#people need to stop lying about weed smoking to make it sound more benign!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

flashfictionforpittance · 5 years

Text

Sweet Remains

(Also submitted to the No-Sleep podcast because poverty)

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t appealing. It’s one of the first things you notice, but you never talk about it. Ever. In all my years not one member of staff, no janitor, no grieving family member who insisted on being there when it happened, talked about the smell. It makes you think you’re the only one to notice. You stay up late at night wondering if there’s something wrong with you, whether it’s some caveman instinct that, after millennia, can still only see meat as meat. Then you see them when they come in, stumbling on their paws, coughing weakly in-between yowls and howls of fear as you prop them up and pat them down, see the sadness and acceptance in their little faces as they have one last cuddle before crossing the rainbow bridge into oblivion, an you know that’s bullshit. Your heart melts for the little creatures right up until the fire swallows them.

I never talked to anyone about the smell, but I know they all feel it too. My first day on the job, the guy who started with me didn’t even wait for us to be out of the crematorium before suggesting we go get lunch. He had steak, medium rare, and I had a roast. We both acknowledged that our meals were missing a certain something, that they were OK at best. Even as I said that, my palms were sweaty, my mind raced. It was like remembering something about yourself you’ve repressed, something that changes how you see your entire life. Even through the burnt hair and the sound of crying, even through the heartbreak you felt when you watched it shuffle off this mortal coil, they smell delicious.

Still. You move on. You wait it out until it’s past cooking and the smell fades, and it’s ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You feel a brief cloud of shame before remembering that this time, as with all others, you didn’t give in.

Such a known secret is hard to no talk about though. Sometimes the smell was so strong I’d excuse myself to go throw up. I’d force myself if I had to. Anything to put me off, to associate the smell with something I hated. In the aftermath, listening to the rushing water and the distant sobbing, I’d feel clean. Then by sundown I was a nervous wreck again as the desire, the sheer curiosity of it ate me from the inside.

The internet gave me some solace. I reached out, phrased the question as nonchalantly as I could, and received the validation I needed to be able to sleep at night. Other people knew too; the smell was nicer than you’d think. The trick was to do nothing, until you grew accustomed to it and stopped noticing altogether. They told me not to worry, and so I didn’t. I went to work. I did my time. I thought about the crispy skin browning in the flames and did nothing.

Until Judd started. Judd was a burnout volunteering to make his resume look better who smoked like a chilled-out chimney at every opportunity he got. He also stank. Weed I could deal with, more than a few animals came in with that stink on them, though unsurprisingly the tale of their sudden illness almost never mentioned it. But he didn’t shower either, and he used that kind of deodorant that boasts containing no dangerous chemicals, and as such doesn’t work. Thanks to Judd I couldn’t smell anymore. All day long at work my nostrils burned with his stench, my stomach curdled when he spoke to me. He didn’t brush his teeth, though he claimed to. But you don’t end up with a mouth like a geyser filled with trash water by brushing daily. Visitors held their hankies to their mouths all the more often, the animals feared him and his greasy mitts, and I absolutely hated him.

But it wasn’t until the next cremation that I realised just how bad things were. Alone together in that hot room, his smell was overwhelming. It dizzied me, made my ears ring and my eyes water, and no matter where I stood it wormed its way into my throat and made me breathe it in. All the while a Doberman cooked, crisped, then disintegrated unnoticed. After he’d scooped the remains into an urn and made his exit, I sat on the floor for what felt like a year. I felt robbed. Confused. Like an addict who’s needle snaps against his skin, who’s nostrils clamp shut against cocaine. The high passed me by. It ignored me. That night when I ate dinner I tasted nothing at all.

I told myself it was for the best. There are better smells, I said. Better tastes. It’s creepy anyway, what kind of sick fuck wants to eat an animal that just got put down? What weirdo looks at a grieving family and thinks this is the right time to think about eating? It was sick, deranged. Judd was doing me a favour by taking it away from me before I could let it ruin my life.

But I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t taste. I couldn’t smell anything but Judd even at home, after hours of scrubbing and scouring my skin with steel wool. Nothing. Nothing but putridity and sourness and the unwashed maw of that inane ball of filth. After two weeks, I could only half-remember the smell of burning flesh. My mouth still ran like a faucet at the thought but the high of it, the richness of the scent, the accent of smoke that wasn’t yet overpowering, the inherent saltiness in the air were leaving me. I only had the words to describe them, not the memories. I would often find myself staring into space for hours at a time, not realising until I pulled myself out that I was thinking about this impossible taste, then each time remembering that I’d never tasted it. No, I’d never tasted it.

One month. Then two. But it never stopped gnawing, even for a second. I started to make more mistakes. More routine procedures were complicated, more surgeries botched. Because how could I look at them now? How could I look into the organs of these creatures when I was obsessed with their taste, desperate to tear into them with my bare teeth? I got distracted, caught up in my own head. Just like at home, I wouldn’t realise my preoccupation until the flatline pierced my thoughts. I started to take more and more days off.

Why was this such a big fucking deal? Why couldn’t I forget the smell? People forget experiences every day of their lives. Why was the shadow of this scent, its suggestion of some coveted and forbidden meal so appealing to me? I craved it. I loved it. I booked a vacation that I couldn’t afford. In Yulin, during the dog meat festival with barely a penny to my name, I bought some. I ate it without seasoning and without sauce, with my bare hands as they burned against the furnace-fresh heat of its hide, ripping and tearing and sucking the cartilage out of the bones. I ate joint after joint, bowl after bowl, each transaction dragging me by the collar into debt. I tried as many dishes as the locals could offer me, sleeping under a bench a few streets away in between festival hours.

But it wasn’t the same. With each mouthful I was angrier, more frustrated. The smell wasn’t right either, it was full of pollutants. Herbs and spices, marinades. These animals were special bred and slaughtered, farmed for eating. They were too decadent. Like a steak with too much fat, a burger with one too many fillings. They weren’t the same.

I dragged myself back home. I was defeated. Numb. My head was still swarming with memories of meat that stung me every minute of the day, but I still walked and talked all the same. I could exist, if not in happiness. I showered. I cleaned up. I ate a regular meal that tasted of absolutely nothing at all. I felt strangely elated with my defeat. I knew it was unattainable. Impossible. Not just forbidden. It was like it didn’t exist anymore. So, there was nothing to feel sad about.

I went back to work. I let Judd do the cremations from here on out. Just him. He’d cleaned up a little since we’d last seen each other. He was still Judd, of course, but now he showered. He even brushed his teeth. I didn’t allow myself back into the crematorium, I didn’t see the point. I spent my time comforting the families, and with them myself.

Then one day, Judd was late. Very late. It reached eleven, then twelve, then one, and then two without him. The procedures went on longer, the surgeries were more time consuming and more daunting. I used to be the only vet, only nurses aside from me. But without Judd none of them were quite the same, they were clumsier, less aware of themselves and their hands were less skilled. At five PM we lost a patient. A Labrador, only four years old, who’d been in to get a benign lump removed. As it bled out onto the gurney, my coat, and the nurse’s trembling hands, I knew I wasn’t ready.

I dragged things out with the family. Took responsibility. They were furious. They threatened to sue but all I could think about was how in about ten, maybe twenty minutes I’d be back in that furnace room, alone with the animal, the fire and the smell. I asked if they wanted to take the dog with them, bury it at home. I asked this louder than I should have, and their children started crying. They left. Told me to go fuck myself. But by now I was barely listening.

My stomach was about to fall out of me, shaking and protesting as I carried the animal down to the crematorium. Once we were down there, I set it on the gurney ready to be pulled inside by the hydraulics, out of sight. I took some time to be sick. To prepare. Maybe I could just hit the button and run? Yeah, I’d do that. I hit the green button on the side of the furnace, and as the gears started up and the gurney was pulled inside I sprinted to the door.

Judd came in just as I pulled it open and we collided, banging heads first against each other, then on the floor. I saw stars, then Judd’s terror-stricken face as he helped me to my feet, looking me up and down.

‘You ok, man?’ he asked. ‘you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Did something happen?’

‘Uh, yeah,’ I said, eyeing the door. ‘I just, I need to get out,’ I tried to lunge past him but he caught me with his arm, holding me in place.

‘Woah, you just bashed your head in. Take it easy, ok? Stay still, I wanna get a look at that,’ he said.

Any minute now, the smell was going to come flooding out. I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t. I was free. I was happy. I was free. ‘Judd, please,’ I implored him. ‘please, please let me go. I need to get out!’ I thrashed against him, reaching hopelessly for the door, but he only held me tighter.

‘Calm down!’

I started screaming. I clamped my hands over my mouth and nose, held them shut. Death was better than this, death was ok, I welcomed death. Lord knew, I’d begged for it plenty over these last few months. I held on, curled up in a tight ball so Judd’s newfound strength couldn’t get to my face. I held on and on and on, until my lungs gave up their screaming and my vision faded. Finally. The curtains drew. It all came down, and I died pure…

I woke up. I didn’t have time to feel frustrated. I looked around and the air was simply rippling with it. The way it does during a heatwave or a gas leak. The smell. I breathed it in, and it was like my lungs were drinking, growing fuller, fatter, richer with it. The stuff of life. I swam in it. My mouth watered. I stood up, letting my head dizzy and my feet stumble until they were steady again. I pulled open the furnace, welcomed by a wall of heat that roared in my face as if to guard the small heap inside. I pulled it out. My hands were numb. The fire couldn’t hurt me. And eating it was like making love to a dream. It was fetish and romance, woman and man, supple and hard, it was everything. I felt my body ascending to become something I never knew existed.

I looked at Judd. He was understandably mortified. He’d been there the whole time, standing by the wall waiting for me to come to, then watching as I ate. He was appalled, or maybe just shocked? Perhaps even impressed. It was difficult to say. I wasn’t quite myself.

‘J-Judd,’ I said, wiping my mouth. ‘did you ever notice how the, uh. How the cremations always smell so,’ I couldn’t. I had to laugh. I covered my eyes and chuckled. ‘how the cremations always smell so fucking good?’

He didn’t see the funny side. Instead, he strode over to me in quick steps and grabbed me by the back of the head. He lifted me up by it, forced me to look down on him as he brought my face close to his. My feet were dangling in the air, my lungs were full of smoke, but what did I care? Who the hell cares anymore? I looked down at him, daring him. Punish me? How? I was beyond him now.

He smiled. ‘yeah, I have,’ he said. I took me a moment to realise that he was answering my question. Then, in one deft motion he bit into my throat. Like it was an apple. Soft, mailable fruit. I scrabbled against his head for a moment, feebly, then as my blood escaped through him I let them fall still.

Oh, Judd. Beautiful, sweet Judd. How long did it take you to notice? How long for your own stink to subside enough for you to catch that beautiful scent? How long for you to crave it? How many months did you spend feasting in silence while I chased ghosts in China? I commend you, Judd. I never considered that the taste I coveted was something more than just meat, that it was really the very essence of a recently extinguished life that smelled so damn good.

0 notes