For Eleanor

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It burned strong and steady as it did every year on the 10th day of the 10th month. It burned without explanation or ownership. It simply burned.

The people of Bethel had long since given up on trying to ensnare the one who lit this wax. For so many years the braver or more frustrated members of their community tried. They laid in wait by the cabin. Hiding among the ferns, and vines that encroached it’s yard. They came with torches and cameras ready to prove it was just some crazy person or a teen trying to stave off his eternal angst by creating folklore.

They came every year and every year they rued their attempt. The smell. The ungodly, vile smell that rose up from the soil and bonded to their flesh. It followed them eternally. It could not be washed away or perfumed over. The smell of death, decay, putrid fluids that belonged inside the body, old soup left to rot in the sun, bile on the lips and carnage. It was unbearable. No loved one could brave it or see beyond it. The instant and irrepressible urge to vomit made it physically impossible. The scent engulfed anyone within 100 feet so fully, so thickly, that the unfortunate carrier was left with no choice but to find a far away spot of isolation and slowly exist alone for the rest of whatever days remained. The question of how many days remained was sadly and unfortunately answered. Very few. The isolation was horrible enough. That alone would make the thought of ending it all appealing and soft. But the isolation only brought on the worst of it. The sound. The grinding crunch of tooth on stone. Constant. Coming from within your head as if you yourself were trying desperately to eat pebbles. You could feel it. The wearing away of teeth with each bite. There was no grace or relief. Every moment in the presence of no one but yourself triggered the sound. You would never know if it was from inside yourself or externally. It didn’t matter. It was always there.

These poor, stupid, forewarned people who dared to approach the cabin on the 10th night of the 10th month all suffered the same fate. Rancid smell, isolation, unbearable and insanity rendering crunch. No mortal could stand it. And so one by one, they died. Hangings, shots, drownings, gas…they were fast and deliberate in their deaths. They were alone in their deaths save the one boy who lived beyond the year the rest had lasted. He did not suffer the crunching. He was not alone because his mother would not leave. She stayed beside him. Vomiting and heaving from the scent, but holding her son. Year by year she stayed next to him every moment for fear he would end his life if given a second alone. He watched her deteriorate. No more than skin held to her bones. She was turned inside out, but her pure love for her son kept her alive. She watched his guilt and agony ridden eyes follow her about as she gasped for air. When the last gasp happened he sweetly kissed her head and said “I love you” before breaking a window and slicing his wrists from palm to elbow. Holding his mama tight he joined her in sleep.

After the death of the boy and his mother, the people of Bethel accepted their fate. No one had any doubt anymore as to what caused this. No one questioned it’s root. It all made sense. Every aspect fit well like a disgusting, blood and bile covered puzzle laid before the town. They knew they were all to blame far more than the tormented one enacting these punishments. The people of Bethel met one night at the church by candlelight and begged forgiveness. They sang hymns and beat their chests. They tore at crosses and begged God to release them. God was not there to help them. Only Eleanor.

Today we know the disease as Trimethylaminuria. Today Eleanor’s case would be in the medical journals as the worst case ever. Then, they only knew that somewhere in her 12th year, the shy child who liked to feed the birds in the park suddenly began to smell. Her parents tried every remedy known at the time. Tomato baths, oils and balms of cassia, cinnamon, lemongrass and lily were spread over every inch. She was made to walk around with flowers draped around her head and neck. She looked to any outsider like a queen, but no one in Bethel found it charming. All the body hair was brutally removed from her. The downy soft fuzz that had only just sprung forth in her most private parts was shaved and scrubbed leaving raw her flesh. She cried and howled. She kicked and screamed. But each month she aged, the smell became worse. A doctor traveling through town swore to a cure that must happen from the inside out. He produced a bottle of the new and oh so safe cleaner-Lysol. It would sterilize her from within. He had seen it work. “Women are not in nature clean. So man has created a way for her to be so!”

Eleanor’s parents loved her. She was smart and kind. Until the age of 12 they were an affectionate family. She was their only child and would remain so. At night they curled together in the parlor and listed to Eleanor’s father read the paper aloud until she drifted asleep safely wedged between her mother and father. She learned to read earlier than others and would write innocent poetry as soon as her hand could hold a pen. Her hair was light and long. It fell like silk around her shoulders and her mother loved to brush it. Before.

She loved to feed the birds. They flocked to her as she walked. Even as Eleanor went for a walk on her 13th birthday, the smell did not seem to bother them. They landed on her shoulder and ate the dried rice her mother provided her sweetly from her palms. Alone with the birds she did not need to watch her mother turn away to quietly gag over the sink when Eleanor sat for dinner. Here she did not cry over how much she missed reading time snuggled between her parents. Here the birds showed no sign of offense, only gratitude as she tossed the rice from her hands into the air.

Upon returning home one day, Eleanor smelled a new scent in the house. It was harsh. It burned her eyes and seemed to take all the other smells away. No home lingered in the air. Only a void and chemical.

Her parents introduced her to The Doctor with glee and hope. The Doctor choked immediately and brought a tissue to his face in a feeble attempt to stop the vile smells assault on his olfactory.

It was explained that this man in an old suit and muddy shoes would cure her. She simply had to allow him to medicate her in several ways with this magical Lysol. “It will feel uncomfortable and odd to you, but it will work.”

Eleanor could not smell herself so cared not to allow this man to touch her, but she looked at her mother holding a cloth to her nose and crying as she did constantly now. She saw the hope. She looked to her father who had grown older these past months. The profound worry that filled his every expression was too much for her. She thought of reading time and the warmth of her parents arms. Her body craved it beyond anything in the world.

“Will it hurt?” She boldly asked in a voice outside her body.

“Yes.” He grumbled.

“Will it work?”

“Perhaps”

So she followed The Doctor up to her lilac curtained room. Her parents smiling at the bottom step.

He closed the door behind her and covered his face with several layers of cloth dipped in cinnamon oil. She’s grown used to strong scents people used to avoid one whiff of the young Eleanor.

The Doctor told her to put on a nightgown and remove her underpinnings. She was laid upon her bed. He bound her legs and arms outstretched so she looked like the scarecrow in her neighbors field. He pulled out a bottle of that chemical smell. Next from his worn out bag were long tubes that looked to be made of dead skin. So devoid of color were they, she wondered if they were in fact from a corpse.

“Now Eleanor, I’m going to put this tube into two places. One is your mouth and one is where you will one day birth babies."

Pure and blinding panic set in. She cried out ”I don’t want that!”

He uncorked the bottle and attached a piece to the top that reminded her of the finger puppets her friend had insisted they play with. Two ridiculous looking arms seemed to reach out from each side. The Doctor attached a death skin tube to each one.

He stood above her and she heard him laugh. Ever so slightly. Ever so quietly.

He leaned down over her and said “you smell like hell little girl, but I'll fix you and you will thank me. They will all thank me. You just need to be still and quiet. If you scream for your parents, I’ll give you enough to kill you. Won’t that make your mama sad? So stay quiet and let me work my miracles. “

She squeezed her eyes tight and cried silently. All she wanted was her father to come in and throw this man out the window. All she wanted was her mother to brush her hair. Her poor young girl mind jumbled with confusion and fear.

“You need to be cleaned. “

He picked up the bottle and tubes from her white painted dresser and brought the to her bedside.

He unceremoniously jammed the tubes into her. Poor little Eleanor began to leave us in that very moment.

The tube tasted of sick and chemical. Eleanor no longer cared. She wanted this over. So she gave in to what was next. He turned the nozzle on the top of the bottle and watched her as the Lysol made its way to its destination.

The sensation was that of being burnt alive from within. She could no longer tell where the pain came from, for it was everywhere. She could not breathe or move. She was on fire and blind with the agony. It swam up her gut and down her throat. It’s tentacles grew to fill every limb and pore. She had only one thought and that was to pray for death. She was alone and burning. Darkness followed, but not the sweet death she prayed for. Only darkness.

She awoke some time later. She was told two months had passed. She awoke in a white hospital room with no one beside her. She tried to scream but her voice no longer existed. Over and over she tried, but only a scraping sound was released with each sob. Her throat felt hard and foreign. She pulled her fingers to her mouth and her sweet young lips were nothing but hard scans and jagged edges. She reached into her mouth but found her tongue equally marred.

She tried to sit up, but everything hurt. Everything was still on fire. Within minutes a nurse entered wearing no less than 3 operating masks. Orange. This one used orange oil. She knew she still carried the smell of death upon her. If there were tears in her body she would cry. They were gone. She was gone.

The tragic and gruesome events of that night we delicately retold to her in metered sentences.

She would learn, her father, impatient with not knowing his daughter's state, burst into the room as she lost consciousness. Seeing the tubes and blood, he quickly ripped them out and demanded answers. The fading heap of his beautiful girl lay like trash on the bed. The rage for the Doctors came quickly and completely into Eleanor's confused Father. Her father did indeed throw The Doctor out of the window. Eleanor had willed it so. What Eleanor was not careful enough to outline in her prayers was the exclusivity of who should fall to their death.

It was with such force, driven by a fathers love and ire, that he pushed the Doctor out, that inertia and momentum were not on Eleanor’s father’s side. A small stumble along the way caused him to lose his footing. When the doctor began to fall backwards out the window, he grabbed hold of the stumbling father and took him down to the ground with him.

Neither survived. They perished wrapped together in Eleanor’s lilac curtains below.

Her mother arrived at the door in time to see them both fall. She ran to the window, screaming in hysteria. Only when she turned to run down to her husband did the state of her daughter register. White foam had begun to rise up from Eleanor’s mouth. Quickly it became pink and thick. The blood was running heavily now from between her legs.

She ran to her daughter and scooped her up with a strength only a terrified mother can possess. In a haze of panic and delirium. She carried her dying girl past her dead husband to her neighbor. Kissing her head and apologizing the whole way.

When she arrived she fell to the ground with Eleanor and wept. Praying for life for her child. The neighbor had a carriage and quickly took them both to the hospital.

Her mother wept and cooed “My baby. You don’t smell anymore. I can kiss you my sweet girl” while rocking her in her lap.

At the hospital Eleanor was whisked away from her mother and the police arrived. While her mother explained the unbelievable scene to the police and collapsed into irrevocable sadness, the doctors looked at the destroyed body before them.

A nurse rushed in with charcoal to try and exercise the poison . Yet another tube was inserted into Eleanor’s throat to try and force it out. Only blood and flesh came up. Only shallow breathes remained in the poisoned little girl before them. So shallow in-fact, they could no longer be detected.

With horror and confusion, the slight girl before them was pronounced dead.

When the nurse went to tell the mother that her baby was gone, she expected sobs and tears. She did not expect the mother to stand up and walk away without a word. But grief is different for everyone, so the nurse let her go and said a prayer.

Eleanor’s pretty, young mother walked out of the hospital covered with small bits of her daughter. She remembered the way her husband's body looked as she ran past just hours ago holding her dying girl.

She wanted it all washed from her. She wanted to be cleaned of it all. It was too much. She walked to the park where Eleanor loved to feed the birds. She walked into the pond. She imagined her daughter's sweet breath on her neck before the reek. She remembered her husband's strong hand around her waist as they moved through a crowd. She felt their warmth beside her at reading time. All these things were the last pictures in her mind as she calmly inhaled the cold pond water with greedy gulps until she was simply no more.

While her mother slipped away, Eleanor awoke. Gasping and reaching for air. She awoke. Alone and surrounded by the dead. A forever shaken janitor was the one who heard her. The god awful sound of her screeching and gurgling must have been like no other. He ran for help and quickly a sheet was removed and Eleanor was brought to the light.

It was some time before Eleanor would rise from her bed. After learning what had happened, she slept. She prayed for death but her sleep was the closest thing God would offer. When she could sleep no more, she was lifted into a wheelchair. Doctors coldly explained things to her that she would store away until she could understand. She would never talk. All the organs that made her female were removed. She no longer had lips or a tongue. Her mouth looked to her like that of a shrunken head she had once seen in her Father’s exotic National Geographic. She would need to exist solely on simple and unflavored foods if she were to have any hope of sustenance. No one had come for her. She had no family. Now, between the smell and her new outward deformities, no kind family would adopt her. She was alone. Completely alone.

As was common at the time, Eleanor was sent to the church upon her release from the hospital. There was work for her there. She would have food and a roof over her head. Eleanor could not and knew not to ask about her own home. The proceeds of the sale would be donated to the church in exchange for her keep. She was told that only a rotting little cabin in the woods left by her grandfather remained in her name. It was where she had spent so many summer evenings with her parents when they all wished to escape the noise of town. Set deep in the words, it had fallen to ruin. No place for a maimed little girl to live alone. She longed for it with every scarred inch of her body.

When Eleanor was delivered to the church she was met at the rectory by the tiny, sweaty man she knew only as “Father”. His eyes, hidden behind small, slightly amber tinted half moon glasses, seemed as though at one time, they could have been kind. At one time he may have believed in all he did and stood proudly before his flock in leadership. But now they were red, cold and cloudy. Now the whiskey all but oozed forth from his pores and clothes. There was little love or faith left in this man.

Eleanor's family had not attended church often. They read at home. They learned from science and literature. While the bible always held a place on their parlor shelf, it was never opened. In turn, this new Father was no more than a stranger to Eleanor.

Once alone Father turned to the scarred, shaking and rancid little girl. “You will stay in the back room where hopefully no one will see or smell you. When services are done, you will come and clean up after them. You can keep what is left about for food. I will leave you additional meals each week. I do not want to see you. I do not want to hear you and above all I do not want to smell you. You live as the ghost you are and may God protect your soul.”

Alone in the tiny closet turned bedroom, Eleanor sat with no possessions on a bench dressed only with a small cotton blanket staring directly at the tiny wooden cross mounted on the opposite wall. She shook to the core. She wanted to cry and scream, but the ripping apart of her throat made that no longer an option. She wanted to feel her mother and fathers arms around her. To smell the coffee and pipe. To feel her mothers soft hair upon her cheek. She wanted only for a kiss upon the forehead before bed and the heavenly safety of knowing you close your eyes with your family nearby. She wanted God himself to appear and take her from this place to heaven where she was restored and safe once again with her parents. In place of her prayers being answered, she received only more hell.

There was rarely food brought to her. Occasionally a chunk of spoiled meat or a heel of molded bread. Both of which proved art to swallow through the charred remains of her throat. Water was available at the pump in the small yard between the church and the cemetery. There was no bath made available or clean clothes. She was permitted out only after the congregation had left the church. She took her small broom and pail. She cleaned up the mud tracked in by the holy. She made certain the pews were wiped down and the carpet was swept. If a child had dropped a half eaten candy she was sent over the moon in joy. A small sound like that of a bird would escape her mangled mouth as the sweetness trickled down her throat, coating it with joy. She swept the stairs at the front of the church clean after the happiest of days - the weddings. She could smell the beautiful scent of the dying flowers left behind. She pictured the brides. Beaming and young. Covered in lace and satin that swooshed and crinkled as they moved towards their happily ever after. She would sit for a blessed moment on the steps and close her eyes, picturing every moment. When her daydream was done, she would sweep up the rice and hide it in her pockets. She was so very hungry. The deep hunger. The kind of hunger that no longer registers as pain, but simply eats away at you bit by bit.

Eleanor remembered her mother boiling water to soften the rice for dinner. She wrote a note to Father one night and brought it to him in his office. In her beautiful pen she asked politely if she could boil a bit of water in the rectory kitchen. He was quite heavy with the drink by then and without opening his eyes or lifting his head from his desk simply said as he choked on the words “Go away. I can not stomach you.” And so she did. Back to her hole of a room with nothing but the dried rice in her pockets. She was overwhelmed with hunger and knew that there would be no meat brought to her. She took a small scoop of dried rice from her pocket and gently placed it on the bits left of her tongue. She began to chew with the teeth the poison had spared. The grinding of it shot up through her skull. It infiltrated the silence she found herself in day after day. Still, she ate. She ate and became maddened with each crunch. The pebbles of rice slowly disintegrated but the horrid sound seemed to remain trapped in her little, once loved head. And so her life was. There would never be peace or comfort. Only pain. And so her fate was sealed.

And with each bone grinding crunch of the dried rice she became angrier. As the mind will do when left to nothing but pain, loneliness and hunger, it began to change. She began to imagine the shards of rice she ground her teeth down on were the bones of The Doctor. The fingers of the Father. She imagined the sweet blood released and coating her ever burning throat as she bit and chewed. She had no thoughts other than revenge. Crunch. Grind. Revenge. She imagined the happy children playing together in the park. She could hear and see the laughter and joy in her mind as they ran towards the loving arms of their parents. Those children who taunted her and ran away from her reek. Those same parents who shunned her and left her alone with this stinking priest to rot and waste away. They would all pay. While she prayed for her own death, she knew she had something to complete before that.

On the 10th day of the 10th month Eleanor walked to the Father’s room and stood over his bed until he awoke with a gurgle. She instantly lunged at his throat with her razor teeth - sharpened to fine points by the grinding of dry rice. She bit and cried as he struggled below her. She swallowed the blood and moaned happily at the finally full feeling in her belly as he stopped fighting.

On the 10th day of the 10th month Eleanor left the church. It was a beautiful fall day and school had just let out. The children played and left their books on the edge of the park to chase each other through the golden leaves. Eleanor walked towards the children as she ground the rice down in her teeth producing a sickening sound to match her sickening smell. The children knew she was near before she was realized by the putrid cloud of rot that preceded her. With a strength no one had ever seen she grabbed hold of two children by the wrists and pulled their tiny little arms toward her mouth. Each in turn meeting with a ripping of wrists and veins by her bloody teeth. Each in turn falling to the ground and dying with wide eyes in pools of their own blood.

Full of the energy of the lives that should have been hers, she began to skip away as bewildered parents ran towards their babies. A man followed her but could not approach without falling to the ground gasping for air against the rank smell now pouring from her. She smiled as the blood ran down her neck, beckoning them closer. Daring them. One after another they fell and she stood still now watching them vomit and claw the ground. Slowly adding more rice to her blood foamed maw.

Eleanor skipped away to the woods and continued until she reached the cabin she knew so well. She pushed open the half hinged door and took in the rot and decay around her. It seemed to be a part of her. The house versions of her own once loved and now ruined body. Among the mold she could smell the faintest whiff of her father’s soap and the slightest hint of her pretty mother’s perfume. They were there. They waited for her. Here she would join them. Here they would take their precious brutalized girl into their arms. Home.

Night was falling and she knew they would come for her. She found a candle and lit it on the sill. She wrapped herself in an old blanket and sat, lips caked in dried blood, on the steps leading to the broken down little cabin. She thought of her parents. She imagined them on either side of her now. Kissing her head. Telling her how they would never leave her. She waited.

The first shot hit her shoulder. She knew not where the man who fired it was. Only that a hive of bees had erupted in her body. “Mommy” she silently prayed. The next one hit her stomach sending black blood from her core to the ground. “Father” she begged to the night. And then all was dark.

Little Eleanor lay there alone for all eternity. The men who came near fell cursed to the scent and sound. She was left there to seep into the earth and feed the soil. Of guilt or fear, they buried an empty box at the church yard with only her name on the stone. Her body would never be touched or given the sweet ritual of burial. It just lay there to decay. Alone.

And still to this day, on the 10th day of the 10th month, though the cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, a candle burns in the window. For Eleanor.