Putrescence

What was that rancid smell?

Lila had been fussing over this stench that pervaded the house for nearly twenty years now. It smelled like a deer carcass left out on a hot summer’s day. It always clung to her hair and clothes, always lingered deep in her nostrils and at the back of her throat, but was at its worst within her home. For a long time she assumed it was her daughter. She was a rotten child from the start. Lila had tried her best with her, truly, but she kept misbehaving. No matter how much she was punished, no matter how many times she was locked up overnight in the basement or beaten with a belt she kept being awful. She plagued her mother's life for years with asinine mistakes and destructive clumsiness. She was inept at most everything, or perhaps just played that part to be irritating. She had vanished a few months ago– her final act of disrespect. Abandoning her mother without so much as a goodbye. Perhaps her rot had seeped into the walls during her time living there, perhaps it had taken such hold even her estrangement could not uproot it.

After another day of nonstop cleaning Lila finally packed up her supplies. She gathered up the tins of cleaner and collection of rags into her arms then traipsed over to the bucket that usually held them. She was about to toss everything in when something caught her eye in the low lamplight;  rivets of mop water from earlier in the day still strung themselves along the bottom edges of the bucket. She hissed about how the cloth she had used to dry the thing was worthless under her breath. She dropped the rest of the supplies roughly onto the table in a heap. Tins clinked together and glass clanged, normal sounds… bar the one crack-pop. Like a wound, the mound began to bleed. One of the glass bottles filled with soap and grit had finally given way under her less than delicate hand and broke.

“Worthless piece of shite!” She cursed through her clenched jaw. Hot spittle flew from between a gap in her front teeth. She snatched pieces of the pile away before the leaked soap could touch them and, like a toddler having a tantrum, threw the unsullied items into the bucket she had been so disgusted by prior. While grabbing things by the handful a stray shard of glass bit into her gnarled hand. She yelped and pulled back; there on her finger was a small cut. Her eyes bulged and her face reddened as her lips peeled back into a sneer. She was about to start screaming more expletives, but they caught in her throat as the cut began to weep.

Just a drop of black liquid. It couldn’t be blood, it was far too dark and viscous. That one droplet filled her nose with the awful smell that haunted her. Lila was shocked, her fingers began to shake. With her other hand she grabbed her digit and pressed as if more would come out like a paste from a tube. Nothing.

No, there had to be more, she could still smell it.

She slammed her hand against the table again and again, the supplies that remained bobbed and jumped with each hit. They slowly parted to reveal the shard of glass that sported just a pinch of black on its edge. Lila reached for it as gently as her pudgy hands could manage and brought it to cut finger. She bit her cheeks and sucked in a breath as she pressed it into her skin. For a moment nothing happened, but with just a little more force the slice swelled and birthed a single writhing maggot. It fell to the floor and more black pooled around where the glass was pressed.  

Lila let out a shrill scream as she stumbled and crashed to the floor with a thud. Her eyes watered from the sweet, but sick stench of decay that overtook the air. She was suddenly hyper aware of her body. She could feel that goo coursing through her. She could feel how hard her heart had to strain and squeeze to circulate it. She could feel wriggling against the underside of her skin. She could feel the little bugs that gnawed at and nested within her muscles and fat. She whimpered as her eyes slowly followed a dark, lumpy vein up her arm, past her sounder, and towards her chest. Every vein looked just as deformed. They inched like worms all over her body as globs of this unknowm black mass traveled through her.

What had happened to her? She was normal before her daughter was born. Her daughter… Yes, her daughter must have caused this somehow. Lila did not know how, but that was the only explanation. Of course that rotten child would do this. Not visiting or replying to letters wasn’t enough, she had to do this too.

Lila's expression shifted to an enragee but determined one. However, when she grabbed the shard with both hands and pressed it to her swollen gut she shook like a leaf. Oh once she managed to clean up this putrid sludge within her core she would show her daughter hell for causing this. Lila was sure if it.

She plunged the glass shard into herself with a triumphant yell. Her soft flesh bubbled around the makeshift blade, but all it took was a flick of her wrist to quash her body’s final attempt to save itself. This time the black did not come out in just a drop. It erupted from her stomach with force, popping like a zit. A wet tearing sound was quickly overtaken by a heavy slosh as the gaping wound spouted out thick globby ropes of the rancid black like a geyser, it painted her walls and clothes in gelled splatterings and even more rice sized maggots. It was more than just corrupted blood that raced out of her quickly hollowing torso, but putrified inners as well. Chunks of what once were organs, now blackened slime, spilled out onto the hardwood and caked themselves within every crease and crack. Slivers of bone slid out with the current, but were so grinded down they were indistinguishable from larva that come out alongside them. Even her fat and muscles had liquified and melded with everything else seamlessly as it decorated the room. It was a dramatic explosion of the woman's unrecognisable visera, but was over almost as quick as it started.

A husk now, Lila was merely an emaciated pile of shrivelled skin. She laid on the ground in a pool of the putrescent blackness she had hosted. With the pressure inside her once plump body gone, the explosive bleeding slowed to an effervescent ooze. It was all out of her now. She gnashed what remained of her gums, as her teeth had fallen away too,  and breathed more curses at her daughter for doing this as she faded— not once even considering perhaps Lila had rotted her insides herself.