With some trepidation...

From Gary Harris:

It was with some great trepidation and reservations that I finally donned the gas mask. I wanted to solve the problem without having to resort to artificial breathing, playing the role of the real man, but when the smell overwhelmed me before even opening the door, I relented and donned the mask.

It fits snugly over mouth and nose and filters with charcoal and some other chemical filtrations, not what you need for chemical warfare, but satisfactory for the job at hand.

Looking back, it was all my fault, and I blamed no one but myself for having to wear the mask to right the wrong, but it was still a bitter, stinking pill of foul bile I had to swallow.

At last, with one great intake of air, I opened the door.

The sights that befell my eyes were unimaginable, things that were once wholesome and pure now distented and putrid beyond belief. The wave of nauseating fumes engulfed me, I could feel the fetid air coating my arms, my hair, my clothes, everything. Even through the mask, I could smell some of the putrid air that was now surrounding my body and pooling at my feet.

On the floor was a pool of what I think was once blood. It was now mixed with milk, mold, and substances no longer recognisable to me. It was thick, coagulated liquid, purplish here, and reddish there, and brown in many spots.

I opened the bottom door and found more sights, that were much worse than what the upper level held. My long dead torture victim was rotted and bloated, his eyes totally gone, melted looking in the sockets. I pulled the stake from his gut, and the skin splits and opens, showing me the writhing mass of maggots underneath, wriggling like the scenes of hell where the people are in the pools of lava, struggling and pulling one against the other, yet none breaking free from the pull.

The maggots squirmed in the cadaver's bloated stomach, trying desperately to hide from the light.

I reluctantly pull the gloves over my hands and get down to business.

I scoop out the maggots, watching them wriggle on my outstretched palm for a moment, before plunging them into the large plastic bag on the floor. I hold the body over the back and shake the maggots out into the bag, along with the remains of his intestines, and one leg that just falls off and disappears along with the rest into the bag. I then throw the body in the sack and continue with my work.

I grab a sponge and plunge my hand into the decayed, molding, rotting puddle of blood and other fluids, I wipe the fluids into a bucket, wipe after wipe of green/grey/purple/brown/red gelling liquid goes into the bucket, mixed in are small dead things, that were feeding on the puddle till the fumes and the rotted, putrid air overwhelmed them and added their dead bodies into the putrid puddle.

Many carcasses splash into the bucket along with several gallons of the offal. Some float on top, some sink to the bottom, never to be seen again.

After the puddle is mostly gone, I approach the other large plastic bags containing the remaining body parts, mainly legs, and a few arms and some torsos and trunks, all rotted, most maggot covered.

They were in plastic bags, but I open the bags anyway to look at the contents. I plunge my gloved hands in and scoop out some maggots, I have never seen so many maggots, of all sizes.

The gas mask is doing beautifully, I get a faint odor of the fetid air that swirls around me, but nothing I can't handle. At this point, the unthinkable happens, I yawn.

It is 4:00 am and I am tired, but the job had to be done, but dammit, why did I have to yawn, and why now?

The elastic holding my mask on stretches with the yawn, and the seal around my mouth and nose is broken and the hot air in the mask is replaced with the foul, putrid odors that were before just a glimmer.

The glimmer is replaced by a swift kick in the gut, a hammer to the head, and a punch to the temple, I stumble, I grab for something, anything to keep me from falling, but to no avail, I go down, thrown off-balance by the putrid air filling my lungs. I smash the mask down tight onto my face and breath rapidly for a moment to clear it out, and my sight returns and the bile retreats from my throat.

I slowly pick myself up, gelling liquid clinging to my pantlegs and my ass is covered in the awful fluid, thickly coating my backside.

I wipe what I can off into the sack, and continue my job.

When it was all over, I had 4 large plastic sacks full of liquid and semi liquid fluid, along with many small cadavers and innumerable body parts, all rotted beyond recognition, maggots were all over the floor, and I had to mop the place about 6 times to get the last of it up.

But as I said, it was my own fault. I cut the refrigerator off 5 weeks earlier, and then we moved out. You really can't blame my dad making me return to clean the damned refrigerator out.

OBT_WAH!!!!!!!!! THe damn fridge was broke anyway, even after I cleaned it inside and out. The reason I cut if off anyway was that it was iced-over and not cooling anymore... Shit...

OBRedneck: we put it on the roadside, me and my wife chuckled watching these two rednecks load it into a truck and drive off with it.

And you thought refrigerator were only for keeping your beer cold. But they can be large reservoirs for tasteless encounters...

Gary Harris

"Why, Gary, you are a man of many talents! How comforting to learn you've expanded your horizons from raping your disabled relatives to murine sadism". Todd Buckingham to me

(Originally posted on Wed, 13 Sep 1995)