A post about one of the many reasons I have been so busy as of late.

Enjoy.

I awoke early on Saturday morning with a groan as my dog river-danced on my calves, whining to be let out. I glared at him. All night he had forced me to take him outside to bark at toads and his own shadow. Over and over again I shuffled through the house to open the door and shut the door before passing out again, praying that each time would be the last. Yet it never was. I begged for just one R.E.M. cycle but Max had other plans.

Was this my punishment for allowing him to be fixed? I would be angry too if my testicles had been cut off but this was just cruel. I rolled out of bed once more and glanced at my phone. I only had about 15 minutes until my alarm would go off to get ready for my father’s birthday party. My feet scraped along the wood as I limped into the laundry room to get my duck out of his carrier. He stuck his head out of the top as I approached, like a little duck submarine, and began talking.

“There he is! Mr. Amerrrriduuuuck“, I sang to him as I popped the lid and lifted him into my arms.

He pecked at my shirt and nibbled my hair as I opened the back door and set him down as Max ran out.

“Bye bye, duck!”

I shut the door and started on getting ready. My hair was halfway curled when I heard the dog barking to be let in. I let him in and he took his usual position in a leather armchair but his eyes were locked on mine with cold fury. Was this about the balls? I had a feeling it was but I put it out of my head and got back to doing my hair.

“Oh baby, look at that!”

I admired my hard work in my wall mirror. Boy, was I going to look good avoiding people.

That’s when it happened.

Something was off. I didn’t know what it was but it was foul. The stench of evil permeated the air as a voice in my head told me to please not check on the dog.

As if drawn by an invisible rope I was pulled down the hall through a barrier from which hell was birthed. The smell sucked into your nose and oozed down your throat. It coated your lungs and forced you to taste it. Suddenly, in a twisted flashback from a simpler time,  I remembered something I had learned on the magic school bus as a kid. When we smell, it is actually small particles of what ever is making that smell entering our nose.

It was ripe and it was powerful but somehow I turned that corner to make eye contact with those dark brown orbs of hell that were Max’s eyes just as squirts of liquid ass lava shot out from behind him.

“MAX! NO! OUT! GET OUT!” I screamed at him and he slunk towards the back door, excreting a trail of chocolate drizzle behind him.

There I was. Sprinting to the door, thinking about the billions of shit particles now rampant in the air i was currently breathing. I continued screaming “out” until he was across the yard and the door was slammed. I turned towards the crime scene.

I gagged and ran into the back of the house, away from the site and smells. I couldn’t do it. There had been one giant oozing pile surrounded by smaller squirt-lets of textured brown slime. I took deep breaths of the fresh air inside my room, trying to kill what ever evil had glued itself into my lungs. I stood there for what felt like hours and then called the only person who I’d ever known to able to look a massive pile of steaming filth in the eye completely stone faced in the face of hell it’s self. I’ve seen her clean up more vomit, piss, shit, and god knows what than I’d ever like to see.

I called my mom.

And then she gave a hard no. So there I was, in my Ted Nugent T-shirt and Ellen Degeneres boxer briefs, standing in the living room, looking over a kingdom of shit while the dog and the bird barked at me from the glass doors. I yanked off a sandal and ran at the door.

“GO! GO TEETEE-POOPOO OUTSIDE! GIT! SHOO!”

The dog, followed by the duck, ran out of view and the smell hit me again. I tasted it in every orifice if my face. I walked around the house and gathered as many scented candles as I could, placing them around the living room and lighting them. The room looked like a shrine to the butt-mud God of Lake Titicaca. The smells of the various candles thinned the haze of waste slightly but could not mask it completely despite their best efforts. I was full on triple-wicking those bad boys and still the shit was ripe. I could prolong it no longer, I had to get in the shit.

I tied my once perfect hair into a bun and pinned my bangs to the back of my head, resembling a Nickelodeon-esque lunch lady character minus the mole. Making a mixture of soap and water into an empty spray bottle, I went over exactly what I was about to do. I was going to be in contact with something so foul that the coffee table fern had begun wilting. It was killing things. It had begun to actually kill. It was the shit of  death. I was going to face the shit of death armed with only a roll of paper towels, a spray bottle, and a garbage bag.

Gathering my supplies I walked towards my destiny. The puddles various sizes mocked me with their presence and gleamed with a grey-green sheen. With head held high I knelt at the first puddle.

What followed next, as legend goes, may have been a low point of my life. As I sat there, reeking of chemicals and excrement, sweat melting the makeup off my face, scrubbing shit out of a rug that I didn’t even particularly like, I felt my dogs eyes watching me from the porch. His nonstop bark was like a drum on a ship to my scrubbing. With every wad of soiled towels I put in the trash bag the wave of concentrated shit air hit me in the face. I should have never have let him be neutered. I looked up and the answer was in his eyes. This was his revenge. God help us all.