Trembling With Fear 11/05/2017

Just A Little Bloob

Kathy couldn’t remember exactly when it progressed to hatred. She had a hazy recollection of the slide from young lust to something resembling love to begrudging acceptance, and then bored indifference, but when it finally crossed the line into hate somehow escaped her.

 

Joe wasn’t mean or abusive, nothing like that, but he was indifferent to her, to her wants or needs or feelings. They’d evolved into a dead end couple working dead end jobs to maintain their dead end house in their dead end neighborhood.

 

Not the fairy tale she’d often imagined as a little girl, no, not at all, much more like a reflection of her mother’s life when she looked in her mirror, becoming more clear and distinct by the day.

 

And she hated it. She hated her life, she hated Joe for his casual indifference, and she had to admit, she hated herself for just going along with it, day after day.

 

It had become worse lately, though. She began making an effort to eat better, more salads, more vegetables, leaner proteins, and Joe would have nothing to do with it.

 

“You can do what you want, but I’m not eating that Goddam rabbit food. I’ll pick something up on the way home from work for myself.”

 

And he did. He tried a few of the usual fast food places, and finally settled on a new place in town, the “Taco Tower”. He’d bring home spicy smelling bags and eat their contents while she had her salad, neither of them talking much at all during their meals any more.

 

The worst part for her wasn’t what he ate, not by a long shot. It was the aftermath.

 

He’d begun farting regularly, producing the most obscene, vile odors she’d ever had to endure. She’d worked in a nursing home as a teen, and tending to the bed pans was nothing compared to the repugnant smells he produced.

 

She soon learned that the loud ones, the ones that sounded like thick leather being torn, weren’t so bad at all. It seemed most of their energy went into producing the loud, wet noises.

 

No, the worst ones were what Joe came to call “a little Bloob.”

 

The tiniest popping sound, followed by a poof that reminded Kathy of actors blowing out candles in the old black and white movies. That was the “Bloob”.

 

And those produced the most hideous, rank odors imaginable. She’d be lying on the couch, he in his recliner, and as soon as she heard the little pop, she’d pull up the comforter and cover her nose and mouth with it. Even their little Jack Russel Terrier would hear that sound, jump off the couch, and trot outside through his doggie door to the fresh air out back.

 

With his sensitive little sniffer, she didn’t blame him. Even dogs had their limits, it seemed.

 

As time went on, Joe stopped there more frequently, and it got worse. She’d taken to keeping a can of air freshener at her side at all times, like a Sheriff’s six-gun in a lawless town, to try and offset the revolting odors emanating from his chair.

 

The arguments got worse, more bitter as time passed. One day, he made an extremely rude comment as she was in the kitchen, and she stopped her work, not believing what she just heard.

 

She finally lost it. She’d had enough. She raced in from the kitchen, her chef’s knife in hand from slicing vegetables, and told him she couldn’t take it any longer. She wanted out.

 

And he laughed. He actually laughed in her face, laughing so hard, he produced one of his room clearing “Bloobs”.

 

She shrieked, gripped the handle of the knife in both hands, and plunged it deep into his gut.

 

Even before he howled in pain, she heard the hissing, wooshing sound. The sound of a broken air line, or perhaps escaping compressed air.

 

She understood immediately that she’d made a critical mistake. She’d hit the stomach, possibly the intestines.

 

Her eyes widened to comical proportions, realizing what she’d done. She began backpedaling, waving her arms frantically, but the stench hit her hard, a noxious cloud straight from the very bowels of Hell itself.

 

Decomposing bodies floating in raw sewage would be spring roses in a field of lavender compared to the malodorous effluvium quickly filling the room. The back of her legs hit the couch, and she went down hard, choking and gagging. She leaned to the side and vomited profusely, trying to get it all out and not choke on it, completely ignoring Joe’s frenzied cries for help.

 

The Jack Russel was already out in the yard, howling instead of barking.

 

She rolled off the couch onto the floor, praying the stench would rise, like stifling air does. She began crawling toward the door to the kitchen, to try and get away, and as she passed the wall vent, she heard the click of the heat coming on downstairs.

 

And they heated their home with natural gas.

 

The resulting explosion shattered the windows in seventeen houses nearby, causing severe structural damage to the ones closest. A Desert Storm veteran who lived down the street was quoted on TV as saying it looked worse to him than direct hits by missile strikes from air support in the desert. He was not at all surprised to hear that the governor had mobilized the National Guard.

 

Neighboring towns had to lend support, tending to the wounded, and transporting the worst cases to nearby hospitals.

 

Neighbors first thought an aircraft fell from the sky, hitting the house directly, the fuel exploding on impact. The damage was too severe, too total to have been caused by anything inside. Kathy and Joe were normal people, they said, not criminals or terrorists.

 

Arson and bomb squad investigators ran every forensic test in their arsenal, looking for trace evidence. They suspected a meth lab, a hidden cache of explosives and weapons, but every test came back negative for those elements.

 

The only unusual result was an exceptionally high trace of natural methane, which they could not explain. There were no signs of accelerants, and the trigger seemed to be the pilot in the furnace going on as it should, nothing more than that. Even the FBI, once called in, had no meaningful results from their labs at Langley.

 

The medical examiner couldn’t shed much light, as there just wasn’t enough left of Joe or Kathy to autopsy.

 

The mystery remained front page news for a couple days, only to be replaced by the latest wave of scandal and accusations making the rounds in the Capital.

 

Locals looked forward to the new coffee house being built on the grounds of the former “Taco Tower”, which had been shuttered and abandoned by its owners without explanation.

 

Life moves on.

 

 

THE END