Story #48

Dear Readers,

In this, the forty-eighth weekly very short story on this blog, we accentuate the very. Thank you for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #48

Ronald hated scented soap. He went outside and screamed. He sat down by a brook and rested his chin on his hands. His housemates used so many scented household products. It wasn’t entirely their fault, there were far more scented than unscented household products on the market now. Why stop with soap or candles or furniture polish? Why not scented windows, scented electricity? So Ronald had argued. They’d ignored him. That was because he didn’t pay rent, or know them. They had begun by asking him to leave, then they’d called the cops, back when he began living with them, five days ago. Ronald was younger than they were. He was twelve. The scents of manufactured goods in this house, in his parents’ house, in any interior or exterior space had become a cacophony to him, a thousand tubas an inch away from his head. The brook was quiet, scentless, though not without a smell. The smell of moss, which he had not noticed until last year, was now central to his life. He lay down in the moss by the brook. It enveloped him. To die in moss. School was starting in a week and then the fun would be over.