There’s something dead in my chimney.

I know there is. I know it. Mom says I’m tired, she says I’m seeing things, and I am tired, but I’m not seeing things, I’m smelling. And the smell, that putrid, gooey smell, leads like a ball of yarn to the wood-burning fireplace in the greasy-walled living room.

It’s a sour smell, sourer than a lemon, bitter, more bitter than the bug I chewed up when I was too small to know what murder was. It’s a heavy smell; it floats over my head when I’m in my bed, choking me in the night so I cough instead of sleep. I’m tired. Even when I’m not at home, the smell lingers on my clothes, on my hair no matter how many showers I take, on my skin, my mouth. The smell leaks into every bite of food I eat.

I tell Mom over dinner, “Mom, I’ve smelled it before. It smells like Henry. It smells like the Gerbil cage after he died. Mom! There’s something dead in the chimney!” I hold my fork like a knife, balled in my fist, pointing up. 

Mom rolls her eyes. Her wrist flicks as she coats her dinner in an inch width of salt. “We’ve been over this, Beatrice. There is nothing dead in the chimney.” She cuts a strip of meat with her spoon; it cuts. I’m not sure what kind of meat it is. It’s too grey to be chicken, too white to be beef, too… brittle to be pork, or turkey, or chicken, or meat. She stabs it with her fork.

“But Mom, the smell---”

“If there was a smell, I’d smell it, wouldn’t I?” I nod. She waved the fork and the flimsy not-meat meat as she spoke. “Well then, eat your food.” She breathes in. “Ahhhh, doesn’t it smell delicious?”

I look down. The not-meat meat is fuzzy, flimsy, charcoaled, but still raw. When I split the meat with my fork, some parts disintegrate with my touch, other parts don’t break, some parts are flappy, other parts are coated with fuzz.

Mom takes a bite.

“May I be excused?”

Mom replies with a distracted nod, relishing in the taste of the not-meat meat. As I leave, I peer back from the door frame and see her smile vanish; she eats the meal with absolutely no expression at all.

The smell gets worse every day---it’s like smoke, not like when food gets burnt and the smell of burning covers the furniture for one week, but the smell of when the house next door burned down. Even though your house didn’t burn, every breath burns. I have to find out what’s in my chimney.

Even if it’s all bone. Even if it’s cracked, black, smoky, and brittle. Even if it’s all wet and all flesh.

I will find out what’s dead in my chimney.