Dirty Nurse

To say that I noticed the stench would be an understatement, like noticing the smell of a skunk outside. It would be better to say the stench hit me like a locomotive to the face. I immediately looked at Chris in horror. We should have turned back, but that’s hindsight talking.

I took a deep breath before I stepped through the screen door that Chris was holding open. The welcome mat was dog shit. The entire carpet was literally caked with dog shit, which I estimated to have been there since Texas was Mexico.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” I whispered to Chris.

Martha had waddled her gigantic frame into the kitchen, out of sight. I didn’t want to follow. I wanted to run like hell.

I stood in place for a moment. Like a character in a video game, jumping floating rocks across boiling lava, I accessed the best route through ancient dog shit and the many carcasses of dead cockroaches.

The roaches were alive in the kitchen. I threw up in my mouth a little when I saw the couch she wanted to give to us. It was piled with old pizza boxes, various food and candy wrappers, empty cans, and insects, both dead and alive.

“Oh, I’ll clear that off for you,” she said.

Her massive daughter came in to the room holding a soda and a hot pocket. The fake cheese was on her fingers. She licked it off when she talked.

“Need some help, mom?

“Yeah, help me get this couch cleared off so they can load it in their truck.” Martha said as she opened the back door of the house.

I watched as the two hippos chucked pile after pile of refuse out the back door. The two dogs outside barked and jumped, trying to catch the boxes and wrappers in their teeth.

Martha brushed away the insects with her hands and I noticed the stains. Stains of every color. Red, maybe blood, maybe barbeque sauce. I tried not to guess the origins of the other stains; I already wanted to vomit right there on the nasty floor.

Once the couch was cleared off, Chris went to one end and motioned me to grab the other. I looked at him wide eyed and shook my head quickly, but he mouthed the word “Go” and nodded toward the door.

I picked it up backward, so it rested on my back. I didn’t want to put my face next to it. It was already bad enough that I had to touch the filthy thing. It smelled of shit and trash and fat people. We loaded it in the bed of the truck. I threw up in the grass.

“Chris, let’s go,” I said while I rinsed my mouth out with bottled water.

“We can’t do that!” He said. “She is trying to do us a favor. You know she’ll tell my mom and all of the other nurses. It would be rude.”

“Rude?!” I said, a little too loud. Then a little quieter, “I don’t think that manners are very fucking important right now, Chris. These nasty women live in an outhouse… seriously. I am totally cool going without furniture until we can do better than this.”

“I’m going back in. The only thing left is the bed frame and headboard, and those aren’t made of cloth, so they should be okay, right?”

“Whatever,” I said, with a new cigarette in my lips. “I will come in when the mosh pit in my stomach is over.”

I took another deep breath, and looked back at the truck longingly as I walked back in to hell. Then I realized I had to pee.

I carefully walked down the hall, breathing through my mouth, fighting the urge to blow chunks when each step crunched on shit or carcass. I opened the bathroom door and lost the fight. I threw up in the sink. I didn’t even bother washing it down the drain because I didn’t want to touch the faucet. It’s not like they would notice any way. I rather preferred the scent of vomit over the reek I was already experiencing.

There were several piles of shit in the bathroom. Just like the rest of the house, the toilet had never been cleaned. There was a gaping hole in the tiled shower wall. A solid path of ants lead from it, to an old soda can that sat on the bathtub's edge. A roach fell from the top of the medicine cabinet in to the vomit puddle and I let out a squeal.

“Sorry, love. I should have warned you about the ants.” Martha hollered from the kitchen.

“No, you should have warned me that you and your morbidly obese daughter are the nastiest people on the planet.” I thought.

I decided I would hold it and nature-pee on the way home. The thought of poison ivy or a rattlesnake bite to the ass was far more appealing.

“The bed stuff is back here,” Martha said, starting to walk down an unsettlingly dark hallway. “I kept the frame and the headboard in the dog’s bathroom.”

“What?!” I almost said it out loud. I felt Chris reach backward and touch my leg, to comfort me, or keep me silent, I don’t know.

She opened a door and pulled on a string to turn on the light. The headboard was sitting there. I immediately knew that the dogs were boys. The bottom half of the headboard was so water… no… piss damaged that the wood was warped and wavy and peeling.

“I-don’t-think-it’s-gonna-work.” I said, quickly, with a big, fake smile and wide eyes.

“Why not?” Chris said through gritted teeth.

“It’s a queen size.” I said. “I absolutely must have a king size!”

“King size? What are…” I kicked him to shut him up. The idiot even said, “Ow.”

“We will just take the rails for the mattress,” Chris said while rubbing his calf. “We really appreciate everything.”

I let him carry all the rails. I could not get out fast enough. I had to wipe my feet outside when we left the house. I laughed a little, deliriously, at the irony of it. I jumped in the drivers seat and started the truck. I pulled away before Chris even shut the passenger door.

I was silent, smoking and speeding for a few blocks before I calmed down. The smell was still in my nose. I shivered with disgust.

“We can always try to Febreeze the couch.” Chris said.

I looked over at him, astounded.

“Yeah, I am sure that would work out real well.” I almost yelled. “Hey, maybe Glade makes an anti-squalor fragrance! Or maybe we can just rub it down with potpourri! Or… Or, I know! We can just soak it in gasoline and burn the motherfucker! Yeah!”

Chris didn’t respond.

When we arrived back at our apartment complex, I backed the truck up to the closest dumpster.

“What are you doing?” Chris asked.

“What the fuck does it look like?” I answered. “Get out and help me.”

We sat the couch next to the dumpster. In any normal circumstance, some random person would have snagged it. Families came by, picked up the cushions and ran away. They sat on it before they noticed the smell and then jumped up in horror. They even tried to pick it up when a rogue cockroach came out of the cushions, forcing them to drop it, breaking the legs, and releasing a few more insects.

I watched it all from my apartment where I sat on my new bug-and- shit-free sofa, laughing hysterically.