Fetid

Missing Mile

"It’s a farm. It smells. Get over it,” said the farmer’s wife.

The more the neighbors wiggled their noses, the worst it was. It just smelled terribly. They couldn’t figure out what smelled so badly. The farm had a few animals, true, but it also had a lot of vegetation around. When the farmer and his wife went to town, they used to go inside the barn to see if there was something rotting there. They found nothing. The animals looked well fed and even remarkably clean. They checked for any drainage, which would be expected since this was an old farm and there was a creek behind it. Again they found nothing.

The days, months, years went by and the stench got so bad that the town health inspectors spent two days combing every corner of the property. They too didn’t find a thing.

One day, the farmer died. The neighbors dropped by to pay their respects despite the tension that existed between them. The wife was distraught and kept sobbing incomprehensible words, something like “we needed them, we needed them”.  And out of nowhere, an army of creatures started emerging from the ground almost as in a rehearsed birth. They growled, they dragged their feet, they rolled their eyes, and they bled.

The neighbors scattered in all directions, running away to their homes, locking the doors, hiding behind curtains. The farmer’s wife looked outside the window and smiled.

“There you are. You took long enough.”

The next day, the town newspaper reported an unexpected high number of missing people, including the farmer’s wife, last seen walking hand in hand with one of the creatures who curiously enough did resemble the farmer.

The reader may ask where the creatures came from? Why? How? Well, this narrator doesn’t know. In fact, this narrator was trying to type with one hand while covering her nose with the other.  Fetid, foul smell… Good thing she wasn’t in town that day!

Writer's Dash