Funk

Vince smelled funny.

He was not dirty, mind you; above all else he was meticulously clean. No one could fault him for unwashed clothes or dirty fingernails.

It was just too awkward for anyone to actually comment on his personal aroma.

That was the way Vince liked it. The way he planned it.

The odor was not his own, at least not at first. He had borrowed it from cultures of a high school boys’ locker room, the ball sweat of a frycook, the feminine hygiene disposal box from the public restroom at the I95 Denny’s #327.

He kept the culture, splitting part off for use and saving the rest as “Mother”, allowing it to grow into the next batch.

The result was a gluey brown paste which Vince refined into a colorless essential oil of funk. This he would daub behind his ears, at his wrists, the 27 pulse points a harem maiden knows well, and this attar of rot would envelop him for the day.

The result was not merely unpleasant. Stench rolled and oozed and billowed before him as he walked, parting the waves of pedestrians, elevator riders, fast-food customers. For a half-hour after he had passed, dogs would bark, old ladies would dab their eyes and cover their faces with delicate wrist-tucked hankies, and children would pinch their noses and accuse each other of farting.

This was the way Vince liked it. The way he planned it.

For such was the ethos of this small town that not a soul was willing to mention the smell to Vince. They all assumed he was unaware, and risking embarrassment was something they just would not, could not do. Instead, they found excuses to be somewhere else.

This was the way Vince liked it. The way he planned it.

The landlord hadn’t been by to collect rent in years, and no one would approach the place to serve eviction notice. The electric company stopped sending men out to cut his power for non-payment.

He hadn’t held a job nor needed money for anything since the 1980’s. It was an ideal setup.

It was the way Vince liked it. The way he planned it.

When the man known as the Triborough Razor, suffering a bad head cold, came to Vince in the night, no one was near enough to hear him scream. No one knocked on the door when he failed to show up at his usual haunts. No one noticed anything amiss when the effluvia of human decomposition wafted out through the cracks and the vents. No one knew the Triborough Razor had even been there.

And that was the way he liked it. The way he’d planned it.