Devlin O'Keefe

Can Ghosts Smell?

This house just stunk. Like curdled milk that someone threw mushroom spores in. It seeped into your nose, made you dry heave, cut your breath short. It wasn’t just in the basement, trapped by the cobwebs or seeping through the poorly laid brick foundation. It hadn’t merely resigned itself to the kitchen, pouring out of every dark oak cabinet and oozing out of the floorboards with every echoing footstep. I thought maybe tearing up the rug of it’s brightly illuminated living room would eliminate the source. I was wrong, the raw boards underneath held no answers.

Our real estate agent, Micheal Jeffrey, had assured us that it was just a little sulfur in the pipes and that running the water would get rid of the stench. “It's not like the house is haunted, just needs the presence of a couple like you,” he had said. My wife scolded me for trusting a man with two first names. The pipes flowed for days and the water bill was nothing but insult to stinky injury. 

“How are we supposed to start a family when everything stinks?!”

I really wasn’t sure how to respond, my wife had wanted kids since we first got married, all those months ago. I was not going to deny her or myself that opportunity, but we had both loved this home under the same condition: the stench had to be impermanent. 

We honestly didn’t even notice the little things like the floating appliances, doors creaking and closing on their own, and the cold drafts that came by and took away your breath. Not that there was much air to be taken, just a bunch of stink. Perhaps the way our eyes watered and noses crinkled prevented us from seeing it clearly, perhaps these supernatural occurrences were overshadowed by the clouds of stench

The other houses had been too modern, too retro, without the same charm that this old sturdy stinkhole had. It got so bad that I started smoking cigars in the house. She never even batted an eye when I did. The smell made it so much more desirable that she came right up next to me on the couch. Cuddled up on my left arm, right where the smoke drifted. On my other side, a cigar mysteriously lifted out of the box. It rose to become level with mine and turned to me. I laughed and grabbed my matchbox and lit the cigar for the exhausted specter. Poor ghoul, I wonder if they can smell.

Author's Note: 
I am a second year student at Oberlin College from rural Maine. I wrote this piece sitting on a couch at home only a couple weeks after coming back from school. I had, frankly, never expected to live here again and I was struck by all the familiar scents. Moreover, the way that each one, having been experienced so many times, felt a little sour. I imagine it was my distaste for being home that made all the homey smells curdle. Looking back now I wrote this ending without having experienced the shift in attitude that I have today. I have slowly become accustom to my environment again by making it my own, in a similar way that this character combats the aspects of their situation. I hope that you find it amusing and learn to lean into the unappealing aspects of your own applicable scenarios.