Butterfly Wings - Chapter 9 - Reek

A wall of flat, knobbled granite slabs stacked up against the building. A few of the stones were missing, but no one was exactly sure why. A carved, chunky fast food logo flashed in the pale sun. The windows, black in the daylight, were lined with posters of dripping red sundaes and gold-bunned burgers. They pushed through the swinging doors. There wasn’t any wind inside, at least.

Napkins, ketchup and salt shakers laced the edges of the varnished tables, the floor was tile. The posters were black with backlight that flared from the cracks between the edges and the window panes.

Daffodil stepped carefully on the soles of her feet. She could walk on them for a little ways now, but they were still tender. 

She sunk into the seat of a booth. Aaron sat down across from her and Starling leaned against the table. She tapped her fingers absentmindedly. The sound was loud in the silence.

tap tap tap tap tap

“So-Aaron,” said Starling, “What’s with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I guess mirrors aren't really working, so you don't...anyways, it’s just...you look a bit…”

“Rotted?” suggested Daffodil helpfully.

“Something like that. Like your arm. I can see some gnawed bone there. And your clothes have mildew and just...these signs of not being worn...and so do you, honestly. You don’t have scratches from going through bushes, or bruises from bumping your knees against things. You have dirt on your fingernails but not under them.

You just kind of...smell funny. You know?”

“No, not really. All I can remember is waking up from under some leaves.”

Starling got up and began to rummage through a trash can, and brandishing an empty gallon jug, walked over to the soda fountain.

“That’s sort of what I mean. I know none of us can even really remember when we started to forget, well, everything, I guess. But haven’t you...felt like you still remembered, at least for a second? I just sort of feel like people don’t normally look like that...."

...well, again, really off. Anyways, I need to fill this up.”

“Why?”

“So I can put mentos in it.”

A large tank weighed on top of several dispensers. She pressed the jug against the wire tongue. Ice would help it stay cold.

GRUN-grun-GRUN-grun-GRUN

clatter clatter clatter clatter clatter

gurgle gurgle gurgle gurgle gurgle

“Should we burn something?” she said. “It’s still kind of cold in here. We’ll need to be warm before we think of heading out."

They both nodded.

“Should I smash a chair?”

“Go for it.”

“I’ll get some napkins.”

“Fat burns, right?”

Aaron really did smash a chair. He took it by the leg and had to bash it against the counter a few times.

CRACK

Two of the wooden legs flew off and skidded across the floor, varnish flashing. Daffodil drifted a hand over brown stacks of napkins that were layered like pancakes in the holder and grabbed a thick layer. In the kitchen, golden light beamed from deep fryers, now cold and juiceless, waffled with stale slices of abandoned french fry. Starling pulled out a greasy handful.

They piled the broken chair, and the napkins, and the french fries. Starling pulled out her lighter.

click

“You know the shadows?” said Starling. Her face flickered red with firelight.

“Yeah. They ate my house.” said Daffodil.

“That's...really terrible actually. Anyway, they don’t like fire, right?”

“I guess not.”

“Yeah. I wasn’t sure where I was going with this, but about your house. What if we-”

“What? Torched it?”

The chair legs glowed with red worms of heat, crackling with burning fireflies. Golden tongues of flame like sunflower petals rippled on the fries as they set off firecrackers of sparks that popped like bubbles of magma. The napkins were starting to catch, and curled as they blackened like clawed fingers.

“Hey, Daffodil, want a fry?”

“Sure.”

Starling tossed the fry. It went through her hand like water.

“Oh. What’s with that?”

“It happens sometimes when I go a while without eating, I guess.” Daffodil reach down her fingers and tried to pick it up. It was like trying to hold steam. She had to resort to licking it off the floor. “I need to find some food.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” said Starling. “They’re so many posters of food in here there's probably some.”

tak tak tak tak tak

Daffodil walked through the counter, and Starling slid over it. The kitchen flashed with stainless steel. Stacks of plastic cups gleamed like gossamer, and paper ones were rolled with blue and red. Soft serve machines dripped with dregs of frosty vanilla and chocolate like small icicles. Cardboard cutouts showing cone and cup sizes were propped on top of the register. Daffodil tried to open the fridge but her fingers rippled through the handles, so Starling pulled it open. The racks oozed with raw hamburger patties, soft and dripping, and lobes of raw chicken.

“Let’s get you a burger.”

Starling popped out the grate and walked over to the fire to set it on top.

“Will that really work?” asked Daffodil anxiously.

"I don't see why not.”

The dripping pinkness inside was cooking, and stripes of black were starting to burn into the sides. The smell of the cooking meat was stronger now. It dripped from the teetering grate and rolled over the floor. The smell slid between the thin wire mesh and rolled columns wrinkled with bright blue leathers. The smell of meat.

The reek.

In the play place, someone smelled the reek, the reek of cooking meat, and heard the voices.

“Anyways, Aaron, you’re looking a little crusty. Want a sip?” She held up the plastic jug of soda drinks and swirled it around.

“I’ll get my own.” He stood up and unsheathed a cup from the stack, and plucked out a straw. He looked uncertainly at the dispensers.

“You don’t know how to use it?” said Starling. “I did.”

He shook his head.

“Weird. Anyways, just push the cup against the black lever thingy and soda comes out the spout. It’s just like I did. It’s pretty neat.”

He did. Lemonade trickled quietly into the cup. Sitting down by the fire, he began to sip. The lemonade tasted sweet and acidic, a bright yellow that tasted of sugar and syrups. Starling herself took a swig of her own soft drink concoction straight from the mouth of the jug.

“Well, Dayquil,” began Starling, smacking her lips,

“Daffodil.”

“Well, Daffodil, your burger’s about done.” Starling had a faint impulse to turn off a stove before realizing it was cooking over an open flame. “I think it’s supposed to go in a bun. Just let me find one.”

There was a silence, with undernotes of Starling rummaging through the stainless steel kitchen and Daffodil’s almost-cooked burger sizzling on the skillet. Starling had finished her ice cream cone and threw the soft serve cone label in the trash. There were exactly three smells, the smell of cooking beef, the smell of dusty floors and the zing of fruit-flavored soda. Until there was a fourth smell. A rotting smell.

It floated over the floor tiles, smelling of death and decay. Rotten fruit blooming with green bubbles of mold. Rotten eggs with sickly yellow yolks mixed with a putrid gray. Dried blood. Iron. Burgundy flakes of rust. Rotten meat, simmering in vile juices and covered with flies and wasps. Rotted. Rotting meat, mixing in the air with the smell of cooking meat. Slowly coloring it noxious with a poisonous decay.

“What’s that smell?”

“I don’t know?”

“Smell?”

“How can you not smell it?”

“It smells really bad.”

“I can smell it now. It does smell bad...”

“It’s foul!”

Starling found a bun, and scooped up the cooked hamburger. It was a bit burnt. but that wasn’t the problem. The awful smell had polluted the flavor of the meat, making it taste rotted even though the juice was still sizzling and warm as it soaked into the bun. Daffodil had to force bites of it down her throat, that slid down and seemed to stick there. The scent of death in her nostrils was overpowering, and made her stop eating after a couple bites. The smell, that scent of death, was getting stronger, crawling over everything in a putrid reek.

“Ugh! It’s getting stronger!”

“Where is it coming from?”

“We need to investigate."

They all got up and began walking across the tiled floor. The smell was even more powerful now. They stopped outside the play place. The smell rippled from inside the mesh, mixed with the scent of sweat and old socks.

A tower of soft play structure piled high up as pale light from windows gleamed on plastic and rubber and metal, held together with columns of crumpled blue leather. Staticky plastic tunnels looped through chambers with bubbly clear windows, tube slides swirled down to a spongy blue floor. Tiers of iron triangles towered, dotted with a honeycomb of pinholes, folding like a staircase of sandwiches cut down the middle. It bubbled with clear orbs to look through and the tunnels were holepunched with small windows.

It smelled of socks and lint and static.

And the smell of something rotten.

There was a set of cubbies and a sign that told them to take off their shoes, so they did. Their socks muffled their footsteps.

It didn’t need to hear them. It could see them. It was tracking them, peering through the net of holes on iron shelves that toddlers played on. Mouth crusted with blood.

“This place doesn’t seem familiar,” said Starling. Aaron nodded in agreement.

“It does to me,” said Daffodil. “But not empty. I think usually children play here.”

Aaron peered through the purple plastic slide. It was a dark void.

“I think the smell’s coming from inside.” He straightened. “The tunnels are small. Daffodil and I will look.”

“Are you calling me fat?”

“Starling, children are usually crawling through these tunnels. Small children. He’s calling me small, not you fat.”

“What about him? How old is he? Hey, Aaron, how old are you?”

“I feel fifteen, but I’m not sure.”

THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK

Aaron crawled inside first. There was a slight snap of static as his knees bumped over the iron platform. Daffodil followed.

The rotting smell was so strong Daffodil gagged.She could see Starling waiting at the bottom of the slide through a bulging clear window, distorted like through a fish’s eye. As she crawled up the tiers, she found herself feeling confused, seeing her hands and suddenly remembering she wasn’t a child anymore. Her hair stood up and floated around her face like rays from a sun.

The smell was getting stronger. They crawled through the knotted, strap-woven tensile bridge. She could see the spongy blue floor below. 

THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK

The smell was getting stronger. They maneuvered through cramped plastic tunnels, scooting as they tried to get their knees out of the way. They found another staircase of metal sandwich triangles, that opened up into an open platform.

A rotting corpse was splayed over it.

The rib cage was snapped in two. The organs were oozing out of it onto the floor, half of the shirt trailed on roots of cotton threads. Hair was matted over the face and the heart had been eaten. Muscles made from red, clotted sinews like raw meat bled dried pools of blood onto the metal, and tangled worms of intestine spilled out of the gut. The flesh was covered with flies. It sprouted with butterfly wings.

It smelled awful.

“Um,” said Daffodil. She felt sick. “Um….”

Aaron was frozen.

There was a slight scratching sound above them. Something else was here.

It could smell them. It could smell the scent of cooked beef on them, of mildew and herbal balm, of band-aids, tart, fizzing sodas and lemonade, stale french fries and smoke, a faint note of orange peel and dead leaves. It could smell the meat clinging to their bones under their skin. It crawled, scrabbling in the glossy plastic tunnels.

THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK

“Are you guys okay in there?” called Starling.

Daffodil looked around dazedly. She could see Starling waiting at the bottom of the slide through a bulging clear window, distorted like through a fish’s eye.

“There’s a dead body…” said Daffodil, her voice wavering. “It’s what’s making the smell…”

“What?”

“A dead-” she stopped. She could hear the blue leather rafters creaking.

Slowly, her and Aaron looked up.

There was a dark shape, that cast a shadow over them. They could see it through the mesh of iron holes.

There was something up there.

“We should go.” said Aaron.

CRACK

It was a blur. Daffodil was on the ground. He had his arm locked around its neck. It struggled. It had four limbs and two hands. It wore jeans. Jeans, with rippled folds and stitches like chocolate sprinkles, and a tattered long-sleeve shirt. It had skin and hair and fingers, with the creased where they bent and pinkish nails at the top. It had every physical characteristic of a human, but it wasn't. He threw him to the ground.

“What the heck?!”

It had four limbs and two hands. Two eyes and one mouth. A set of teeth. Saliva. Two eyes.

It had every physical characteristic of a human. So what made it an "it"?

CRASH

It lunged like a wild animal, and bashed its head into the edge of the iron platform, scrabbling at it with hungry teeth and leaving scratches. Aaron scrabbled on the iron, and slid through the plastic tunnel. Blood was pounding in his ears. He could feel screams coming from his throat.

Across the tensile bridge. Through the tunnels. Down the iron levels. He hurled down the slide on his stomach. Bruises bloomed on his limbs as he landed on the soft, shock-absorbing floor. Daffodil was screaming. She was dangling down the dark coils of the slide.

Its teeth were in her hand. She kicked it away, and the teeth phased through, because she only had a few bites of hamburger inside her. Her hand was bleeding.

SLAM

It was behind the door. It pushed hard and scratched at the glass. He could feel Daffodil and Starling next to him, pushing back with him. He was breathing hard.

He felt hands finding chairs. Feet dragging them across the floor. His. Theirs. Both. Air drained out of his lungs. They were piled against the door. It was still scrabbling at the glass. But it was quieter now. The air smelled better. The fire was still crackling.

It was an "it" because it couldn't think.

They all sat down quietly, and Daffodil finished the hamburger. It was still warm. A lot can happen in a minute or two. Like near-death experiences. But apparently not a burger becoming cold.