The Stink of Death

A very foul odor

Over the last few days every time I would come home, enter the apartment building and walk up the flight of stairs to my apartment, I noticed a rather disgusting odor, which was intensifying with each day. I wondered where it was coming from.

It certainly was not coming from my apartment so it had to be coming from either the one other second-floor apartment or one of the two apartments downstairs. Then yesterday morning I noticed that the nasty smell was starting to creep into my apartment so I fetched some air freshener from under my bathroom sink and went out into the hall to liberally spray the air. It seemed to work but only for about two minutes.

I then came back into my apartment and put down a towel at the bottom of my front door to block any air flow coming in from the tiny space below the door. Going into the bathroom to put the air freshener away I noticed that the odor was stronger in there. I sprayed as I wondered if the apartment was having some sort of plumbing issue.

Then I went to my office at the far other end of my apartment. There was no smell so I proceeded to get to work.

Yesterday evening I quit working and went into the kitchen to start cooking. It was dinner time — or as the locals call it, ‘supper time.’ I caught a brief whiff of the stink but before long all I could smell was the delightful aroma of my cooking.

It was just after I finished my meal that I heard commotion. I went to the window to see what was happening. In front of the apartment building was an ambulance, its lights flashing, and four police cars. Uniformed police officers were rushing into the building and up the stairs.

Holy crap! Were they coming to arrest me? I couldn’t recall partaking in any illegal activity. Was my writing really that bad?

But they weren’t coming to my apartment. They were quickly banging on the door of my neighbor across the hall. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time police showed up at his door. I decided to sit tight and not open my door to see what was happening.

In the almost eight years that I’ve been living in my apartment the apartment across the hall had been occupied by seven different people. No one stayed there for long. The current occupant has been living there for almost two years; longer than anyone else.

He was a young balding man around 30 years of age. I never got to know him very well. He was a bit of a loner and kept to himself. He was a bit standoffish. Whenever we would pass each other either leaving or going into the building he would merely nod his head then look down at the ground without saying anything.

I am a bit of a hermit myself so I understood and let him have his privacy. He never actually introduced himself to me but I knew his name because his mailbox is right next to mine. I did know that he was divorced and had an eight-year-old daughter who came to stay with him every other Sunday afternoon.

Curiously, whenever the girl came to spend the allotted time with her dad she spent most of that time alone on the front porch of the building playing with her dolls. Whenever I passed her she would immediately strike up a conversation with me. She was a delightful young girl. I ended up getting to know her much more so than her dad.

Once, I asked her why she spent the little amount of time she had with her dad playing alone on the porch instead of upstairs with her dad. She said that she couldn’t stand her dad’s apartment. It was so messy and stinky.

I did finally get to know my neighbor a little bit over the last month. A change seemed to come over him. He was suddenly very cheerful and talked to me every time we passed.

He bought an old pickup truck and once when I was leaving the building he called me over to show me the truck. The truck was forty years old and barely ran but he said that he was going to fix it up. When he was done working on it, it was going to be “bad-ass.”

He spent the next month working on that truck. Every time I looked out the window he would be out there working under the hood of the truck. There were several days when he could no longer get the truck started. He just kept replacing parts. The truck also had two flat tires during the month.

Then one day last week I heard banging noises and yelling. Looking out the window I saw my neighbor, tire iron in hand, walking around his truck beating the heck out of it while furiously cussing. When he was done there was not any surface of the truck that was not dented. He even smashed out the headlights.

Oh my!

Soon after that he seemed to disappear. I never saw him. He ignored the truck and there was not so much as a peep coming from his apartment. I thought that perhaps he had left for a while.

But then that awful odor began.

A cop finally knocked on my door. As I opened the door I was overcome with a powerful blast of that foul stink. It was a hundred times stronger than before.

I looked at the cop then glanced down the stairs. A body completely covered with a sheet was being taken down the stairs.

I then looked past the cop at my neighbor’s apartment. The door was wide open. I had never seen his apartment so I did not know what to expect. To my horror I saw that there were six to twelves inches of garbage covering the floor and every other visible surface.

“Excuse me, sir. I don’t mean to bother you but your neighbor has passed away and I’d like to ask you just a few questions.”

I looked back at the cop.

“When was the last time you saw him? And did you know him well?”

I explained that I hardly knew him at all and that I had not seen him in around five days.

“Have you noticed anyone coming to his apartment in those five days?”

“Yeah, his father came a couple of times and knocked but no one answered the door so he left.”

“Do you know his parents?”

“Not at all. I don’t even know their names. I’ve just noticed that his dad comes a couple of times a week to bring him groceries and cigarettes and money. I only know that the man was his dad because I heard him being called ‘Dad.’ But I haven’t heard anyone else come by. He almost never had visitors. So what happened? How did he die?”

“Well, we’re not sure but we have some ideas. Your other neighbors also said they haven’t seen him in around five days. Apparently he’s been dead in his apartment for around five days. That’s what you’re smelling.”

I was speechless.

“Well, thank you. If we have any other questions we’ll stop by again.”

Yesterday was by no means a typical day for me.

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