the stench of something rotting

a thought analysis

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I think this house has rot seeping through the floorboards. I can smell the decay when I step through the wooden doorframe. It smells of roses from my garden, hung to dry upside-down – they say it keeps its shape that way. It smells of old clothes, shoved in the back of a closet with the tag still on – an item you know you’ll never return. It smells of garlic and sesame sauce, left in a room with the door shut overnight – that stench that used to be delicious, now stifling, lingering. It feels like forcing open your wax-crusted eyes, being met with baby-blue walls and the constant, dull pounding in the back of your head. It feels like managing to drag yourself out of bed, your feet cold because you took off your socks before you went to sleep, stumbling half-blind into the washroom.

The washroom – that dirty, unpurgeable state of living; black and pink mold crawling across the silicone lining of every crevice, the mirror that keeps getting dirtier the more you clean it (and the face that stares back at you), the mess on the counter that keeps growing no matter how many times you tell yourself you won’t let it get that bad again. I cannot look at that room but I need it. And no matter how much I need it, I cannot bring myself to clean it. 

There are cadavers under these floorboards. I have never tried to wedge them up. Nor has Grace, but I suspect she doesn’t know they are there. I think she has buried the memory of them long ago, under the pile of clothes or the caked-on foundation. I cannot tell if Mother knows they are here or not. She has always been bad at noticing the steady decline of the state of things. I fear that even if she knew, she has moved on. Easy for her. She doesn’t realize that we are all killers.

I have always known exactly where they are. I tread lightly, so as to not wake them. Sometimes I think I see them in the background of my pictures, or behind me in the mirror, but I pretend they are not there. They are fragments of the history of this house, better left unacknowledged. But it bothers me at times – at night, when I can almost hear their voices whispering through my shut door.

Why are you the only one who remembers where we are?

That is when I beg for absolution. Did Grace really kill them if she doesn’t remember? Is Mother really guilty if she is able to look at it all so objectively? I settle upon the conclusion that I must be the one. The cause of the rot. Those bodies were meant to be forgotten the moment they were buried, but I hold onto their memory as if they owe me something. I figure that I find solace by basking in the stench because the house would feel empty without it. It doesn’t feel right to try and forget that they are there, and I have always been bad at fooling myself. 

I dread being away for long periods of time because I fear I may miss them. When I’m elsewhere, I can breathe in the fresh air. But not for long, I’m reminded.

Never breathe in the sweet, tantalizing scent of the outside for long.

Or the rot that you carry in your burdened little heart will infest the walls of others. The bodies that you do such a wonderful job of hiding can only mask their stench for so long. They will figure out that this unbearable scent of decay comes not only from your house, but from your person as well. You will corrupt everything good, everything pure. Soon, you will realize that the only place you are welcome – the only place you cannot corrode even further – is right there, back where you started, under the floorboards of that corner house.