This Story Smells Like Poo

based on true events

I’ve seen Star Wars, and I know all the best stories take place a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. But my story isn’t like that. There’s no ‘once upon a time’ here. It happened not too long ago, in a building just down the road. Maybe that means it’s not a very good story, but it’s the only one I have to tell. If you don’t want to hear it, then, by all means, stop reading. Or – I suppose you can’t hear a story you read. But that’s not the point.

Go on. Put down the story. I dare you.

No? That’s what I thought. I’ve got you hooked now, whether or not you want to be. How will you know if my story’s worth reading if you never read it? You’ll have to decide for yourself, and let me know when you do.

My name is Ben, and there’s nothing really special about me. I’m just an ordinary boy with an ordinary family that happened to move to a not-so-ordinary town.

At first glance, Union seemed like your run-of-the-mill country town. It was founded by Quakers back when people rode in carriages instead of cars. The minute we arrived, pulling the U-Haul behind our beat up Ford pick-up, I was overwhelmed with the suspicion that most of the residents had been present at the founding. The roads weren’t paved, and every building appeared to be decorated with a thin coating of dust rather than paint. Even the air was saturated with it, tickling your throat in a way that made you need to cough all the time. Union was exactly the sort of place I didn’t want to live, but there I was – trapped, with no means of escape.

I walked to school that Monday morning. Our new place was just down the road, and riding the bus seemed pointless. I tried to be interested in the scenery during my walk, but there were only so many trees and weeds you could look at before they started blurring together, so I ended up just staring at a rock as I kicked it along in front of me. I stopped, though, when the school came into view over the top of the cornfield next to me. I had to stand on my toes to get a good look at it, the corn was so tall, and I frowned when I noticed that the school was painted the same colour as the corn. Gross.

The closer I got, the more strongly I could smell the boredom, wafting out of the building from the students inside. Oh, boredom was a scent I knew well. Every student knew it. It was commonplace at any school, whether located in the big city or a podunk town like Union, and here it was especially strong. But as I approached the front doors of the school, another smell greeted my nostrils. I hesitated, my hand on the doorknob, as I tried to place the new scent. I couldn’t. It was too unfamiliar. Boredom smelled chalky and bland. This smell was tangy and sharp and unpleasant, and I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from, like when I stepped in dog poo and didn’t notice. I didn’t like it.

I frowned and stepped into Union Public School, my grip tightening on the strap of the backpack that hung off my shoulder. A lady in the office to my left gave me a once-over and, when I introduced myself, gave me directions to a classroom in the junior wing of the school. I had just started off down the hallway when that smell assaulted my nose again. I looked around, trying to locate the source, and a boy of about my age rounded a corner to join me in the hall. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, but the moment he saw me, he froze and his eyes widened. I stared at him for a moment, and he relaxed. I guess I didn’t seem all that threatening.

“I’m Ben,” I said, and, before he could say anything, I turned and started back on my way to class. He fell into step beside me. At first, he didn’t say anything, but then he tilted his head closer to me and spoke softly, in a confidential tone.

“You shouldn’t wander the halls by yourself,” the boy warned, and I scoffed.

“Like I could get lost in this school. I’ve been in bigger houses.” Maybe I was being a little defiant, but seriously. Did he think I was a baby or something?

“It’s not that. It’s –” He cut off abruptly and I frowned, looking over at him curiously. He was frozen in place again, his eyes as wide as dinner plates as he stared passed my shoulder.

“What’s your problem?” I blurted. I didn’t get an answer, though, so I turned my head to see what he was looking at.

My eyes fell upon an old man hunched over a mop and bucket, swiping the sopping strings back and forth over the ugly tile floor. His head was almost completely bald, but still had patches of hair sprouting randomly from his speckled scalp. His fingers gripped the handle like claws. I watched him carefully. What was so scary about the school janitor?

At the precise moment this thought occurred to me, his neck craned toward us. It creaked audibly with every fraction of an angle that it turned. His eyes landed on me, totally ignoring the boy to my left. His face was manic, his lips twisting into a mangled mockery of a smile and revealing jagged, fanglike teeth, dripping with saliva. It was hideous, but I was powerless to look away. His eyes, previously blue, faded to a deep red colour, and he blinked. But his eyelids, instead of moving from the tops and bottoms of his eyes, came sweeping in from both sides to meet vertically in the centre.

A girlish scream sounded, and even now, I have no idea if it came from me or from Mike, for I would later find out that was my companion’s name. I only remember that after this screech, I yelled, “Go!” and grabbed hold of Mike’s arm. We tore down the hallway toward our classroom, and neither of us ever thought to look back to see if we were being chased.

We burst into room thirty-four, slamming the door shut behind us and panting in an attempt to re-inflate our empty lungs.

“Michael! And… you!” the teacher shrieked upon our interruption. “What is the meaning of this?” Unsure how to phrase it, I turned to Mike for instruction. His hand covered his heart as his chest heaved. Each kid in the room had twisted in their desks to observe us, their expressions a mixture of sympathy, terror, and outright awe.

“It was,” he wheezed, “Dogan.”

As the word escaped his lips, that hideous poo-smell increased to the point that it was almost overwhelming. I covered my nose, and my eyes began to water. Through my blurred vision, though, I could make out the stiffening posture of every student in the room. They were afraid. And they smelled like poo.

“For Heaven’s sake, Michael, if you call Mr. Travers that ridiculous name one more time, you’ll be staying inside at recess to help him clean the toilets.” Mike released an eep of fright and quickly skittered forward to sit at his desk. Once the teacher had established who I was (“the new kid”), she assigned me the seat next to Mike, and I flopped into it, adrenaline still thrumming through my veins. I was pumped.

I dropped my book bag under my desk. Immediately, I leaned across the aisle toward my colleague, not even pretending to pay attention to the explanation of fractions Mrs. Mickelson was spoon-feeding us.

“So what’s the deal with Dogan?” I whispered, and a few of the kids around us jumped in their seats. One girl squeezed her pencil so hard it snapped in half.

“Shh!” Mike hushed, waving his hand at me as though that would get me to shut up.

“No, come on, tell me. I have to know,” I insisted.

“He’s the janitor.”

“Really?” I countered sarcastically. “I thought he was mopping for fun. Why’s he all…” I trailed off, and instead of attempting to explain, screwed up my face in a laughable imitation of the horror I’d seen not ten minutes prior.

Mike sighed and leaned across the aisle too, so we could converse privately. “I don’t know what he is,” he explained. “But if you want to survive the school year, you’ll stay away from him.”

“What do you mean ‘survive’?” I frowned, but then my jaw dropped in excitement. “Does he kill people?!” I urged in a harsh whisper. Mike hesitated.

“There’s no proof, but…”

“But what?!” Another hesitation.

“At the start of the year, there were thirty-three kids in this class.”

I blinked, not comprehending. Mike rolled his eyes at me as though I was very stupid. I refrained from pointing out that at least I didn’t smell like poo.

“Now there’s only twenty-seven.”

“And nobody’s doing anything about it?” I’d seen Law and Order. Missing kids caused uproar in small towns. It was a fact.

“They pretend it doesn’t happen. Watch.” Mike straightened in his seat and raised his right arm to gain the teacher’s attention. When she called on him, expecting him to answer whatever question she’d just asked, he instead blurted out, “Where did Janie and Eddie go?” Mrs. Mickelson growled in frustration.

“For the last time, there were never any students named Janie or Eddie in this class. And there was never a Jordan, Gregory, Francis, or Sophie either. You kids need to stop watching so much TV.” She turned back to her lesson, and Mike raised his shoulders at me in a shrug.

“I think he’s got the adults all brainwashed,” he offered by way of explanation. “That, or they’re just really, really stupid.”

“So he just takes these kids and gets away with it?!” I was infuriated, as a fellow student, whose life was in newfound peril. Mike nodded.

“But nobody’s seen him do it, and nobody knows where he takes them. My advice is to never go anywhere alone, and stay away from the vents.” When I asked why, he again treated me to that ‘you must be dumb’ look. “That’s where he lives, doofus.”

That was that. I decided something had to be done. I didn’t know about the rest of these kids, but I was going to make sure I made it to high school without being, in any way, killed and/or eaten. So Mike and I pledged to meet at recess by the swing set in the field to plot our investigation and eventual insurrection.

After class, I had to go to the office to meet my other teachers, but as soon as I was finished, I rushed outside to meet Mike. There was only one swing set on the playground, but my new friend was nowhere to be found. I waited for the whole fifteen minutes of recess time, and Mike never showed. When we re-entered the school for class, I asked Mrs. Mickelson where he went, and she claimed he’d gone home sick with his father. I found this somewhat suspicious given our plan, and Mike had seemed perfectly healthy before recess. I mean, aside from the poo smell, which I countered by carrying an air freshener in my pocket to school the next day.

Mike wasn’t in class the next day, either. The day after that, I again asked where he was. This time, I received a much more suspicious response from our teacher.

“Mike? Never heard of him.”

Oh no. Oh, no, no, no. Dogan had nabbed Mike, right out from under my nose! And in my new kiddishness, I had waited too long to investigate. He was surely a goner by now! He’d been gobbled up by the evil janitor, never to be heard from again. Now who would be my friend?

Only one option presented itself. I had to find out what happened. I had to look for Mike, and I had to do it now.

I was excused from class under the pretence of visiting the washroom (my classmates gasped audibly upon hearing my brave request), and exited, eyeing the hallway up and down before I began my trek. It was eleven-thirty, and Dogan would be mopping the primary wing about now; you see, in Mike’s absence, I had taken the opportunity to time the janitor’s duties and develop a precise schedule.

I only had one lead, however. During gym class, I had noticed a peculiar door situated in the centre of the wall above the stage. It was completely inaccessible – no stairs led to it. It just hung five or six feet above the ground, like a big, useless … door. If my suspicions were correct, it had vent access. But there was also the issue of reaching the doorknob, and my four-foot-nine body could barely reach the bottom of the door.

I scavenged for something to stand on, and was judging the potential effectiveness of some oversized bouncy balls as foot stools when the door to the gymnasium whooshed open. I took a flying leap at the huge container of balls and dove head first into its contents. Although my hearing was impaired by countless rubber balls surrounding my head, I could make out manic cackling and some insane mumblings about yummy insides. Automatically, my expression twisted into one of disgust. My displeasure was put on hold, though, when, through a small space between the balls, I saw Dogan approach the door.

He wasn’t tall enough to reach the knob on his own, but he didn’t need to be. I watched, terror-stricken, as he pressed his fingertips against the wall and simply pulled himself up, as though he had suckers on the pads of his fingers. Who did he think he was? Spiderman? I was outraged. He was ripping off one of my heroes and using awesome abilities for evil. The ugly little man padded his way up the wall and turned the knob easily, crawling passed the frame. That was when a whiff of poo-smell wafted out of the new opening and assaulted my nostrils, triggering my gag reflex.

I barely managed to suppress the urge to dry-heave, pulling the collar of my t-shirt up over my nose to help filter out the stench. Unable to stand being trapped in all the balls with that smell, I poked my head up out of the container. Luckily, Dogan was long gone – and he’d left the door open!

I hauled myself out of the container and right away noticed something I’d missed before – a couple of milk crates they hadn’t been able to fit in the school kitchenette. I manoeuvred them against the wall underneath the door frame and managed to worm my elbows over the edge to pull myself up.

I landed on my stomach in the darkened lair. The first thing I noticed was a loud humming coming from some sort of mechanical device to my left. This was a kind of boiler room, hot and humid. What made it unusual were the piles of boneless skin strewn about the dusty floor.

“Sick,” I murmured.

“Ben? Is that you?” It was Mike! He was alive!

I clamoured to my feet and rushed over to my friend, who was chained by the ankle to the wall behind him. “Are you oka –” I started, but doubled over, covering my mouth and nose. “Mike, man, you reek.”

“I’m so scared,” he confessed meekly. That’s when it hit me. The smell! It was fear! Boredom smelled like chalk. Fear smelled like poo!

I replaced my shirt collar and tried again.

“Are you okay?” Mike’s face was briefly overtaken by sadness.

“Ben, he ate my arms.” I looked down at the arms in question, and noticed what I’d missed before in all the excitement – Mike’s arms were completely empty. They were nothing but skin. No bone, no muscle, no nothing. My mouth twisted. Ick. “But it’s not all bad,” Mike assured, and I arched my eyebrow in disbelief. “Check this out.” He pulled his shoulder back, and then threw it forward, and his flabby non-arm flew out and smacked me in the face. He collapsed in hysterical laughter as I stared at him, stunned.

“That is so gross,” I told him, but failed miserably at keeping the chuckle out of my voice.

“Wait ‘til you see what eaten legs look like.” The menacing voice sounded behind us, and I froze in place as Mike crumpled to the floor, whimpering in panic. It was Dogan. And he sounded hungry.

I turned to face him, forcing myself to swallow dryly. I was terrified, and I could smell it. Surely Dogan, as he eyed me with his ferocious red eyes and licked his dripping fangs, could, too. This was where the flaws in my plan became obvious – those flaws being that I didn’t have a plan at all.

He advanced toward me, inching forward with his right foot and dragging his left behind him. The closer he got, the more scared I became. The more scared I became, the worse I smelled. And the worse I smelled, the bigger his teeth grew. Wait, what?

“I love the smell of fear,” the janitor hissed, lifting a claw-like finger to drag it down the side of my face. I trembled, but responded defiantly.

“Ew, why?” The smell decreased slightly, and so did his fang size.

“It’s appetizing.” I scoffed and Dogan stepped back, confused. The smell of fear was fading from me, although Mike was still radiating the stench of poo. “Why aren’t you as scared as your delicious friend?”

Of course! When he smelled fear, his teeth grew, and he was better able to suck the insides from his victims. But how would could I stop Mike from being scared? And the other students? There were too many. Dogan would never lose his power. They were all too afraid.

My confidence wavered, and the janitor pounced on me. I collapsed under his weight, and Mike screamed. Dogan’s teeth elongated, preparing to sink into my left arm and suck out all the important bits. I tightly grasped my thigh, eyes scrunched shut as I prepared for the pain that would surely follow, but then – there! In my pocket! Our salvation!

My fingers dove into my pocket and pulled out a cardboard pine tree, drenched in new car smell. With my free hand, I slapped my palm against Dogan’s greasy forehead, shoving it back, and with all my might, I crammed the air freshener up his nose.

The janitor screeched in pain and rolled off me, beginning to twitch on the floor next to me. I scrambled back, accidentally planting my hand in a puddle of Janie, but my eyes were fixed on the horrific sight before me.

Dogan twisted and writhed, letting lose sounds so horrible I could never describe them, and would never want to. He twitched, and his fangs shrunk all the way back into his gums. He was unable to smell any poo now, and could not feed. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as his face began to flatten and shrink, and the tufts of hair he had left fell out of his head to join the dust mites on the floor. He seemed to be melting, his insides leaving his body as though sucked out with a giant straw like a triple thick milkshake, only a lot more gross.

After a few minutes, all that was left of Union Public School’s janitor was a steaming pile of overall-clad flesh. It was all over now. I looked over at Mike, to see if he’d passed out during all the action, but he was wide awake, and flexing his fingers.

“My arms grew back,” he explained. “I guess because he wasn’t finished eating me. But…” He looked at the other piles of skin on the floor, his former classmates. A beat of silence passed, and then he shrugged. “Oh well. At least they don’t have to go to school anymore.” I agreed. I’d much rather be eaten than have to multiply fractions ever again. Maybe defeating Dogan hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

Mike was still chained to the wall, though, so I went to find the principal, who came and unlocked him. Mike and I were both fine, but we got detention for being out of class when it was in session. The other kids were never mentioned again, and nobody ever asked us what happened in the boiler room that day. Life continued on in the same old boring way it had before I’d moved to Union.

It took a few months for the poo smell to fade entirely from the student body, but they’d been scared for so long it was hardly unexpected. Nobody ever asked what happened to Mr. Travers, the custodian, either. It was just one of those things. Because, unlike the events of Star Wars, the happenings at a small-town public school were largely ignorable. And who would believe a couple of kids who watched too much TV?

So that’s my story. Maybe you liked it, and maybe you didn’t. I’m no George Lucas, and Dogan had nothing on Darth Vader, but our stories do have some things in common. At the beginning, Luke was just an ordinary guy, like me. And like Luke, I used the Force, even if I don’t think Luke’s Force smelled like new car. But everything worked out okay in the end, and maybe – just maybe – in that galaxy far, far away, everybody smelled like poo.