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By M. Rook Grimsley
I wonder if you can smell what I smell. I hope that you can. Even the damn cat’s face fades into the back end of my mind as memories surface.
I was married once. His name was Brian. Last Christmas, we went on vacation together. The vacation was a gift from me, and I thought it would make things better between us. I'll never forget how he looked the night we arrived at the cabin in the snow-covered mountains. He wore a dark blue sweater that made his blue eyes blaze. God, I loved his eyes. They were pale icy blue with darker limbal rings around the irises. He was tall, with dark hair and white skin that looked like it had never seen the sun.
I had never seen a man so beautiful. Normally I don't like men. I don't particularly like women either, but I find men vile with their body hair and their putrid sweat. Brian was different though. I knew it from the moment I first met him. He caught me off guard with his beautiful smile and his icy blue eyes that seemed as fresh and cool as a glacier. He smelled like cedar in the forest in winter. He didn’t shed flaky dry skin everywhere and he never allowed himself to have bad breath, body odor, or even ear wax. Unlike most disgusting human beings, he was just so clean.
"Wait,” you must be thinking, “If you don’t like men or women, then who do you like?"
Nobody. People thoroughly and absolutely disgust me.
"But you're a doctor, aren't you?"
Yes. But that shouldn’t suggest that I care about my patients. What I care about is money. I also enjoy taking bodies apart, but that’s another story. Ever since I was a very young child, I’ve hated people. I never wanted to hug my aunts or uncles. I didn’t want to play with other children. School was a nightmare at first, until I learned that I could compete with the other children for the best grades. Then, it became a challenge. I ignored everyone, save for a few bullies who thought they could make me feel bad. It was then that I learned that I could hurt them if I wanted to. And when I discovered that my interest in human anatomy could be channeled into a high-paying career in the medical field, I felt I had found something of a calling.
Either way, once my patients are not in front of me, they're not my problem anymore. I am kind to them, of course, but it's an act. They disgust me. I hate their voices, their smells, their emotions. Brian was the total opposite of me in that regard. He loved everyone openly and unashamedly. He even loved me...at least, he said he did. I believed him. I don't know why or how, but I believed him.
Loving someone was a strange experience. I stayed up late at night thinking about him. I followed him to work just to watch him walk inside the building. I memorized his every move, his routines, his schedules, his mannerisms. He never knew that I followed him or how intently I watched him. I didn’t think he would understand, and I didn’t want to scare him away. I learned a long time ago – in therapy – that all I had to do was appear normal on the outside, and people would be far less likely to call me weird or creepy. I never really cared if people thought I was weird, but sometimes it benefitted me if they thought I was normal. And all I wanted, more than anything, was for Brian to keep loving me.
He's the reason I'm here, you know. Singing reminds me of him. Brian could sing. I can too, but not like him. His voice was a rich, smooth baritone and it gave me chills. I loved singing with him. He even talked me into going to church with him and joining the choir together. Sometimes, we did duets in front of the whole reeking congregation. I never believed in any gods, but I never told him that. I just went with him because it made him happy, and his happiness made me happy too. I did a lot of things for him that I hate. Parties, work functions, family gatherings—even our wedding. I would have been perfectly happy going to the courthouse, but he insisted on a big wedding with me in a white dress. I hated the wedding, and I hated the dress, but enduring it resulted in me being his wife.
Things were good, at first. I was happier than I had ever been, and for a time, it was easy to mask my antisocial tendencies. But as things settled down, it became more difficult to hold the mask up. He could tell that I was never upset when a patient died, even if I pretended to be. He knew I didn’t have any real friends, and that I didn’t want them. I went to church with him, of course, but I was never interested in fellowship or bake sales or any of the things the church ladies did. I even pretended to read the Bible he had bought me as a birthday gift. It was a beautiful book—leather-bound with Dr. Erica Rasmussen in gold ink across the lower right corner of the front cover, pages as delicate as flower petals. But eventually, he noticed that I wasn’t reading. I was only staring, lost in my own thoughts. He tried to be understanding, but I knew he was figuring out who I really was, and the fact that I didn’t believe in his god was only the beginning.
We had been married for two years when I first smelled another woman on him. It was sweet, almost like maple, and a little sweaty. I hoped, at first, that he had simply hugged a female coworker; he was rather friendly in that way, after all, and I knew that he worked with women. But then, a week later, I smelled it again. I looked through his phone while he was in the shower but didn't find anything. I had hope for a while that it was nothing, but I then began to smell it more frequently. I’m honestly not sure why he never thought to at least try to hide her smell, because he knew that my nose was sensitive.
I bet you’re wondering, "Was he cheating?"
The answer is yes. I went by his office one day to bring him lunch, and I smelled that same scent on a woman that walked past his cubicle while I was there. The woman had bleached hair and wore tall boots with leggings and a floral top with a brown suede vest. She looked like a generic boutique bitch. She gave me a small smile as she passed, and then her eyes immediately looked forward. Her nostrils flared just a bit. That was when I knew for sure, and in that moment, I knew a rage like never before. I wanted to kill them both slowly. I watched where she went, and when I left the building, I made sure to walk past her desk. All the employees had engraved name plaques on their cubicle walls, so I glanced at hers. Her name was Heather. She had a pink smiley face sticker on her name plaque, and it made me want to punch her in the face until she stopped moving.
After some research online and following a couple other leads, I found enough evidence of Brian's cheating. What I couldn't understand was why. I was good to him. I—he said he loved me. He married me. Sure, I was a little different from the other women he knew. But being unique is a good thing, isn’t it? Besides, I was hotter than Heather. She looked like she’d been beaten half to death with hair bleach and floral prints, and she clearly needed deodorant.
It wasn't pretty when I confronted him. He was angry that he had been caught, and he turned into a different person almost right away. He told me it was all my fault because I was too frigid and had no passion. He said that sometimes he wondered if there was something wrong with me.
Granted, I didn't know how to love someone. Love is, apparently, an art of sorts. I had thought that loving him and trying to make him happy was enough for him. I'd had no idea until that moment that he was unhappy. All the things I had endured for him, all the time I'd spent in his ridiculous church, everything I had done for him, to make him happy, weren't good enough. I made more money than him. I bought us a beautiful house. I filled the house with beautiful furniture and hired a decorator. I cosigned on a nice car for him. He needed something else but couldn't name it, and I guess I just didn't have it, but Heather did.
I wanted to try, though. I read books; I listened to podcasts. I tried to learn. I got him to agree to not have any more contact with Heather. Yet, he remained distant with me, never wanted to touch me anymore, and got angry every time I brought up Heather. That's why I booked a Christmas vacation for us. Originally, I had planned to use it as an apology and try to reconnect with him. But two days before we were to leave, I found out he'd seen Heather again.
As stupid as it sounds, I never would have left him. I never even thought of it. I wanted to prove to him that I really did love him, even if I had difficulty showing it. The cabin I had rented overlooked great snow-covered mountains, and it had a Christmas tree already set up in the living room. When we got there, I watched him fondly as he picked at the decorations. He sang Silent Night. He had always loved Christmas so much. He made me like it, too.
Inside the living room there was a big stone fireplace. In front of it was an oversized sofa. I made myself comfortable and then invited him to join me, patting the space beside me. I snuck a look at myself in the reflection of the big windows to make sure I still looked perfect, and I did. My white dress was flawless, dark hair perfectly curled. I hoped my dress would remind him of our wedding day.
He approached the sofa and sat down. I handed him a long-stemmed glass of red wine. He took a long drink, then rewarded me with a smile that made my heart flutter. Excited, I handed him his gift - a small rectangular box with silver wrapping and a green plaid ribbon tied in a bow. It’s this one, in fact, right on top of my gift. Pretty, isn’t it? I can’t abide a sloppy gift. He admired the wrappings for a time, and then he began picking at the paper to unwrap it.
“Now, what could this be?” he asked, gifting me with another dazzling smile. My heart beat just a little faster. I encouraged him to keep unwrapping. My stomach felt warm and happy. I was sure the gift would show him how much I loved him.
I watched as he lifted the lid of the now-unwrapped box, and then began pulling away bubble wrap that protected his gift. The thing itself was wrapped in black plastic. Nimble fingers worked at it until he caught a whiff of what was inside. He said it smelled bad, and he asked me what it was. I could smell it by then, too. It was quite pungent; it had been wrapped in plastic, after all, with no air getting to it. He kept digging into the plastic, though, and when he reached the prize inside, the blood left his face.
I was excited, but he wasn’t. He looked up at me with his blue eyes wide and said, “Erica - what the fuck? Please tell me this isn’t real.”
It was real, though. It was as real as any of us sitting here. He figured it out quickly. The box fell from his hands when they went limp. He trembled as my gift to him fell out.
”What is this?” he asked.
”Oh, that's a foot,” I told him.
He was quite shocked, of course, but even as he put a hand over his mouth, I thought he would eventually see what the foot symbolized. I told him to look a little closer, but he didn’t want to. The severed end was facing him so I hopped up and turned it around to face the windows instead, hoping that would make it a little easier. Sometimes, I forget that things like severed feet bother people. I never understood the big deal; it was just flesh, and everyone had it. Besides, the cut end wasn’t that bad. It was a clean cut. It wasn't all that different from meat to be prepared for cooking, except for the smell and the graying skin. The comparison didn’t help him, though. He just looked at me and stammered a bit. “Why would you—so this is—oh my God, I can smell it. Where the fuck did this even come from? One of your cadavers from work?”
I smiled at his stammering. “I told you to look a little closer,” I said. “You should recognize the tattoo.” He still wouldn’t look at it, so I picked it up, showing him the top of the foot. There was a small tattoo of a music note near the big toe. He shut his eyes against it at first, but eventually he opened his eyes.
I was disappointed with his reaction. He knew right away, of course, that it was Heather’s foot because of that tattoo. He had paid for it. His eyes grew large and round, and he yelled at me.
"Erica. Is this...Heather? Is it Heather?” he said a couple of times.
“Well, it was Heather,” I told him. “She’s dead now, and she won’t be bothering us anymore. I want to recommit to you. To us. I hope you feel the same way.”
He didn’t hear me, though. He was panicking and yelling, and I began to realize in that moment that I had probably not made the best decision in presenting him with the foot.
“At least you got the tattoo back,” I said in an attempt to reason with him. ”You hate to waste money. Now you can keep it, although I hope you don’t. I thought we could throw it into the fireplace together.”
But he only yelled at me that I was psycho. He said he had always known there was something wrong with me. I reminded him that he had promised to stop seeing her, but he didn’t. What was I supposed to do? Honestly, the man left me no choice.
It wasn’t even terribly difficult to do. Heather wasn’t hard to find. I had been watching her social media profiles for a while by then, and on that particular day she checked in at a restaurant. I drove there. When she left, I followed her home. She lived just outside of town on a county road with no close neighbors, which was perfect. I hit her with a baseball bat, dragged her inside her house, tied her up, and waited for her to regain consciousness. The memory still makes me smile. Hurting people who've wronged me was nothing new, but watching the life flow out of that woman had been oh, so sweet.
She screamed and begged while I removed her foot. Nobody was close enough to her house to hear her. When the foot was completely detached, I held it up for her to see.
“You keep asking me why,” I said to her. “See this tattoo? My husband paid for it. You’ve been fucking him, but that ends today.”
She sobbed about how sorry she was, but it didn't matter. I had avenged my pain. I let her bleed out on the floor. I had already booked the vacation at that point, and I hoped to be out of town with Brian when her body was found. Everything came together beautifully, and Brian didn’t know she was dead until I told him.
I took no joy in his pain. I just wanted him to love me. But that is impossible now. He rejected the foot. He even reached for his phone, and I hate that he did that. I had no choice but to silence him. I used one of the bigger knives from the kitchen. I hated the sound of his heart sputtering and struggling to beat around that big dull blade. The cleanup was easy enough, at least. It turns out that mountain lions are very good at taking care of soft tissue evidence. They seem to like bones, too. I imagine he's scattered like ash on the wind through those mountains.
This is the end of my story. I don’t see any judgment in your eyes, not that it matters. It does make me wonder, though, if any of you are like me. I know what I am. Do you know what you are?
The smell from my gift is stronger now, as if it’s calling out to me. And look - inside, on a nest of gold-colored tissue paper, is Brian's heart. It’s been expertly cut away from the inside of his chest, just as I'd done it, and it’s beating again.
The glorious sound of it washes over me like a favorite song. Oh, how that man had wounded me.
It smells of blood and cedar. What a thoughtful gift! It’s all I ever wanted.
