“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” she said.
I was holding the tip of myself against her lips, the dark taupe disarray of her hair strung through my fingers, as I stared and smiled and said the words again.
“I love you.”
Her name was Monty. Strange name for a girl, but everything about her was a little odd, like those weird indie girls in movies losers ruined their lives for. We’d been seeing each other for a while, another dating app find, and I was totally drunk on her. I loved that she smelled like a garden. Her hair was spicy, like sage and rosemary crushed in the palm of a hand dirty with wet soil. Her scents would waft off my sheets for days after we fucked. Even her pussy was earthy when I pressed my face against it, like she washed herself with handfuls of roots and flowers and fresh river water. I figured she’d be fun for a couple weeks, and I’d just gobble up what I could while it was still exciting. Like a foreign sweet I’d taste on vacation and never think about again.
After that night, though, after I said those words, her texts didn’t stop: cute places she wanted to go on dates, funny shit she saw online, things that made her think of me. It was exhausting. The next time we fucked, a week later or whatever, it felt stale, and she clung to my side after with her head against my chest. She sneezed, and a loud fart came out.
“Whoops,” she said. “Sorry.”
I was mortified, caught totally off guard. A girl had never farted in my bed before. It was fuckin’ gross. I moved my face to keep her hair out of my mouth, tried to find my composure.
“All good,” I lied, shifting my shoulders, trying to create some space. She squeezed me tighter.
“Sorry,” she said again.
“It’s fine, really.” I kissed her forehead and settled back down.
I lay there, trapped against my sheets, the smells that had me so drunk mixing with the new, meaty fumes she’d released in my bed, and I knew she’d never make me hard again. I managed to roll over and pretend to fall asleep as she sucked up against my back like a symbiotic koala. I woke up before her the next day, and she just didn’t look the same, sleeping there with her mouth hung open, makeup smeared.
She called and texted and I made excuses for a while. I lost my phone, I had family in town, I was working overtime. Eventually, I told her I was having some personal problems. No, there was nothing she could do to help, thank you, I’d check in soon. The whole thing should’ve ended there. Most girls took the hint and left me alone. No need to make a big scene of it.
I was texting with a new girl; tall, amber-skinned, and thick. The banter was getting juicy, and I was typing out a reply when a notification popped up: Hope you’re ok. Love you. I shuddered. The echoing trumpet of her asshole rang through my head, and the soft cloying of her concern soured my growing hard-on. I blocked her.
*
Emma was gorgeous. Short and blonde, a little skinnier than I liked, but she was nice and simple. The same Netflix shows everyone watched, the same boring bands with hot lead singers most women listened to; conversation was easy. Every time I said I heard of this show or that band, she was blown away. Whoa, really? I love that, huge fan. Fish in a barrel. Dinner was smooth, and she seemed like a nice girl, so I wasn’t expecting her to accept the invitation back to my place. Sometimes it took a couple dates.
We were closing in on my building, walking the evening sidewalk, past people out enjoying the late summer heat. My pants were already tightening thinking about getting Emma upstairs. I made her laugh, and she slipped her fingers between mine. Contact. I pictured pulling that hand down from my chin as we kissed, sliding it south down my chest, further, a little further –
Someone grabbed my wrist and yanked. I popped out of the fantasy and saw a familiar face framed by a light hood. I hadn’t even noticed them standing near the door. Emma let out a startled yelp at my sharp motion toward the person who grabbed me.
“Did you fucking block me?” It was Monty. She ripped down her hood and singed me with her eyes, her brows shoved down, and her mouth twisted up in an ugly grimace.
“What?” I said, panicking, looking between the two girls, my heart kicking my chest with heavy boots. I’d never been caught out with one girl by another. With Emma holding one hand, and Monty attached to my other wrist, I had to think quick. My first thought was unhelpful: three-way.
“You just ghost me after months of dating?” She was breathing heavy and shifted her eyes to Emma. “This the ‘personal problem’ you were having? Did you have a girlfriend the whole time, or is this just some new girl who fell for your shit?”
I stumbled over my thoughts and stammered. “What?” I said again after an awkward pause. A nervous laugh fell out. Had Monty and I really dated for months? I couldn’t have said. Emma let go of my hand and started backing away. I looked at her with pleading eyes, trying to think of a way to salvage the lay, but Monty grabbed my wrist in both hands then and squeezed, pulling my attention back to her.
“Um,” Emma said, “I don’t know what this is, but I’m not his girlfriend. He’s all yours.” She ran from the drama like escaping a bomb. There goes the three-way, I thought.
“Smart girl,” Monty said. “I wish someone would’ve warned me.”
I tried to get my arm free, shaking it, leaning back against her weight. No luck.
“What the fuck? I’m sorry, Monty. Alright? I really was going through some shit.” I turned away from her and made eye contact with the security guard inside my building, raising my eyebrows like get me the fuck out of here.
“Why have you been ignoring me?” Her tone deflated from rage to real hurt. I didn’t get it. “You couldn’t just break things off? I was over here actually worried about you, you asshole.” She sniffed back a tear. It was ludicrous, even if it had been months. My eyeballs twitched with irritation, my wrist felt rope-burned in her hands. “You didn’t think you at least owed me a conversation?” The security guard was up, waddling toward the front door, and I was done. She was hysterical, unreasonable, being a fucking child. My chest grew tight, and burned with anger.
“No!” I turned back toward her, hulking up my shoulders, my face hot. “I don’t owe you shit!” I yelled. “Jesus fucking Christ! We hooked up! It’s not my fucking fault you caught feelings. Get the fuck over it!” I jerked my head back to the sloth of a security guard before she could respond. He’d barely made it to the door when a sharp pain shot through the center of my palm.
“Ow!” I yelled. My knees gave from the stinging pain. She had her thumbnail planted in my hand. I tried again to yank it away from her, but Monty’s hands became iron shackles, immovable, and pulling against her was like trying to tow a truck with a jump rope. Her head hung over my palm as she whispered rapid-fire words, some foreign language shit. The security guard reached me and grabbed my shoulders. Monty moved her thumb, spit where it had been, and released me. I fell into the guard as she backed away, smiling.
“Be seeing you, champ,” she said. “Love you.” And off she walked down the block, flipping her hood back up and spitting again on the ground. I rubbed my aching wrist, looked at the small puncture in my hand. I wasn’t totally convinced of what just happened; her strength, the strange language she was speaking, my hurt fucking hand.
“You okay, sir?” the guard asked. “Want me to call the cops?”
“No, I’m alright,” I told him. I watched Monty disappear around a corner.
Standing in the elevator, I told myself at least it was over, hopefully she’d gotten it all out of her system. The floors chimed by as the elevator climbed, and blood and spit traced the lifeline of my palm, dripping pink pieces of me and Monty onto the floor.
*
It took a while for her smell to find me. A month? I don’t know, time got weird. My energy was zapped. I was exhausted all the time, no matter how much I slept. I felt ill but didn’t have any of the usual symptoms. No fever, no sore throat, nothing. I woke up in a fog every day. Sometimes I woke up with my cheeks wet, like I’d been crying in my sleep. I didn’t even get horny. I was sad for no reason, my body ached all over, and I couldn’t taste or smell anything. My doctor ran tests, but didn’t find anything wrong with me. Said I sounded depressed, try therapy. Stupid.
I used up all my sick time, so I had to go to work every day. Hours would pass as I sat at my desk, ignoring the shit I was supposed to be getting done, unable to focus. I avoided my coworkers and hid in the bathroom, scrolling through bullshit on my phone. When it was time to clock out, I dragged my body home to force down handfuls of dry crackers while zoning out to endless amounts of shitty streaming TV.
I was in the middle of that grey soup of misery, nearly home from work, when her scent – that spicy, earthy scent – blew hard across my face. I stopped flat and jerked my head around, my heart all shot through with searing excitement. I hadn’t tasted or smelled anything in what felt like weeks. When that sage and soil shot up my nose, I almost cried. I salivated. The fiery excitement in my chest faded to a dull blue malaise when I remembered why I recognized the smell. I’d forgotten all about Monty, and with just a whiff, memories crashed through my thoughts like a boulder tumbling down a hill of glass.
The first time we fucked, she wrestled me onto my back and straddled my hips. Nobody had ever done that to me before. Taken charge, thrown me around. I froze, looking up at her as she sat back, tossing aside her shirt and bra, smirking, pursing her lips. My room drenched in mood lighting. Her hair hanging over one shoulder. Upturned brown eyes made black in the low light, wings of eyeliner off the corners. Her tits, pale and so perfect I didn’t even want to touch them. A truly immaculate demon perched on me.
My heart palpitated as she unbuttoned my shirt and dug her nails into my chest like she was going to rip me open. I wanted her to kill me. I actually thought that: Fucking kill me. Please. No woman made me as hard as Monty did that night. I wanted total and complete destruction. I worshiped every piece of her with my tongue and fingers, arranged her limbs in abstract configurations to feel every possible sensation. Folded her, picked her up, pushed her to the floor. She drew blood with her teeth. Every part of me combusted.
Fuck.
The memory landed like a javelin through my forehead. Standing outside my building, in the pathetic state I’d been in, I wiped a tear from my cheek, breathing her perfect smell, feeling her nails sunk in my skin. I walked the block, desperate, looking for her. I went blocks in every direction, the smell never weakening. There was no sign of her. I walked until my feet were aching and kept going until my ankles were rubbery and I couldn’t feel my toes. I gave up and went home, and the smell followed me inside the apartment. My bed was soaked in it like she’d just left.
The first night was the worst, before I really began to crack. I was sleepless, prone and melancholic like a teenager, obsessing over memories. I stared holes through my ceiling. I rolled over and bore down on the wall. My phone lit up blue, and I dove for it, hoping she felt me thinking about her and texted, only to find some useless notification from an app I didn’t use anymore.
I forgot we had fun. We laughed, talked good shit. How could I have forgotten that? She teased me, looking over my bookshelf.
“These are so basic,” she said. “Terrible taste. And what good are books in your bedroom? By the time a girl's in here, she’s already gonna fuck you. You should have them by the front door, where pretending to read them can really seal the deal.”
“My collection is shitty on purpose,” I told her. “They’re not there to get me laid. They’re there so nobody comes back.” She tossed her beautiful hair with a laugh.
“Well, you nailed it,” she said, draping her arms around my neck, kissing me, her tongue unlike any other. It hunted my mouth and tackled mine before she sucked it into her mouth and bit.
I rolled in bed, my stomach twisting, and cried. Burying my face in a pillow, trying to escape the smell, it was useless. There it was, embedded in the fabric and stuffing, in every fiber, staining my nostrils.
*
“I told you,” Rich yelled over the pounding bass, “I don’t fucking smell anything! Just way too much cologne, you fuckin’ weirdo! Besides, you should be more worried about the fact that your hair looks like shit. And when did you get so fuckin’ skinny, man?” He didn’t wait for an answer, turning his attention back to the dancefloor, like a coifed lion peaking through tall grass at supple deer. I backed away as he moved in on a group of drunk, dancing girls.
I shouldn’t have gone out. But I’d spent a couple weeks tormented by the Monty smell at that point, and I was going stir crazy hiding in my apartment all the time. Rich threw the invite into a group text, and I was the only one who showed. I was too focused on the smell while getting ready to care much about my hair, which had grown well past the length I usually kept it, or my clothes, which had begun to hang off me. Layer after layer of cologne went on, and the smell of Monty kept seeping up through it all, like I was trying to mask the smell of a corpse with Febreeze.
80s night at The Little Lyre was usually great. Drinks flowed, inhibitions lowered. I usually at least got a dancefloor makeout session out of it, but I couldn’t get comfortable in my skin. I kept adjusting my clothes, fidgeting with myself, looking away when people made eye contact with me. My drink made me feel sick. I left it half-drunk on a neglected table, sticky-wet with spilled alcohol.
Waves of smells passed me; perfumes and lotions, aftershaves, sweating makeup, booze and cigarettes, a whole library of different flavored BO. But beneath it all, everywhere, was the smell of Monty. Spice and earth, a woods witch’s apothecary cabinet. And with the smell, obsessive thoughts of her. I looked for her in the crowd, got excited when I saw girls with a similar shape or style. I even tried to approach one, but chickened out and ran away when she yelled “What?” to my mumbled question, which didn’t make it through the deafening synths of “Blue Monday.” The crowd suffocated, the beautiful people too beautiful to look at, and me, an anxious mess, my cologne probably dense enough to repel all females for the next five years.
I ran from the bar like I’d run from the girl, inexplicably nervous, unsure of myself. Locking myself back in my apartment, I burned my thinning body with hot water in the shower, turning my skin flayed pink. I couldn’t remember if I’d eaten that day and didn’t care. I wasn’t hungry. I crawled in bed, lying in the body divot I’d made in the mattress. No one had ever slept in my bed long enough to make its twin on the opposite side. Maybe Monty could have. Her smell made the bed feel more empty, and my apartment, and me too.
*
“We need to talk,” my boss said. It took a second for the words to register. I was staring at my monitor, slack-jawed, with little twists of toilet paper stuffed in my nostrils. The earth and spice still found their way in, seeping through the TP, poking my brain with their irritating little Mony fingers. I kept my computer desktop looking busy with reports and spreadsheets, but they were all old. I hoped my boss didn’t ask me what I was working on, because I hadn’t opened my email in days and didn’t know what the fuck was going on with the projects I’d been put on.
“Sure,” I croaked, and followed him to his office. I pulled the tissue from my nose, stuffed it in my pocket, and recoiled at the stronger smell of earth. My boss shut his door, and we sat with his desk between us. He started talking about my performance, something about missing reports, not responding to emails. I stared through him.
Rosemary, sage, wet earth. Dark hair tented over my face. Spit slipping from her bottom lip in a long thread, stretching to my open, thirsty throat. The feel of her. Tight, grinding, unrelenting.
“Okay?” my boss finished. I cleared my throat and tried to focus.
“Yeah, for sure,” I said. I adjusted myself in the chair as he studied me, glowering.
“Look,” he said, after a heavy sigh. “I’m not sure what’s going on with you. You’ve been looking more and more rough, and we were in here last week, talking about these same issues. A couple months ago, you were killing it. You were taking on extra work, talking about taking the lead on a project by the end of the year, and now it’s like you’re not even here.” I wonder what Monty is doing right now, I thought. My boss was waiting for a reply. He snapped his fingers. “Are you hearing me?”
I shook my head, as if some wind between my ears would clear the fog. “Yeah,” I answered. “I hear you. I’m sorry.” I wonder if she ever thinks about me while she masturbates? My boss stared at me for a long time. My apology sounded hollow because it was.
“This is your last chance,” he said, and slid a business card across his desk. “Take the rest of the day off and get your head straight. This is Jill from HR’s card. If you need time, if you’re dealing with issues outside of work, call her and work it out. If you don’t show back up ready to work, you won’t have a job here. It’s that simple.”
I took the card and left, rubbing at my nose, raw and wrecked from constantly swiping at the smell. My coworkers watched me through side-eyes as I passed their cubicles; raised eyebrows, smirks. I didn’t give a fuck. I tossed Jill’s card in the trash on my way out of the building. There was no hope of getting my head straight until I found Monty and figured out what she’d done to me.
*
I threw out all my sheets. The fucking mattress reeked, so I started sleeping in the kitchen – the one place in my apartment we never fucked. I’d been trying to avoid calling her or sending pathetic texts, but I was well beyond that. I stared at her contact pic, the one I snagged off her Insta before she blocked me. Electricity surged from my body, through my phone, reaching across the expanse of the city to land wherever she was. I started casually: Hey. Been a while. How r u? I sent it in the innocent, definitely-sober midday hours of a Thursday and waited for a reply.
Nothing.
Hours passed. My phone didn’t leave my hand as the sun went down and my apartment walls faded from purple, to navy, to black. I still hadn’t heard from her. I sent another text, apologizing. I was a piece of shit. I was sorry I hurt her. I was fucked up, but I was getting help. I wanted to make things right. Blah, blah, blah.
Still nothing.
Around midnight, pacing, gripping my phone like a stress ball, I finally caved and called her. She’d have to know it was an emergency if I reached out that late, right? She said she was worried about me the night she caught me with Emma. Maybe she’d be worried again. She was a good person. I stared at her face, absorbing those perfect upturned eyes shining over a smile that revealed a single, perfect canine, then hit call.
A robot on the line told me the number didn’t exist.
Red, blinding rage boiled my insides. Finally, after letting myself become pathetic enough to call her, she’d changed numbers. Panic then. The reality of having no way of contacting her dressed my innards as I hung naked on the hook of desperation. She’d blocked every path I had to her. I bellowed a wordless yell and went to hurl my phone at the wall. It slipped as it came out of my hand and tumbled limply through the air like it was thrown by a toddler. I couldn’t even throw a tantrum properly.
I stood in the shower for forty-five minutes, ice cold until I was shivering, then stared at myself in the mirror. Skeletal, sunken-socketed eyeballs, hair thin and greasy, a wiry beard grown by neglect. Hollow and hopeless, Monty gone forever, I couldn’t stand the sight of myself. How could I have let her go? What the fuck was I thinking?
I cut off the long hair with scissors and shaved my head and face. I looked like a different person. That was good.
I just needed a fresh start, I decided. I hadn’t fucked anyone since before Emma. I needed to touch someone, someone to swallow me. I needed to shoot my misery down the soft passage of a stranger’s throat. I opened the app, swiping, swiping, swiping. I changed my preferences to include men – I needed a sure thing. I swiped, swiped, always right, right on everyone, waiting for the notification I’d made a new match. Even that started to feel like it would be enough, but it didn’t happen. I downloaded a different app and then another. I made a profile on a kink site and posted pictures of my cock.
Nothing. No matches anywhere.
I looked at my profile photos; handsome, fit, laughing and having fun with friends. I shuddered, remembering the shaven ghoul I’d seen in the mirror. I was good for a match or two every time I swiped – and usually, I was selective. Even swiping on every trogladite and crackhead didn’t get me a match.
I paced the apartment, unable to settle. I called Monty over and over, mouthing the words of the cold robot telling me the number didn’t exist. I typed out walls of text and sent them, knowing they’d never reach her eyes.
I stood in my kitchen naked and put porn on my laptop, looking for girls who looked like her. I yanked my dick till it hurt, but it refused to comply, stretching out thin and sad, and snapping back like a dead balloon. I curled and cried on the floor, dying of a thirst I didn’t understand, that terrified me, and made me sick. Her lips. Her perfect tongue. Kill me.
*
Weeks of horror. Months. Days bleeding and blending, passing out from exhaustion, waking at weird hours, body creaking, sore.
I dreamed I was swimming in Monty’s mouth, rolling over her tongue; sliding, soaking in her fluids. She juggled me like a Jolly Rancher, clacked me against her teeth, slipped me between her lip and gum, slipped me out again. She pinned me between her teeth and squeezed, slow and steady, harder, harder, my body about to pop like a Gusher. I shot awake with the sounds of cracking ribs and sucking spit echoing in my ears.
It was almost 8:00 pm. Who knows when I drifted off, or for how long, or what day it was? The smell ripped at my nose, clawing its way inside me, stronger than ever, so strong my eyes watered. Monty had to be close. I was manic, hallucinating probably. Maybe she came to check on me, worried. Found my hidden key, let herself in. I stumbled around the apartment looking in every room and closet, under the bed, in the oven and cupboards, behind the curtains. The smell was too strong. She had to be nearby.
I pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie. My clothes fit me like a Halloween skeleton, the drawstring of my pants pulled tight, barely hanging on my protruding hip bones. I left the building, shivering as the spring air snuck icy breaths under my dirty clothes and goosebumped my skin.
The smell blew hard from the north, raging from an epicenter somewhere in the direction of downtown. I picked it up immediately and followed like a hound. I went blocks, turning left and right, as the smell commanded me like its thrall. It grew unbearable, peeling the Monty scab slowly from my heart the closer I got to where it came from. I was nearly there, eyes closed, practically floating. A cartoon hobo drifting on the fumes of a hot meal. I walked face-first into a bookshop window and left a ghostly stamp of my dirty cheek and nose against the glass.
There, luminescent in the golden light of the shop, the elegance of Monty’s profile shone, buckling my knees. People moved about the shelves and tables of books, dogs and shitheads, pissants, but she stood central, perfect, a different species of creature altogether.
A strip of stomach flesh smiled above her skirt line, her top glittering black under a loose coat. She tossed back her head and laughed, the split ecstasy of her lips showing perfect, violent teeth. The dream – popping in her mouth, being decimated – came back. I wanted to shrink and crawl between the little pearl tombstones of her skull and die there. Seeing her again hit me like a clean dose of an unnamable drug; lavender light in my veins, every hair on my body at attention, honey-dipped euphoria. I love you I love you I love I love love love love.
But then I saw. I saw why she was laughing. A man walked toward her, tall and handsome – in a little-boy way. Bookish, he handed her a volume of something, after shaking it like you-gotta-read-this. He stepped to her, put a hand on her hip, thumb resting against that tender strip of flesh. I fell against the window, heart thumping, breath choking, gasping. She laughed again while looking at the book. The guy was hilarious. She put a hand on his cheek and hugged the book to her tits as he ran his other hand through her hair, tangling his fingers. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. Her fingers on his face. The fingers I’d sucked and bitten. Those fingers. My fingers.
They walked to the counter. Monty’s date made the girl behind the counter laugh, too. But after, he looked at Monty, as if to check in, make sure he wasn’t being too flirty with the book girl. She smiled up at him and pinched his cheek. She wasn’t threatened. How could she be? Her date's eyes lingered on her, were lost in her, like my eyes. Lost forever in Monty. But he had her still, and I didn’t. For the smallest fraction of a moment, my hate for him dimmed, and I wanted to warn him, tell him what she’d do, what she’d done to me. It was too late for him anyway. He’d had a taste, he was done for.
I stepped back from the window and waited for them to leave. My reflection – fuck. I looked worse than ever. My hair had grown back since I’d shaved everything off, and there was no order or style to any of it. I tried to find a direction for it to lie, but it stuck out all directions in greasy spears. I gave up. Maybe she’d feel sorry for me. I just wanted to hear her voice, know that she cared.
They got closer and closer to the exit. Monty’s clothes floated around her in slow motion as she held her man’s arm. He pushed the door open.
The wind of her with the opening door. Months of her scent following me around was the burping squeak of a toy recorder compared to the symphony of her smells in person, with nothing but air between us, the distance shrinking as she drew closer. Her presence hit me hard enough to scramble every thought; it nearly knocked me over.
“Hey,” I said. It was the first time I’d heard my voice in days. It was thin, reedy, sick. They didn’t hear me. “Hey!”
They looked at me, both smiling. Monty took a step back when she saw the state of me standing there, trembling.
“Hey, sorry, we don’t have any change,” her man said. Their smiles were gone, and I’d been dismissed. The doofus pulled Monty’s hand, moving her along, taking her away from me.
“Been calling you, Monty,” I said. They stopped and turned back. “I think you must have gotten a new phone or something.” She squinted at me, no recognition in her face. The doofus looked at her suspiciously.
“You know this dude?” he asked her. Monty just stared at my face. “I –” she started. “Are you from the clinic?” she asked. What the fuck was she talking about? “Are you okay?” Real concern then on her face. “Do you need help?”
I bumbled and began to cry. She didn’t recognize me or, worse, forgot me.
“I miss you,” I said, stepping forward. “I miss you a lot.” She grabbed onto her man’s sleeve and her eyes widened. Fear. “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I’m sorry,” I whined, and kept blathering on as she whispered something to him. He nodded and puffed out his chest.
“Have a good night, man,” he said. He dismissed me for a second time, this time with a manufactured authority – superiority, even. They turned and took quick steps away from me.
“Please!” I yelled. “I’m sorry!” She glanced back briefly. A canine glinted from a quick grin. Was it a grin? Was she playing victim for the sake of her man? I ran to her. “Please!” I yelled again. “Just talk to me, please!” I grabbed the back of her coat and pulled. She screamed, and her guy whipped around.
“Fuck off, asshole!” He shoved me. It was noodle-armed, weak, but I was so ragged it knocked me flat on my back. I landed hard, my wind gone. She stood behind him as I lay there on the damp concrete. Both canines came out, but vanished when he looked at her. Another grin. Another grin? She walked past him, coming toward me, and stood inches from my feet. I cowered beneath her. Her presence, even down there like the pile of shit I was, filled every anemic cell in my body. She was impossibly beautiful, her hair backlit by streetlight coronas and platinum, whisper-thin strands of rain.
“Should I call the cops?” someone asked.
Monty looked down at me with a conquering pity.
“No,” she said. “He’s harmless.”
*
I knew it was some kind of curse when I couldn’t kill myself. Everything else – her smell, my obsession and deterioration – could be chalked up to a tumor in my brain or late-blooming schizophrenia, maybe. But I should have at least been able to kill myself. The smell, which I thought I may have been freed from after my humiliation outside the bookstore, didn’t dissipate whatsoever. It haunted me constantly. I slept with it on the floor of my kitchen, walked my halls with it. I was forced to accept it, but refused to live with it any longer.
First, I tried Xanax and trash booze, but couldn’t keep any of it down and ran out of pills. That made sense. I’d put nothing but water and crackers in my belly for months. The next best option would only require a single, short step: in front of a speeding train or off a rooftop. I tried both.
I lined up my toes at the edge of a subway platform and watched the menacing owl eyes of a train appear in the void of the tube, ready to throw myself beneath its girth. But I couldn’t move. My body on pause, I stood shaking as the steel skin of the train whirred by me, dousing me in hot tunnel air as passengers waited to board. I tried another train, and another. Each time, some invisible force pushed me further from the edge, away from the tracks. It was as if the smell itself had developed a ghostly hand that could move my body.
That night, the roof of my building was freezing. Crisp winds bobbled me as I stood on the ledge, looking down at the spot Monty doomed me with her thumbnail and foreign words. I felt the same invisible force from the subway, the smell’s hand, stronger than before, keeping me from stepping off and splattering myself all over the accursed spot. The invisible force, the wall between me and death, wasn’t cowardice. It was Monty. She wanted me to live with the smell, with her, forever.
After a failed attempt with a kitchen knife and another with my belt, the only other thing I could think of was starvation. I was already close enough to it with how little I was eating. I finished the last box of crackers in my cupboard and just wouldn’t buy any more. Simple.
But it wasn’t. I couldn’t make it a day without limping to the shop for more. Sometimes, I didn’t even remember going, or I would suddenly come to, sitting naked somewhere in the apartment with a mouthful of flavorless cracker paste and my hand in the box. I was possessed.
Fucking Monty. I wished I could hate her. But, even after everything – torture, humiliation, the complete destruction of my ego and self – I just wanted her more. I needed her. There was no moving on with my soul stapled to her smell. No forgetting her while my head endured the ceaseless carpet bombing of intrusive memories.
I had to restrain myself somehow to keep from eating. It was the only way to beat her.
*
When I was a kid, I spent a weekend helping my dad build a low brick wall around my mom’s garden. My dad dug the trench, I unloaded the clean, red bricks from our truck and mixed the mortar. Me and my old man, shirtless and laughing, sipping lemonade from sparkling, sweating mason jars. The warm green smell of herb and tomato plants in the sun, Zeppelin on the boombox. Real Americana shit.
That scraping sound, trowel on brick. Thick, crunchy, wet. I went back to it a lot in my head, fell asleep sometimes to YouTube videos of people building walls. There aren’t many sounds like it. Hearing it again in real life was a warm blanket.
I could still smell Monty through the stink of mortar and filth in my closet, but she was getting weaker. With each layer, the closet got darker, and I felt a little better. The scrape, the satisfying smoosh of pressing a brick down, was therapy. Scrape. Smoosh. I breathed a little easier.
The doorframe was three-quarters filled. The relief that quietly bloomed in my chest as I built the wall made me think maybe it was what she wanted all along. Maybe she just wanted me locked away.
Another layer, and another. Scrape. Smoosh. It would take a while for the wall to dry, but that didn’t matter. I fastened a chain to the floor at the back of the closet to secure around my ankle. I had to be absolutely sure.
Another layer, and the smell was so faint I couldn’t tell if I was just remembering it. The masonry stood on top of Monty.
Five final bricks. One for the night we met. One for the night she cursed me. One for our mouths and flesh, smashed and writhing. One for the words, I love you. And one for the cost of it all. I didn’t know if I meant the words when I said them to her on her knees beneath me, or if I meant them there, sealed in the tomb I’d built for her. Because of her. Because of me. It didn't matter anymore.
I limped to the back of the closet, fell to the floor, and secured the chain with a padlock. I sat and rested in the perfect dark, alone with the smells of my wall and body. I breathed deep, taking in as much air as I could through my nose.
Monty’s smell was gone, and I realized that was worse.
This story took months of writing, abandoning, restarting, giving up, and being stubborn. Thank you to Dev for editing and for putting up with me.
And thank you, too, reader. 💔
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What an amazing story, Jimmy.
I started it, and thought, okay, well written broken-heart love story. But then it takes such a twist. The emotions are intense.
Thank you for sharing; this is great!!
Yikes! I started to speed read to hurry to see what happened, but went back and started again to makes sure I took in each word. My heart was pounding. I didn’t expect that end but loved it! Really good!