Dispatch No. 24

Memories + Adulthood + Screaming

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Recent stories: Love Potions No. 1-8 | The Bear | Johatsu

Missed something? Sketchbook | Stories | Dispatches | Series

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Non-Sequiturs

1. Olfactory travels — Scent—or its close relative, taste, as Proust showed us—unlocks memories. Countless writers, from Murakami to Fitzgerald and Nabokov, have captured this phenomenon, too. Smells can feel like time travel, transporting us beyond mere thought and right into a specific moment. I, too, remember certain scents and their place: walking with friends and wondering about the persistent dog food smell wafting from the ADM plant in Decatur, Illinois, or scrunching my nose at the paper-pulp smell (with a hint of wet fart) that hangs over Tacoma, Washington. And who could forget the Wonka-like sweetness of Hershey, Pennsylvania? Las Vegas doesn’t have a distinct odor, yet its casinos reek of stale cigarettes, ozone, human excrement, or coconut tanning lotion—sometimes all within mere feet of each other. My current neighborhood, such as it is, smells of wood smoke and wet leaves.
   But one smell has stayed with me more than any other: the trailer park where I lived for less than a year in Quincy, Illinois, when I was six. We’d ride our bikes to the bottom of the U-shaped park, leaving them near a massive propane tank with its faint, metallic chemical scent. Around it grew tall grass with wheat-like shafts and bushy bases, giving off a dry, sweet smell in the sun. Farther along, on trails that led to a small creek, we’d catch the sticky sap of the trees, the earthy mud around frog dens, and the musty damp of the snapping turtle we knew lived there, its back caked with dried mud. By the water treatment pool, on the manmade embankment, we could see our path back to the trailer park. We’d stay out there, poking in the mud, climbing trees, soaking the smells into our soul, until we’d hear it, the call of our mothers leaning out the door or standing in the road calling us home for dinner.

2. Splat — A fly got stuck in my bathroom. One of those big, clumsy ones—the kind that has heft if you hit it right. I considered my options: a towel, a full-force throw of toilet paper, even my phone. Then I remembered, maybe inaccurately, that houseflies only live a day. Not sure if that’s true, don’t much care. But it got me thinking: on its one big day, with all its buzzing dreams of landing on something delightfully filthy and maybe propagating its little fly legacy, could I really kill it?

   Nope. Not for all the gold in, well, wherever. Besides, I might need that toilet paper, and I didn’t want to think of the fly every time I reached for a square. So, I let him be. Figured I’d let him live out his ambitions in peace. I mean, imagine you only had one day—just think of the hell you could raise! I’d squeeze a whole saga out of those 24 hours, I can tell you. Songs would be sung, legends spun, tears of joy shed at the mere mention of my name.

   But then, a little while later, I found him in my bedroom, all hopped up on his “too-good-for-the-bathroom” feelings. There he was, taking a smug little rest on my lampshade. So, I squashed that somebitch. “Welcome to adulthood,” I said aloud.

3. The Screaming Woman — In 2003, I worked from my third-floor cinderblock apartment in Nashville, TN. The place was cheap, but it had a tiny balcony where I’d read and chain-smoke every afternoon, gazing out over a scrubby field and the wide-open sky.

   And that’s where this story starts—

   One afternoon, I was in my chair when the sky went from blue to slate gray in minutes, thunderclouds stacking like gods laying down fresh blacktop. The storm was ON.

   Now, I’m a geek—technophile, if you want to get fancy—and I had a new digital camera. For weeks I’d been trying to snap lightning, so I got my camera, set it on the balcony railing, and waited, breath shallow, fingers steady. Aiming for the shot took total stillness and patience.

   Then, it happened! A massive bolt struck, dead-on, right as my shutter opened. This was my once-in-a-lifetime shot, right in front of m—

   Oh, wait. Forgot to mention one important detail…

   Right between my apartment and the field stood a massive cell tower, all silvery metal like some giant robot arm reaching from the earth. And in that second, it became a lightning rod.

   KA-BLAM!

   The flash was so intense I swear my shadow burned into the wall. And the thunder? It was so close I felt it in my teeth. But what really struck me was the sound beneath the thunder: a rising, high-pitched scream.

   Eyes wide, I looked around, trying to locate the poor soul shrieking in terror. And that’s when I realized—the scream was coming from me.

   I screamed so loud, I outlasted the thunder itself. When it finally faded, I trailed off into a whimper, the silence settling around me as my heart pounded.

   Then a voice from the balcony below called up: “Hey, you okay up there?”

   Too embarrassed to do anything else, I squeaked back, “Just fine, thanks.”

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Music

I See The Sky - Michael Giacchino

Masque Of The Pink Death - Duran Duran

Thriller - Michael Jackson

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Words

Waffle Hat

Please Vote

Why they vote for the monster

WEIRD AL vs THE LINGUISTS

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