factory.

She knew her quarry was near. She was ravenous and had been since emerging from the cosmic spawn carried across the galaxy, which had settled on Earth a month ago. She and her kind were used to blending in and taking on the local form. It was a hard slog but as long as they were fed it was worth it. One of these meaty people would fill her for a year. They didn't smell her coming.

The stink ballooned as she slid towards the bed. Her wet antennae felt for the head and her oozing maw opened as they gripped the hair. In a watery sigh of excitement she whispered "Strils!"

"Wait!" he commanded himself as he hefted the axe under the quilt.

As Miss. Tritus began to drag him in he leapt up, threw back the bedclothes and swung the blade hard on her neck.

"You can smell me! You lied Strils!" She gargled in shock.

A huge rupture appeared on her throat and a terrible slime poured from the wound. The creature's face drooped and the whole thing went limp at his feet, its head detaching with its probosci still gripping his wet hair.

I wrestled it off like a football and feeling spent but elated I staggered downstairs for the whisky bottle on the side.

I raised the cut glass to my lips but to my horror heard a slithering sound on the landing.

I turned to see the monster staring at me through the ballustrades.

"Strils, that hurt! You shouldn't have lied to me!"

Miss. Tritus had grown a brand new head!

I fainted and awoke just as my body was dissapearing down her throat.

It reeked to high heaven that alien gullet, worse than any other niff I'd known and just my luck, it was the last thing I ever smelled.

I didn't get the job after all.

In I went .....

Schlupp!

2 comments:

  1. It's ace when there are a number of interpretations to be found, Woodsy. Such as a commentary about growth unemployment, job desperation and exploitation. Then there's your Faustian plot, forcing the despairing Strils to need this job in meat processing: effectively selling his soul to the devil.
    As for being eaten alive... a deep-rooted primeval fear... thankfully often overlooked as a form of death in my neighborhood... at least for now :)

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    1. Thanks Tony. I have a strong sense of smell and this is its natural extension I suppose. Sniffing out monsters! The heath element was added when we stayed on a remote heath on Anglesey this summer. Very Basketville! The use of senses in horror is a long tradition but its often blindness as in Day of the Triffids. Smell needed its day in the sun!

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