Not wanting to be blamed for the smell, and deciding now would be the perfect time to get changed out of my work stuff, I pointed toward my bedroom. “You go let them in and I’ll be right back after I’ve changed my clothes.”
Not waiting for an answer, I turned on my heel, hoping that by the time I came back through, the smell of skunk fart would have cleared from the hallway.
It turns out I could hope all I wanted, but it wasn’t going to do me any good, because minutes later when I walked back out the smell was even worse.
“You can fart in someone else's house,” Luisa hissed at her husband who had his t-shirt over his nose like his son. “I warned you if you went the ghost chilis you’d do this, but you promised me you’d behave.” Fsssst! “There you go again.”
“I swear, it wasn’t me,” he insisted, moving so that his bicep now covered his face, too. “Did you check the dog?”
“Ma, it’s not him. Rose did it when we got back,” Garrett told them, opening and closing the door to try to get some of it out.
Glaring at him with my hands on my hips, I growled, “I can assure you that no normal human can do what amounts to scented version of a ventriloquist fart, seeing as how it smells worse now and I’ve been in my room with the door closed while I got changed.”
“I dunno,” Cat shrugged, still standing outside on the porch. Smart woman! “When Garrett or Raoul did it while they lived at home, you could definitely hear and smell them in other rooms.”
“Your father, too,” Luisa added, still glaring at her husband.
Turning to move away, Harry was about to say something when there was another fssst. Glancing down at my grandmother’s table, he pointed at what looked like a small beige vase. “What’s that?”
Not recognizing it, I took a step further away with Luisa beside me - which was just as well, because the second his finger passed in front of it, another fssst sounded. Fortunately Garrett wasn’t as lucky as me, because he’d walked closer when his dad had pointed it out, so whatever came out of it hit both of them almost immediately. And that was his karma for accusing me of being responsible for the stench.
Turning his head to the side and gagging, he choked out, “That’s where it’s coming from.”
And that’s when I remembered that his brother had locked my house up this morning, meaning that he had enough time to do something like this. That also meant that all I had to do was say one name and it would all make sense to all of us. “Raoul.”
They say that we all have pivotal moments in life, and it turns out this was one of them for me. See, any residual awkwardness between myself and his family left as quickly as the fart spray in the automated machine did at that revelation. We bonded over mutual fart victimization at the man’s hands, meaning that instead of there being just one brain coming up with ways to torture him, there were five. This meant that I had firm allies who had good reason to make him suffer in return as we hammered out a plan. So, after playing rock, paper, scissor, the loser (Garrett) picked up the automated air freshener, flicked the off switch – managing not to puke – and stored it in a bag beside the door.
Raoul wasn’t going to know what hit him – until it actually hit him.Chapter SeventeenRaoul“What the fuck is that smell?” DB barked the next morning as we all sat down in his office for a briefing, his eyes coming to me when everyone pointed in my direction at the same time.
Through no fault of my own, I stank of moldy ass, and because I was late getting here I hadn’t been able to jump in the shower and change into the spare clothes in my locker. And why was I late when I’d given myself thirty minutes for a ten minute drive? Because just after I’d set off in my car this morning, I’d heard a fssst noise, but hadn’t thought anything off it until the smell hit me.
Waving my arm around in the air, I tried to open the windows, but it just made the noises happen faster and the smell stronger, until I remembered that the automated dispenser I’d used for the prank on Rose had a sensor in it that triggered its release when things moved in front of it. Really it was a clever invention that was meant to be used with pleasantly smelling air freshener, and I’d loaded it with a small fart spray canister instead, something I was regretting now. With the traffic moving and nowhere to pull over, I’d only just managed to get here in one piece, albeit late because I hadn’t been able to see properly with the amount of times I’d choked and gagged on the smell.