Fetid

Fetid was the only word that came to mind when I opened my eyes in the caress of Teresa McCrery’s upstairs bathtub. The stench that shattered my slumber wafted through the stagnant air of the bathroom, searing my nostrils. Combined with the amount of alcohol I drank the night before, the smell caused the contents of my stomach to race up my throat. The smell of vomit only made it more unbearable. Curses spilled out like a river from my mouth, flowing just like the vomit had. What a shitty morning.

Disregarding the stink that plagued the air, everything seemed to be fairly normal. Rays of the rising sun leaked through the wooden blinds and smeared across the linoleum in distorted streaks. Red plastic cups peeked out from the sink, pink lipstick smudged across one of the rims. The rug that lay sprawled across the floor displayed several unidentified stains, presumably from the night before. A raging ache throbbed persistently in my head. It was such a typical way for me to wake up: with such an expected hangover, after such a normal nap inside such a standard, white porcelain bathtub owned by an incredibly ordinary girl named Teresa, who threw a pretty average party. At least, that's what I was thinking in my early-morning stupor.

I knew it was inevitable, but dislodging my twisted body from its porcelain cradle proved to be just as awful as one would imagine. It took plenty of failed attempts before I managed to free myself and move my aching body onto the sticky rug. With my arms finally released from their awkward entrapment, I managed to cover my nose with one of my soiled cotton sleeves. It didn’t do much, if anything, to evade the foul odor. Then again, it’s not like ignoring it would be any better. Finally, on wobbly legs, I reached for the faux-golden door handle and fumbled with the lock. With a twist of the handle and a small shove, the door opened. Big mistake.

Waves of nausea wracked my body immediately, and I began to gag. Nothing came up. It wasn’t just the smell that caused my repulsion, and let me tell you: pulling my eyes from the scruffy brown carpeting of the McCrery’s hallway floor took an amount of courage I couldn’t quite muster. It was as if I were a puppet. A puppet whose strings had been torn savagely from their sockets and left frozen and inert in the middle of a hallway. Somehow I managed to break the spell. I’m not too sure how long it took, but it felt as if I’d been doubled over for an eternity.

It would’ve been beneficial to have the opportunity to take deep breaths to calm myself down. Then again, it also would have been lovely if there weren’t decaying bodies propped against the mustard-colored walls. My heart thrashed wildly in my chest. Bodies. Dead bodies. There were dead bodies piled along Teresa McCrery’s upstairs hallway. The thought simply wouldn’t register. It was impossible to wrap my head around the fact that it was rot, that I’d awoken in a bathtub to the smell of my friends’ decaying corpses.

For some reason, I was laughing. But laughing transformed into violent sobs pouring out of my trembling body. The same body that, for some strange reason, wasn’t decomposing in the bathroom. Why was I alive when the carcasses of the people I’d grown up with, gone to school with, laughed, cried, and danced with were littered on the floor? How did I manage to walk out into this carnage? I took one step, and then another. The milky eyes of the dead stared permanently forward as I stepped through the hall. I had to get to the stairs. I had to go down the stairs and get the hell out of the house.

Of course, I entertained the thought that the killer could be waiting around any corner. They could be playing cat-and-mouse with me, right? They could be chuckling quietly in come shadowed corner or something, just like in all of the horror movies. The only thing is, these people were clearly murdered a while ago. At least, enough for their cadavers to start to sag and putrefy ever so slightly. Enough for the spatters and pools of blood to dry and crust over to black. Which brought up another question. How had I been sleeping so long?

The stairs were oddly clean, save a couple scattered beer bottles. My bare feet were silent as I eased myself down to the ground floor. The reek of human meat stunk even worse, and the body count was massive compared to what I'd just seen. Slivers of light rested on deteriorated limbs and faces. I think I saw Teresa's parents propped against the wall by the door. None of their distorted expressions looked anywhere near pleasant. Of course they weren't; somebody had killed them. Shivers wracked my body as my eyes roamed the room.

That's when I noticed the note. It sat in the center of the open space, atop the glass coffee table that Mrs. McCrery used to shine to a glorious sparkle once upon a time. The table was nowhere near as pristine as it'd been the last I'd seen it, what with all the blood and dust and spilled beer across its surface. Tears pricked at my eyes and started to fall as I reached out and plucked the paper off its resting place. The paper itself wasn't particularly remarkable, with its numerous crinkles and the occasional bloodstain here or there. What stood out to me was the message scrawled haphazardly across the page. The message that was written in my own mediocre handwriting. The note I'd left for somebody, anybody other than me.

THEY DESERVED IT