Chapter 2: Gross

I slammed into a thick layer of gelatinous slurry. The impact splattered guck over me, punched the air out of my lungs, and forced me to gasp for breath. Worst mistake. Like a physical blow, the stench stung, my eyes watered, nose hairs burned, and stomach acid filled my throat. I pushed myself up on my hands and knees. Slime. Slime covered the floor. So deep it spilled over my fingers, seeped through my pants, slid down my back as my shirt trapped it against my neck.

The smell and texture on my fingers reminded me of the first time I changed our daughter’s diaper, when I didn’t know to wait for her to finish, when she covered my hand and forearm under my sleeve in green-brown poo. My wife laughed at me and said that I would laugh about it one day. I still haven’t laughed, although I did smile later. Now, I laugh about it. Trapped in a maze, in a room with the worst smell, and now I laugh at that day. My wife’s words echoed in my mind, and I vowed to get out of here just to prove to whoever made this maze wrong, just like I did my mother when she said that men couldn’t change diapers.

Tears clouded my eyes. A film of yellow discharge, bile, mold, furred, greasy, shiny coated the walls that swam in and out of focus. My body almost passed out. It needed to breathe, but it didn’t want to taste the foul air. My stomach clenched, and my mind screamed for me to leave this place, but my muscles seized and didn’t let me move.

The trap door above closed and removed all light from the room. My stomach dry heaved. Each spasm sent a stab of pain into my lungs, into my heart, and caused the tiny bit of water in my stomach to come back up and dribble across my lower lip.

Vomit. The room smelled of vomit. Rotten stale vomit. And shit. Foul, old, shit. Like week-old diapers that had marinated in a forgotten plastic bag. The clear plastic bag ripped and spilled toxic diapers across the china-covered dinner table when I tried to move it. Covered my pants and hands like now. I laughed the next day. We all did, but not in that moment. If I survive this, I will never laugh about this room. We moved the party outside, under a single awning, and rain dripped off the edge. Six people, all with babies, huddled while everyone told stories about other accidents. No one ate. No one had an appetite. We threw out a lot of good leftover Chinese food. I have not eaten Chinese since that day. After this room, I may never eat again.

Trained by years of spreadsheets, the smell categorized, lowered my fear. But not the physical, not my buckled stomach, the burn in my lungs, spasmed fingers, pain along my spine, and the throb in my skull. I needed to cover my nose, but slime and feces covered my fingers. Vomit, and shit. Familiar. Knowing didn’t stop my stomach, but it did stop the scream in my head.

“Just vomit and shit”, I said, out loud, just to have a sensation not based on smell. Then I laughed at the idea of ‘just’. No ‘just’ about it. And worse, I inhaled too much air with the small laugh and coughed on the smell. Too deep into my lungs. My hand braced on the slime-covered wall. With the need to breathe, I tried to both breathe and not breathe at the same time. Shit. Literally.