YOu R sMellY
By
Paul O’Neill
The kids rocket around my classroom, scream, wrestle, call each other wretched names. The word respect is foreign here. Nonetheless, it’s my job to mould their ten-year-old minds.
I tug at the lapels of my tweed jacket with the leather patches at the elbows, cough, wait for the monkeys to simmer down.
It’s not working.
“Settle down, now. Take your seats. Stop pulling that girl’s hair at once. Quiet!”
All twenty of them have a spiteful laughter in their eyes I haven’t seen elsewhere. It makes them look like rats. Everyone in this small seaside town in Scotland shared that look – a promise of violence that was never far away.
Some of the kids tilt their heads, shoot me a questioning look.
“Seats, children. Thank you.” I fold my arms behind my back, pace the small space in front of a whiteboard. “Now, you may have noticed, I’m not Mrs. Hadley. Mrs. Hadley will be… taking some time off.”
What the board refused to tell me when I agreed to this post, my first post since graduating, was that these devils broke Mrs. Hadley, forced her into early retirement. I turn to face them, ignore the mingling stench of musty chalk dust and the sticky toffee smell of unwashed hands.
“I’m Mr.—”
“Badger face!”
“Pube hair head!”
“Outsider English cunt!”
The class erupts into giggles, desk slaps, high fives.
“Now, now,” I put on my plastic smile that already feels worn. “Any more of that and—”
“You’ll what? Do what Mrs. Hadley did and cry all day long?”
A ginger-headed girl at the front raises her hand. I jump at the chance and point to her, bid her go on.
“Sir?” she says.
“Yes, my dear?”
“Why’s your Adam’s apple so big? Looks like it’s about to explode.”
I gulp, feel the appendage bobbing. “A gift from my mother’s side. Never mind that. I’m Mr. Yates. I’ll be finishing the rest of your time in primary six. So, rule number one – don’t use foul language and be respectful of each other. Words matter. They leave a stain.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Yes, they do.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Yes, they—”
I squeeze the bridge of my nose, realise I’ve been drawn in. This is going to be a long four months, but what other choices do I have? I had to jump at the post, ask questions later. One’s debts do not simply disappear. Not when one’s mother chewed up one’s inheritance in that sick bed, all while she shrank away like it hurt to look at me.
I open my mouth to introduce myself properly, tell them how I was educated in Edinburgh and raised on the outskirts of London. At the back of the class, a sullen boy’s stare catches my eye.
The March sun is blazing its way into the class through gaps in the broken blinds. Despite the eye-testing light, I can’t see the boy’s face. It has some kind of black mesh over it, but the mesh is moving. It’s a breathing shadow that teems with its own life. I see the silver of his rising smile beneath it. Something cold and sharp touches my bowel.
A heavy-set boy stands, knocks over his chair, points a chubby finger at a blond boy on the opposite side of the room. “Gary, you’re getting it!”
“Bring it on, snail breath,” says Gary.
Before I can summon the volume to command that they sit, they’ve flung themselves at each other like high-strung cats. This is no push-shove, playground squabble. They’re punching each other full in the face. It’s an awful thing to have to watch.
The class burns with the chant of Fight, fight, fight. I get to my knees, haul them off one another, my palms on their chests to hold them back.
“This won’t do,” I shout. “Do you ever actually listen to anyone? Stop!”
The fight starts to go out of the boys, but neither wants to be the first to back down. They glare at each other with murderous hate.
“I’ll be contacting your parents,” I say to no effect whatsoever. “Now, I want each of you to say you’re sorry and—”
Something dark moves its way to me. It’s the boy with the shadow over his face. My breakfast feels suddenly heavy, uncomfortable in my stomach.
Can anyone else see his face?
He sticks a yellow post-it note to my forehead, walks back to his desk like he’d done nothing more than return a book to a shelf.
Gary and the other fighter turn to stare at me. Their anger drips away, replaced by guffaws of pointing laughter. The rest of the class join in.
I stand, whip the note off, hold it before my eyes.
YOu R sMellY.
It’s written in a lively, scrawling hand that doesn’t look like it came from a ten-year-old.
The pair of fighting boys are now laughing into each others’ shoulders, the best of pals. The only one not laughing is the shadow boy who sits, twiddles his thumbs.
I scrunch up the yellow note, let it drop to the worn, musty carpet. “I am not smelly. You… You… shit-turd! I’ll slap some respect into you. Looks like you need it, you shadowy little gremlin. You—” I slap my hand over my mouth, feel the regret worm its way inside. “I shouldn’t have said that. Forgive me…”
“The name’s Kage.”
“Kage?” The name feels fuzzy in my mouth, like it doesn’t want to be there. “I’m sorry, Kage. Sincerely. That wasn’t the best of starts, was it?” I raise my voice. “I’ll have some decorum in my class. Please?”
The kids in the front all give each other a funny look, like someone let go a stinking flatulence. They take their seats with groaning reluctance.
“Let’s go over the importance of manners. Why we don’t call people smelly, for instance.”
#
I gasp awake, clutch the covers to my chest. “Mummy, speak to me, please? I…”
The dark bedroom fuzzes into existence as I try to hold on to the slippery dream.
A much smaller version of me racing into the hall. The smells of fresh October following me inside. Mum slapping me across the face, spitting at me for trapsing mud all over her new Fabrica carpet.
Dirt comes off, but smell stays, is what she screamed in my face. It was the sludgy, part-brown, part-green dog poo that my wellingtons had brought in that ruined everything.
I scratch my head in my dark bedroom. Thinking back now, Mum had never treated me the same since that day. I’d been stained with that violent, cloying dog-poo smell in her eyes until the end, when she didn’t know who I was anymore. She’d back off, try to scuttle away from me like she could still smell the reek of it.
YOu R sMellY.
That post-it note had been part of the dream, too. The boy, Kage, sat in the corner of my childhood living room, laughed behind his shadowy mesh as I got slapped about.
“I shouldn’t have gone off on him like that,” I say to Keturah, my ginger feline who’s puddled at my side under the cover. She opens one eye that tells me to lie back down or we won’t be on speaking terms come morning. “Okay, my snookums. It’ll be a better day tomorrow.”
#
When I got out of bed the following morning, it felt like someone held a burning rubber doll under my nose, refusing to let me breathe. The stench attacked my lungs, doubled me over, had me chucking my empty guts. Keturah yowled from dark corners, lashed out with hissing strikes whenever I neared.
That first morning, I went out into the hallway, checked that the apartment building wasn’t on fire. I couldn’t shake the reek of it.
It wasn’t until I got on the bus to the school that I realised the smells were coming from me. I nearly got into a fight with a yellow-toothed man, but my fish-oil reek stopped him cold, made him yell at me till I got off the bus before my stop.
They suspended me. Said I was a danger to the kids with my foul smells. The headmistress could barely look me in the eye.
When I hung around the school to beg Kage to remove the curse, they phoned the police, escorted me off the premises. One officer asked if I bathed in tomato juice before he gagged, barely held onto himself.
The days went by as I tried to think what I could do. Every hour seemed to bring a fresh, gut-tweaking reek that oozed out my pores.
Sulphurous eggy burps.
Sweat-stained armpits on hot, busy trains.
Green, infected warts between toes.
Lingering, collected juices at the bottom of a food bin.
It was too much for Keturah to handle.
Just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the neighbours thought me some Jeffrey Dahmer wannabe, stashing my victims in the flat until the flies came. They threw me out, said I violated my agreement not to damage the place.
So, now I sleep in Cuttie Hill park with the other desperates, but even they won’t come close. It’s like I’ve got leprosy.
I have no family to turn to. No savings. This town was supposed to be the place where I start to build my finances back after Mother’s too-long fight with dementia.
Dirt comes off, but smell stays. I can almost hear her stinging words on the warm breeze.
“How right you are,” I say.
I’m sitting with my back against one of the gnarly trees, watching the sun fall down the clear sky. There’s a black tar smell coming from me that’s impossible for the passersby to ignore.
I lean my head back. “What now?”
Even the homeless shelters refuse to see me. My hygiene is too much of a hazard, they say. Go to the doctors, they say. And the doctors only tell me to go for a bath, get away from the genuinely sick patients.
I draw my knees to my chest, hug them. It all slipped away so fast. I was supposed to be making a difference here.
My teeth saw together as the walkers avoid my stench. They move away from the gravel path that runs with the edge of the trees, preferring to take their chance on the dog shit laced grass.
I see how their noses quiver, how they turn their heads away. Then their eyes lock on mine. They say, What’s wrong with you? and, Go die somewhere else.
Here comes a mother and father with a boy in their wake. I stare down at my mud-caked boots. I can almost see the air around me change as the smell of me morphs into something like wet dog.
The parents react in the usual way, slaloming off the path. It stings a little more each time. I look at the boy through my watery eyes. There’s something on his face.
“You.” I’m up, marching toward Kage.
He doesn’t back away, dares me with a smile under his grey hoodie. The darkness clings to his face like a cloud of small flies.
“You did this.” I grab him by the shoulders. “Take it back. You have to take it back!”
Fingers dig into my shoulders, haul me off. I expect a right hook, but it’s the mother who’s pulled me off. The father only stares down at his phone, dull expression on his face.
“Get away from my—” She coughs, fans a hand in front of her face. “You stinking bastard. What’s wrong with you? Come on, Kage. Told you we should stop coming down here.”
“It’s okay, Mum,” says Kage, wrangling free. “I can help him.”
I push the words over an emotional stone in my gullet. “You will?”
“Mum, stand over there with Dad.”
The mother becomes a dull-eyed thing, shuffles over to the father like she’s in a dream.
“Thank you, thank you,” I say as we sit on a rusty bench. “You’ve no idea what this means.”
“I’ve some idea.” He sits, puts his hands in his pockets.
I stare at the shadows on the boy’s face. This close, they’re like clouds, clambering and circling over the contours of his face.
The words drip out my mouth. “What are you?”
“I’ve always had a… gift. That’s why Mum and Dad don’t see the real me. That’s only for special people.”
“Please fix me. I need my life back.” My mother’s stinging words come back to me as if she were sitting on the bench. Dirt comes off, but smell stays. “You’ve no idea how it feels to be this unclean.”
The boy’s mouth moves as he seems to think about it.
“Okay,” he finally says.
The air rushes out of me. I expect Kage to recoil from the green stench of it, but he stays as he is. He shifts, takes a yellow post-it pad and a small, stripy pencil from his pocket.
He turns away from me as he writes. The pencil scritches on the paper. The way the black shapes on his face move is almost soothing, hypnotic. He stands, gestures at me to stay where I am.
“Close your eyes, Mr. Yates,” he says. “I promise, all your problems will melt away.”
The heat of the sun is an embrace. A tear falls down my cheek as I shut my eyes. It’s finally over. I can get my life back.
A chill moves over me as he blocks the sun. He presses the note on my forehead, runs his finger slowly along the sticky part. He whispers, chants something in a different language.
I open my mouth to say thank you, but the words stay on my tongue. I’m so at peace, despite the chill.
“It’s over, now,” says Kage. “Rest. Be at peace.”
All the hate I aimed at him floats out my shoulders. I nod, lay down on the bench, head resting on the armrest. The gravel crunches as Kage and his family move away.
The sun is so strong it’s making purple flashes on the inside of my eyelids. Somewhere nearby, a small stream burbles, sends its silver smells to me. The green of the grass dances around my nostrils. Everything is tinged with an intensity I’ve never known. It’s like I’ve been given a drug, experiencing the soul in everything.
When I open my eyes, the world shifts, sways beneath me. I scrunch them closed again, set my palm against the bench, try to push myself up. Dizziness has me in its clutches. I take a few slow breaths, will it to settle.
“You’ve been through a lot,” I say to myself.
The crunch of gravelly steps is rhythmic. People aren’t walking around me anymore.
I open my eyes.
I no longer stink.
I can go to the homeless shelter now. Explain everything. Get my life back on track.
The breeze pushes at the yellow square of paper still on my forehead. I raise my hand to take the note off, but my arm is numb and useless. I feel sloppy all over.
I try to push myself up to stand, fall back down on the bench. My head is swimming. “What the?”
Something’s terribly wrong. It feels like I’m sitting on a bench in the middle of a washing machine, sloshing back and forth.
I slap my forehead with the back of a loose hand.
The post-it note falls onto my lap.
I blink, try to focus on the angry words.
Kage had told me it was going to be okay now. I was going to be clean.
“No,” I say. “Not exactly.”
It’s over, now, was what he said. Rest. Be at peace.
The words on the note come into focus.
U R DeAd.
I try to shake the dizziness that has me in its grasp, pulling my centre down, down. I catch the eyes of a passerby who gives me a wide berth. I must look drugged out my head.
“Please?” I say. “Please. Help.”
I fall off the bench, clatter to the hard ground, breath rushing out my lungs.
As the people walk by me, the words of the post-it note that’s fallen by my head scream its command.
U R DeAd.
Paul O’Neill is an award-winning short story writer from Fife, Scotland. His works have been published by the No Sleep Podcast, Crystal Lake, Sinister Smile Press, Scare Street, Vanishing Point Magazine, Fifth Di Magazine, Hell Bound Books, Eerie River, Grinning Skull Press, and many other publications and competitions. He runs Short Story Club on Substack where he and over 100 readers analyse the classics on a regular basis.
By
Paul O’Neill
The kids rocket around my classroom, scream, wrestle, call each other wretched names. The word respect is foreign here. Nonetheless, it’s my job to mould their ten-year-old minds.
I tug at the lapels of my tweed jacket with the leather patches at the elbows, cough, wait for the monkeys to simmer down.
It’s not working.
“Settle down, now. Take your seats. Stop pulling that girl’s hair at once. Quiet!”
All twenty of them have a spiteful laughter in their eyes I haven’t seen elsewhere. It makes them look like rats. Everyone in this small seaside town in Scotland shared that look – a promise of violence that was never far away.
Some of the kids tilt their heads, shoot me a questioning look.
“Seats, children. Thank you.” I fold my arms behind my back, pace the small space in front of a whiteboard. “Now, you may have noticed, I’m not Mrs. Hadley. Mrs. Hadley will be… taking some time off.”
What the board refused to tell me when I agreed to this post, my first post since graduating, was that these devils broke Mrs. Hadley, forced her into early retirement. I turn to face them, ignore the mingling stench of musty chalk dust and the sticky toffee smell of unwashed hands.
“I’m Mr.—”
“Badger face!”
“Pube hair head!”
“Outsider English cunt!”
The class erupts into giggles, desk slaps, high fives.
“Now, now,” I put on my plastic smile that already feels worn. “Any more of that and—”
“You’ll what? Do what Mrs. Hadley did and cry all day long?”
A ginger-headed girl at the front raises her hand. I jump at the chance and point to her, bid her go on.
“Sir?” she says.
“Yes, my dear?”
“Why’s your Adam’s apple so big? Looks like it’s about to explode.”
I gulp, feel the appendage bobbing. “A gift from my mother’s side. Never mind that. I’m Mr. Yates. I’ll be finishing the rest of your time in primary six. So, rule number one – don’t use foul language and be respectful of each other. Words matter. They leave a stain.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Yes, they do.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Yes, they—”
I squeeze the bridge of my nose, realise I’ve been drawn in. This is going to be a long four months, but what other choices do I have? I had to jump at the post, ask questions later. One’s debts do not simply disappear. Not when one’s mother chewed up one’s inheritance in that sick bed, all while she shrank away like it hurt to look at me.
I open my mouth to introduce myself properly, tell them how I was educated in Edinburgh and raised on the outskirts of London. At the back of the class, a sullen boy’s stare catches my eye.
The March sun is blazing its way into the class through gaps in the broken blinds. Despite the eye-testing light, I can’t see the boy’s face. It has some kind of black mesh over it, but the mesh is moving. It’s a breathing shadow that teems with its own life. I see the silver of his rising smile beneath it. Something cold and sharp touches my bowel.
A heavy-set boy stands, knocks over his chair, points a chubby finger at a blond boy on the opposite side of the room. “Gary, you’re getting it!”
“Bring it on, snail breath,” says Gary.
Before I can summon the volume to command that they sit, they’ve flung themselves at each other like high-strung cats. This is no push-shove, playground squabble. They’re punching each other full in the face. It’s an awful thing to have to watch.
The class burns with the chant of Fight, fight, fight. I get to my knees, haul them off one another, my palms on their chests to hold them back.
“This won’t do,” I shout. “Do you ever actually listen to anyone? Stop!”
The fight starts to go out of the boys, but neither wants to be the first to back down. They glare at each other with murderous hate.
“I’ll be contacting your parents,” I say to no effect whatsoever. “Now, I want each of you to say you’re sorry and—”
Something dark moves its way to me. It’s the boy with the shadow over his face. My breakfast feels suddenly heavy, uncomfortable in my stomach.
Can anyone else see his face?
He sticks a yellow post-it note to my forehead, walks back to his desk like he’d done nothing more than return a book to a shelf.
Gary and the other fighter turn to stare at me. Their anger drips away, replaced by guffaws of pointing laughter. The rest of the class join in.
I stand, whip the note off, hold it before my eyes.
YOu R sMellY.
It’s written in a lively, scrawling hand that doesn’t look like it came from a ten-year-old.
The pair of fighting boys are now laughing into each others’ shoulders, the best of pals. The only one not laughing is the shadow boy who sits, twiddles his thumbs.
I scrunch up the yellow note, let it drop to the worn, musty carpet. “I am not smelly. You… You… shit-turd! I’ll slap some respect into you. Looks like you need it, you shadowy little gremlin. You—” I slap my hand over my mouth, feel the regret worm its way inside. “I shouldn’t have said that. Forgive me…”
“The name’s Kage.”
“Kage?” The name feels fuzzy in my mouth, like it doesn’t want to be there. “I’m sorry, Kage. Sincerely. That wasn’t the best of starts, was it?” I raise my voice. “I’ll have some decorum in my class. Please?”
The kids in the front all give each other a funny look, like someone let go a stinking flatulence. They take their seats with groaning reluctance.
“Let’s go over the importance of manners. Why we don’t call people smelly, for instance.”
#
I gasp awake, clutch the covers to my chest. “Mummy, speak to me, please? I…”
The dark bedroom fuzzes into existence as I try to hold on to the slippery dream.
A much smaller version of me racing into the hall. The smells of fresh October following me inside. Mum slapping me across the face, spitting at me for trapsing mud all over her new Fabrica carpet.
Dirt comes off, but smell stays, is what she screamed in my face. It was the sludgy, part-brown, part-green dog poo that my wellingtons had brought in that ruined everything.
I scratch my head in my dark bedroom. Thinking back now, Mum had never treated me the same since that day. I’d been stained with that violent, cloying dog-poo smell in her eyes until the end, when she didn’t know who I was anymore. She’d back off, try to scuttle away from me like she could still smell the reek of it.
YOu R sMellY.
That post-it note had been part of the dream, too. The boy, Kage, sat in the corner of my childhood living room, laughed behind his shadowy mesh as I got slapped about.
“I shouldn’t have gone off on him like that,” I say to Keturah, my ginger feline who’s puddled at my side under the cover. She opens one eye that tells me to lie back down or we won’t be on speaking terms come morning. “Okay, my snookums. It’ll be a better day tomorrow.”
#
When I got out of bed the following morning, it felt like someone held a burning rubber doll under my nose, refusing to let me breathe. The stench attacked my lungs, doubled me over, had me chucking my empty guts. Keturah yowled from dark corners, lashed out with hissing strikes whenever I neared.
That first morning, I went out into the hallway, checked that the apartment building wasn’t on fire. I couldn’t shake the reek of it.
It wasn’t until I got on the bus to the school that I realised the smells were coming from me. I nearly got into a fight with a yellow-toothed man, but my fish-oil reek stopped him cold, made him yell at me till I got off the bus before my stop.
They suspended me. Said I was a danger to the kids with my foul smells. The headmistress could barely look me in the eye.
When I hung around the school to beg Kage to remove the curse, they phoned the police, escorted me off the premises. One officer asked if I bathed in tomato juice before he gagged, barely held onto himself.
The days went by as I tried to think what I could do. Every hour seemed to bring a fresh, gut-tweaking reek that oozed out my pores.
Sulphurous eggy burps.
Sweat-stained armpits on hot, busy trains.
Green, infected warts between toes.
Lingering, collected juices at the bottom of a food bin.
It was too much for Keturah to handle.
Just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the neighbours thought me some Jeffrey Dahmer wannabe, stashing my victims in the flat until the flies came. They threw me out, said I violated my agreement not to damage the place.
So, now I sleep in Cuttie Hill park with the other desperates, but even they won’t come close. It’s like I’ve got leprosy.
I have no family to turn to. No savings. This town was supposed to be the place where I start to build my finances back after Mother’s too-long fight with dementia.
Dirt comes off, but smell stays. I can almost hear her stinging words on the warm breeze.
“How right you are,” I say.
I’m sitting with my back against one of the gnarly trees, watching the sun fall down the clear sky. There’s a black tar smell coming from me that’s impossible for the passersby to ignore.
I lean my head back. “What now?”
Even the homeless shelters refuse to see me. My hygiene is too much of a hazard, they say. Go to the doctors, they say. And the doctors only tell me to go for a bath, get away from the genuinely sick patients.
I draw my knees to my chest, hug them. It all slipped away so fast. I was supposed to be making a difference here.
My teeth saw together as the walkers avoid my stench. They move away from the gravel path that runs with the edge of the trees, preferring to take their chance on the dog shit laced grass.
I see how their noses quiver, how they turn their heads away. Then their eyes lock on mine. They say, What’s wrong with you? and, Go die somewhere else.
Here comes a mother and father with a boy in their wake. I stare down at my mud-caked boots. I can almost see the air around me change as the smell of me morphs into something like wet dog.
The parents react in the usual way, slaloming off the path. It stings a little more each time. I look at the boy through my watery eyes. There’s something on his face.
“You.” I’m up, marching toward Kage.
He doesn’t back away, dares me with a smile under his grey hoodie. The darkness clings to his face like a cloud of small flies.
“You did this.” I grab him by the shoulders. “Take it back. You have to take it back!”
Fingers dig into my shoulders, haul me off. I expect a right hook, but it’s the mother who’s pulled me off. The father only stares down at his phone, dull expression on his face.
“Get away from my—” She coughs, fans a hand in front of her face. “You stinking bastard. What’s wrong with you? Come on, Kage. Told you we should stop coming down here.”
“It’s okay, Mum,” says Kage, wrangling free. “I can help him.”
I push the words over an emotional stone in my gullet. “You will?”
“Mum, stand over there with Dad.”
The mother becomes a dull-eyed thing, shuffles over to the father like she’s in a dream.
“Thank you, thank you,” I say as we sit on a rusty bench. “You’ve no idea what this means.”
“I’ve some idea.” He sits, puts his hands in his pockets.
I stare at the shadows on the boy’s face. This close, they’re like clouds, clambering and circling over the contours of his face.
The words drip out my mouth. “What are you?”
“I’ve always had a… gift. That’s why Mum and Dad don’t see the real me. That’s only for special people.”
“Please fix me. I need my life back.” My mother’s stinging words come back to me as if she were sitting on the bench. Dirt comes off, but smell stays. “You’ve no idea how it feels to be this unclean.”
The boy’s mouth moves as he seems to think about it.
“Okay,” he finally says.
The air rushes out of me. I expect Kage to recoil from the green stench of it, but he stays as he is. He shifts, takes a yellow post-it pad and a small, stripy pencil from his pocket.
He turns away from me as he writes. The pencil scritches on the paper. The way the black shapes on his face move is almost soothing, hypnotic. He stands, gestures at me to stay where I am.
“Close your eyes, Mr. Yates,” he says. “I promise, all your problems will melt away.”
The heat of the sun is an embrace. A tear falls down my cheek as I shut my eyes. It’s finally over. I can get my life back.
A chill moves over me as he blocks the sun. He presses the note on my forehead, runs his finger slowly along the sticky part. He whispers, chants something in a different language.
I open my mouth to say thank you, but the words stay on my tongue. I’m so at peace, despite the chill.
“It’s over, now,” says Kage. “Rest. Be at peace.”
All the hate I aimed at him floats out my shoulders. I nod, lay down on the bench, head resting on the armrest. The gravel crunches as Kage and his family move away.
The sun is so strong it’s making purple flashes on the inside of my eyelids. Somewhere nearby, a small stream burbles, sends its silver smells to me. The green of the grass dances around my nostrils. Everything is tinged with an intensity I’ve never known. It’s like I’ve been given a drug, experiencing the soul in everything.
When I open my eyes, the world shifts, sways beneath me. I scrunch them closed again, set my palm against the bench, try to push myself up. Dizziness has me in its clutches. I take a few slow breaths, will it to settle.
“You’ve been through a lot,” I say to myself.
The crunch of gravelly steps is rhythmic. People aren’t walking around me anymore.
I open my eyes.
I no longer stink.
I can go to the homeless shelter now. Explain everything. Get my life back on track.
The breeze pushes at the yellow square of paper still on my forehead. I raise my hand to take the note off, but my arm is numb and useless. I feel sloppy all over.
I try to push myself up to stand, fall back down on the bench. My head is swimming. “What the?”
Something’s terribly wrong. It feels like I’m sitting on a bench in the middle of a washing machine, sloshing back and forth.
I slap my forehead with the back of a loose hand.
The post-it note falls onto my lap.
I blink, try to focus on the angry words.
Kage had told me it was going to be okay now. I was going to be clean.
“No,” I say. “Not exactly.”
It’s over, now, was what he said. Rest. Be at peace.
The words on the note come into focus.
U R DeAd.
I try to shake the dizziness that has me in its grasp, pulling my centre down, down. I catch the eyes of a passerby who gives me a wide berth. I must look drugged out my head.
“Please?” I say. “Please. Help.”
I fall off the bench, clatter to the hard ground, breath rushing out my lungs.
As the people walk by me, the words of the post-it note that’s fallen by my head scream its command.
U R DeAd.
Paul O’Neill is an award-winning short story writer from Fife, Scotland. His works have been published by the No Sleep Podcast, Crystal Lake, Sinister Smile Press, Scare Street, Vanishing Point Magazine, Fifth Di Magazine, Hell Bound Books, Eerie River, Grinning Skull Press, and many other publications and competitions. He runs Short Story Club on Substack where he and over 100 readers analyse the classics on a regular basis.
