Something died in the walls

"Something died in the walls," Gienne said. Had we been in a sitcom, my unhesitating response would have been "yeah, our marriage" or perhaps "yeah, our sex life." But as it was, I only thought of that line three days after the fact, and besides, it isn't really true.

Gienne, by the way, is spelled G-I-E-N-N-E but pronounced like Jean. Don't ask me.

Gienne came to the conclusion that something had died in the walls because of how awful our apartment smelled. It had just washed over us one day while we were eating breakfast. It was the worst thing either one of us had smelled in our lives, besides the time my old dog threw up all over the kitchen and died while my family and I were at the mall. It (this smell in our apartment, not the dog thing) smelled to me like toilet water. Like gallon upon gallon of toilet water, a very large amount of it, compressed into a very small space. You can't really smell it when it's just that little bit in the toilet, but if it were, say, a swimming pool's worth or a lake's worth of toilet water that has traveled through the most acrid lead pipes before suddenly finding itself stagnant and stewing there in the bowl, and no one has bothered to purify it because you're just going to end up pissing in it (or worse) anyway.

But it would have had to be a hell of a lot of toilet water and probably some sewage too, because it smelled just awful.

The first day it happened, we did what we could. We opened all the windows, turned on all the fans and took a walk in the park (it was windy and cold and we didn't have much to talk about besides that awful smell). I saw someone taking a picture of a squirrel and chuckled. "What are you laughing at," Gienne asked. I said, "nothing."

We came home and the smell had dissipated, but not completely, so we blasted the place with Febreeze (or more accurately, a cheap knockoff I had bought with which Gienne was deeply dissatisfied).

Well four or five days later, I came home to the carbon monoxide detector going off even though all the windows were open and the place smelled terrible again. Gienne came home right after me and said "again?" We called the super. He sniffed around and said he could barely smell anything and advised us to air out the room (even though all the windows were already open). That's (after he left) when Gienne said she thought something had died in the walls.

One good thing about this apartment building is we don't have rats. So I said I didn't think anything had died and explained my toilet water theory (much abbreviated) and told her it was probably a burst pipe or something. Or not burst, but trickling. Or something in between.

Well, she didn't go for that. We decided the best course of action was to ignore it and ventilate. (I have just noticed how "ignore" must be etymologically linked to "ignorant." Even though they have come to mean slightly different things. It would be best to realize and remember that they come from the same source, I think. One could have a field day playing around with that.)

An hour later I was beating at the wall with the claw end of a hammer. At Gienne's directive.

It is much harder to break through drywall than I thought it would be, but I finally got through after scraping for a while. Instantly, the smell got worse. Gienne backed away; I shielded my face. I saw black flies, like little sicknesses. "Could be a burst pipe," I said.

I riped at the hole (this was in the closet, BTW) until I couldn't see through the fine plastery dust clouding my eyes. It all cleared and there was our son Jonathon, shriveled up like a raisin, hands turned in like claws, mouth open, eyes dead. That's a synecdoche; the rest of him was dead, too. Seven or eight years old.

Neither of us said anything, but mostly we were just relieved to have the whole smell thing figured out, I think.