DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I sleep like a log. Logs don’t sleep, of course, but if logs were to sleep, that is the fashion in which I slumber: felled despite shouting (“timber!”), loaded onto a truck, driven across the county, dumped into the river, then inadvertently sunk to the bottom, preserved at 40°F for one hundred years, immobile. Or, alternatively, milled into a bannister. Either way, I wouldn’t wake up. I figure, if I’m going to sleep, I might as well do it right.

So it was with some surprise that I awoke at 2:00 AM for no immediately apparent reason. Until I breathed. Argh! The worst smell I’ve smelled, and let me tell you, that’s saying something. The room was filled with a putrid stench. I clawed at my own throat. One of my lungs collapsed. Well, not really.

Bad sign: the window was closed. So, if the smell didn’t come from outside…

But no. This was skunk. Not the sort of “dead skunk on the road” skunk-smell that you can identify as skunk even without seeing the black and white pelt pressed into the asphalt. A whiff of the carcass, even at 60 mph, is sufficient for reliable identification. I wasn’t getting a whiff of skunk. I was soaking in it.

Have you ever heard music so loud you couldn’t discern notes or instruments or melody? Have you ever gone momentarily blind in the parking lot after a matinee, the sun so bright your eyes clamp shut?

My nose was overloaded. I couldn’t really smell the bad smell; it was too big. But I could tell it was there. I could feel it in the air, in my eyes and throat. And around the edges of every breath was a whiff of something horrible, something dead or worse. (Dead things stop stinking, eventually.)

I stumbled into the living room. If anything, the bad smell smelled even worse. Further, into the kitchen, I followed the smell to an open window. I pressed my overworked nose against the screen. Fresh air! My nose came back to life. Oh, did my house stink then.

I don’t know what happened. I guess a skunk sprayed just outside the kitchen, and a cloud floated inside and settled in for the night.

I could still smell it at lunch today. I had to eat outside.