The Prompt
For Rasmus. Thank you for the song and inspiration!
Prompt: Song “The odour of Jim”
Happiness. What was happiness?
It was a question Jim had pondered lately. Not so much when he was younger. He lived a pretty standard life as a young boy, going to school and running errands for his father. His mother had died young, but Jim couldn’t remember her, so he hadn’t missed her. He had been happy then.
Now, however, as an adult, things had changed and the question rummaged through his thoughts constantly. He had thought it was getting a good job, finding a sweet girl, get married and have kids. He had thought he was on the right path.
He had gotten an apprenticeship at the local mortician. It was a steady job – people didn’t not die and the old man, mr. Phelps, had promised him he could take over the shop. He even got his own room in the attic. He didn’t have any sons himself, and Jim’s father was an old friend of his. Best of all there was no splashing blood only half coagulated dark paste.
The funeral business was more psychological than physical. Jim found himself more often than not talking to grieving family members and preparing the dead for either embalming or cremation. Being the son of a doctor he thought it stupid that most people still to this day believed that they had to embalm people to ensure they were dead when buried.
He had worked with mr. Phelps for half a year when he had noticed something was off. It had been on a date with the lovely miss Perkins that it had happened. They had been dating for almost a year, and marriage was in their future. Her father was another family friend and she hadn’t minded he had started working for mr. Phelps instead of finishing his medical education. She was practicing to be a nurse herself and even if she made fun of him once in a while due to his fainting when he saw splashing blood, she saw the funeral business to be an extension of the medical profession.
Since she was a nurse practitioner she was also very direct. He had leaned in to kiss her goodnight after a night out in front of her front door.
“Eww, you stink!” She had exclaimed right before his lips had met hers.
A quick hand to his breath had confirmed she was right. At that time he had thought he had eaten something bad, but the same thing happened the next time they were out.
Then she had started tellling him he stank when he picked her up. Miss Perkins had tried giving him herbs to chew. She even had even stolen a couple of her father’s cigars to see if the tobacco could mask the stench, but the repulsed look on her face, made Jim not even want to kiss her.
That had continued a couple of months where miss Perkins gradually had increased the distance between them when they went out. From holding hands to having no body contact what so ever.
Like that wasn’t enough people begun to complain of the odor in the funeral home. Both mr. Phelps and Jim tried to mask the smell by burning more incense inside both the shop and the cellar where they kept the bodies. Jim had been on hands and knees for two days going over every crack of the floor and walls to determine if it was the smell of the bodies that leaked through.
Then miss Perkins said she couldn’t continue her engagement to him. She had tried everything, but she was now turning 22 and needed to find a husband before she became too old. Jim had been angry and yelled at her, which only had made her yell back that it wasn’t her fault that he not only smelled but stunk like a gravedigger that hadn’t taken a shower for a fortnight.
Miserable Jim had returned his attention to his work. Dating other eligible women had been out of the question. The rumor of his breakup with miss Perkins had spread and nobody wanted to see him.
Then people began asking for mr. Phelps when they came into the shop. At first they said they wanted the owner who was the more experienced mortician, then they began giving him the stinky eye every time they saw him. Even when he was freshly bathed.
At first mr. Phelps had not noticed and tried to include Jim in the business affairs, and only when people threatened to go to their competitor did mr. Phelps take it seriously. He demanded that Jim took a bath each morning in behind the stable before coming in. It didn’t help, and whenever they had customers, Jim found himself go down to the cellars with the cold bodies that didn’t tell him he smelled.
“I think you should continue your medical education”, his father said one evening out on the porch. It was a nice mild weather and he had opted for them to eat outside.
The voice in the back of Jim’s head said that his father also could smell him and didn’t want him inside his big house.
“I smell, don’t I?” Jim more exclaimed than asked.
His father leaned back in his chair and looked at Jim with dark worried eyes.
“Yes, you do”, he finally said. “Have you taken your baths? Taken care of your hygiene? You of all people should know how important that is. We are not living in the dark ages anymore”.
“I have! But apparently I still smell. Even my clothes smell”. Jim could feel the tears pressing agains his eyelids as he closed his eyes in despair.
The big hand of his father on his shoulder made him calmer and he opened his eyes.
“Of course you do, Jim”, his father said. “Come inside and I will do a thoroughly examination of you. Even if my specialty is not general medicine, I may discover enough to send you to the right specialist”.
The examination was thorough if not short. Jim couldn’t help notice the peppermint balm his father had under his nose. It was the same balm they used at the funeral home.
“Let me analyze all this data”, his father said when he sent him home.
In the time it took for his father to revert to him, the smell had gotten worse. At least that was what Jim thought as whenever he ventured out, people were staring at him, and going over to the other side of the road.
Children were beginning to laugh at him, pointing fingers while on a safe distance until their mothers grabbed and scolded them. Jim tried to keep to himself when he went shopping. He found, however, he soon had to go to the poor district in the city in order to buy food and clothes as nobody else wanted to serve him anymore. His father had an errand boy deliver groceries and other necessities to his door.
Jim was sent to one specialist after another by his father, but nobody could find anything wrong. By the look and behavior of the specialists when he was under their scrutiny, he was certain it was only because of his father’s reputation that they saw him.
The odor was not only coming from Jim, but it soon permeated his clothes and sweat making his smell noticeable even in the slightest breeze.
When the doctors refused to see him, Jim went to see the wise woman in one of the surrounding villages.
“Scrub yourself in a mixture of jasmine and rosemary”, she said almost puking. “Here, take this, and don’t come back!”
Defeated but with a small hope Jim went home and did as she said, but the next morning when he came down even mr. Phelps had a horrified expression on his face. He didn’t say anything though, but put the balm under his nose and even used a clamp!
“Oh my God!” He exclaimed. What did you do to yourself?”
“Herbs?” Jim tentatively said.
“No, not the herbs. They smell fine! Well they would, if not for the pungent stench coming from you.” Mr. Phelps opened the window. “Even the corpses downstairs smell better than you”.
He motioned for Jim to leave. “Go – Go! Outside! I have Mrs. Doekin coming in soon, and I can’t have her smell you like this”.
With his head bowed, Jim went out the door, only for people to shy away from him. Some hastily others ran like they were afraid the smell would reach them before they could get Jim out of sight.
The splash of the rotten tomato hit Jim square in the breast followed by two eggs that definitely had seen better days. That rotten smell Jim could smell with no problem.
The laughing children disappeared before Jim could say anything but he heard them yelling: “Even rotten eggs smell better than Stinky Jim!”
Wandering around town he came to the outskirts where he could see a band of gypsies had set up camp. They were usually not welcome in the city, but people liked to trade with them anyways as they had more exotic wares than the traveling merchants.
They smelled him before he was even close. A group of sprawled clothed people with gold jewelry glinting in the setting sun. Watching him. Waiting.
“What do we have here?” An old woman came nearer. She made a sign before her chest and mumbled something.
“I’m Jim”, Jim said. Then he paused. “I hoped you maybe can help me?”
The old woman smiled, revealing an uneven row of teeth. “Come sit down by our bonfire. Malek, fetch some clean clothes and someting to eat for our guest. And throw some more rosemary on the bonfire!”
“Yes, Nana!”
A young boy scurried away and returned with clothes which Jim tried to refuse.
“I will ruin the clothes!”
“Nonsense”, the old woman said. “The clothes smell of rotten eggs. We can’t have that”.
“But I smell”, Jim said lamely.
“You smell of a curse”, the old woman said.
More women came to him after he had changed clothes and were sitting by the fire. The men kept away, probably due to the smell, Jim couldn’t help think.
“Tell me what happened”, the old woman said.
And Jim told of how he had gradually started to smell. How the odor had gone from bad to worse to horrible. That nobody had been able to find a cure. How he couldn’t smell it himself.
How his life was ruined. Nobody wanted anything to do with him anymore. He had no fiancee, no friends and even mr. Phelps could now smell him, and he had lost most of his sense of smell due to the embalming fluids during a lifetime. Soon he probably wouldn’t have a home nor a job – and then what would he do?
The women who had sat in a semi circle around him looked at each other while Jim had told his story.
“He is cursed!” Said one woman taking a small sniff of him, while she with a knife cut a lock of his hair off.
“No!” Said another. “He is possessed by evil sprits. I’m certain of it! Can’t you smell the sour scent in his smell?”
“Maybe he is on his way to become an undead!” a third chimed in. “I have heard of such instances in far away lands…and he did say he worked in a funeral home”.
“Whatever it is, I think we need to find out before it gets even worse”, the old woman said. “Now it is permeating Jim, but what if it spreads. What if it is contagious?”
“Hmmrpf”, said a young woman with a black eye. “That would serve the Gadje well, how they treat us here. Can’t even pay us in coin what was promised”.
“No, without the Gadje, we can’t trade”, a fifth woman said. “And if you can’t be quiet, maybe you are not mature enough to be here”.
The young woman bowed her head but Jim thought, whenever her eyes met his, they were full of hatred.
“Enough of this”, the old woman said. “Let us get to work. We only have a few hours to determine the cause of the odor”.
And examining Jim they did. He was prodded with instruments he had never seen before, inhaled scents that he couldn’t name and heard more foreign tongue that he ever had before when the women started arguing with hands in the air, sometimes pointing to him, sometimes pointing to the big books that had been fetched.
In the end the old woman said: “We think it’s a curse, but we are not entirely sure, so here take this”, she gave him an amulet formed as a curved double star with a cross in the middle. “Tonight the moon is full, and I want you to wear that while you drink this. Here. When you can feel the drowsiness getting to you, say this incantation”. A small flask along with a scroll of paper was given to him by another woman.
“That should be enough to dispel the curse. Come back to us tomorrow if you don’t smell. We want to find out who cast it on you. We are quite sure that, whatever it is, it is powerful.”
“Thank you!” Jim said, feeling happier for the first time in a long time.
It was quiet when he reached his small room in the attic. Mr. Phelps had left him a note that he was sleeping over at his sister’s place as that didn’t stink so much.
Looking out the window Jim could see the full moon rising. He did as the old woman had told him to do feeling the warmth of the liquid spreading inside him. He couldn’t read the text on the scroll, but he had learned both French and Latin as part of his education, so he thought he knew how to pronounce the foreign words on the scroll.
Then he waited.
Nothing happened at first. Then it was like the moon crept inside the window and swiveled up the dust. Jim blinked. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was feeling tired that his eyes played tricks on him or if it was real.
The smell however, told him this was real. It took him a moment to realize that the smell was coming from himself. He almost gagged. Now he understood how everybody else must have felt the last year.
“Ah there you are”, the voice said and Jim almost knocked himself into the small table behind him.
In front of him stood the Devil himself. He was sure of it! He rubbed his eyes but the vision wouldn’t disappear. The big black body of a goat on two legs and with two arms. Red eyes and curled horns and a face that was unmistakable a mixture of goat and human.
“Are you…you…?” Jim couldn’t get the words out of his mouth.
“I have many names, shapes and forms”, the entity said. “However, you may call me Lucifer if you need one.
“I’m pleased to meet you Jim. Brimstone and sulphur. I’m surprised nobody picked up on that smell, but then again that is the perks of living in modern times, right? All that science and they can’t see – or rather smell what is right in front of them”.
The Devil’s laughter was warm and mesmerizing. Jim found he was not afraid.
“Did you do this to me?”
“No, but I will happily take the sacrifice”, the Devil said.
“Sacrifice? And who did this to me?” Jim was a bit worried now. Not enough to be afraid, but maybe that was the concoction he had imbibed.
The Devil shrugged. “I don’t care. It could be you, it could be an enemy, or it could be your father trying to trade your soul for your mother’s. Of course, since he is a scientist he couldn’t get the ritual right, and he didn’t succeed. Anyway now we are here”.
“My father?” Jim couldn’t believe it.
“Don’t blame him”, the Devil said. “He was half mad with grief when he realized that you were both dying. I don’t even think he knows he tried to summon me. And I spared your life as a consolation prize. I did find it quite hilarious that you had been cursed by a family member to one of his patients he failed to save.”
The Devil beckoned to Jim, who couldn’t do more than take a step forward.
“I know you wanted to be happy, Jim. You can be happy here. With me. I can grant you everything you want. I’m always in need of more warlocks. And when you die, and have performed well for me, I can always use a good general among my demons.”
“When I die? I’m not going to hell now?”
“No, of course not. I need your skill set. You are a scholar of the modern age. You will come in handy for the next couple of thousands years. We will soon enter a new age of wonders. And my existing employees are quite old fashioned. I need somebody like you to help recruit more, and to bridge the gap between the old and new world.”
“Oh”, was all Jim could say. “I thought this was the enlightened age.”
The Devil laughed again. “Just wait and see, my boy”, he said.
Jim was intrigued. He had been raised by his father…to study, to become a doctor. His dream had been the medical profession – at least up until the first operation he had to help assist.
He took the Devil’s hand and felt the nails grip him so hard that blood flowed from his wrist. Then the moonlight thickened, and Jim had only time to think before they were enveloped in the light mist: if this was happiness? To experience a new age. Or was he a fool going willingly with the Devil? At least he wouldn’t smell.
***
Epilogue
Malek was sitting by the bonfire. Around him was the rest of the camp’s children. Their eyes were wide and some were hugging each other in fear.
“Then what happened?” One of the older kids asked. He sat with straight back and Malek was quite sure he felt brave.
He smiled to himself. Just as brave as he himself had been when he was a child and had spied on the women’s gathering even if had been forbidden for men. Malek had convinced himself, that as his voice hadn’t even transitioned yet he wasn’t technically a man, so he was not forbidden.
He had also decided to follow the Gadje home. Curious he had been as a child. It had rewarded him well. He was now the rom baro.
They had avoided the town for many years, but the closer they had gotten the more sharp the memories had become for Malek. He thought it fitting to tell the story to the children. It couldn’t hurt to make them more sensible, than he had been when he was a kid. And who didn’t like a scary story on such a moonlit night?
“Well, children…
“One day Jim was gone and the odor along with him. He was nowhere to be found. No one ever knew what had happened to Jim, and they never missed him.”