You died cleaning out Ricky Werner's son's refrigerator

What was left of those trunks-of-the-Hudson sculling arms, hollowed out by seventeen years of filterless cigarettes and pork rinds and whatever the most disarming thing was on free telly, had been scrubbing the absolute life out of the shit sprayed hard onto porcelain, the kind of working one gives food dried to dishes, or a tooth you were curious at getting to the root of. He called your name, Mr. Sendonanza did, minutes after you had that bowl as sleek as a prism, from that very shitter that he was now repopulating with the dead of a battle between Overhalt and intestine; Ballantyne and bowel. What a shame he had not drunk himself to death this time. How you would've loved to have kicked his whiney gaze-fucked shitzu through the ribcage on the way out of pretending to have never found his body.

"You know my pal Ricky?"

You fluttered down the hall to stand within earshot of your bellowing employer who was mid way through relieving himself. You could already smell your hard work wasting away to Mr Sendonanza's second movement of the day.

"Ricky Werner? You know, tall guy, talks like a--hey I don't know what you put in the plug-in this time but it smells fuckofaload better than the shit you put in last time. Oriental Springtime my ass." Your employer punctuated his sentence by breaking wind so hard it carried across the room--in and out of the bowl--to where you were standing. You were by now used to them being many many times more unbearable than any other smell you had smelt from any other man. And you had certainly been with some odorous sorts in your time.

"Ricky's son is a real fuckin piece of work so far as fucked up pieces-a work go." Your employer said between folding the newspaper and letting it glide down to the parquet floor in front of him.

"Washes clothes for retarded people or somethin' I dunno. Motherfucker can't even pay all his rent but old Ricky's come to expect that shit I mean," your employer shifts weight to his left side and breaks wind again which is louder than the previous time though does not noticeably make contact with your olfactory system "it's a fuckin miracle kid's out on his own without the adult diapers anymore I guess."

You acknowledged that you were understanding him so far and without anymore audible flatulence your employer proposed the following:

"Look, I told him I'd send ya over there, like you could just bill the hours to me and I'd get the money from him and whatever, right. But he's a lonely kid, and Ricky's startin' to get worried so ya know, I said maybe you know you'd just pull him off on the sofa or somethin' and then like go clean his fridge."

You stood for a moment, wondering if you'd heard correctly.

"I mean I don't mean to pile too much onda ya, but from what Ricky's sayin', that fridge is a fuckin' nasty ass piece of somethin'. Could be years old pizza or jars of piss or fuckknowswhat. Kid's a head case."

Your employer spat a thick inch of saliva at the basin across the way and missed hitting the door carved out of some ancient oak suggested to his wife by the decorator she was at the time fucking and who made the case to your employer that he (the decorator) wasn't by coming off as an absolute tartan belt five-hundred-on-the-hair scented candle scented faggot--the loogie dripping down across the gold foil handles linked to yet another tale of infidelity your employer's bowels were beginning to give a fuck about. He groaned and pushed his weight back on the right. You stood silent still. He let another drop.

"Look our deal still stands, and as you know I'm not a monster. Look, three more months, I'll be in Caracas, you'll get back your passport and we terminate the contract. Kid's not even a mess to look at far as I remember. Maybe I'm even doing you a favor. Sure the young guys aren't throwing themselves at ya like they used to."

You told him you remembered Ricky. The one that slapped your ass every beer you brought him and who you unbuttoned a few notches on your blouse for on account of that little chat with your employer in the kitchen at half time. You told him you liked Ricky. Your boss reached into his pocket for a business card, at the same time with the other hand he was mid-wipe.

"Oh hah--shit. I just had one of those...you know when you keep the wrapper and throw out the chocolate moments." What he meant by that was that he'd dropped the card with Ricky Werner's son's number written on the back into the toilet and thrown his used ball of toilet paper squares out the door at you. Without query you pinched the scrunched tissue between your index finger and thumb, ran it to the downstairs bathroom and disposed of it appropriately.

* * *

You arrived at Ricky Werner's son's place at about three forty-five in the afternoon because you'd been told that the kid doesn't wake up until three and he would spend the first twenty minutes of his highly productive day shitting out last night's carton. The space around his apartment building was two metres of gravel in every direction occupied by dogs because the kids that always waited for that one guy that looked like Robin Williams to come out of his home so they could let him know how much of a gaybo butthole stink-fingering pedophile he was, would tip bins in the meanwhile. A small stone went into your white flat soled shoe and you pressed down hard with your heel and you did not wince.

There was an almost immediate groan that accompanied you ringing the doorbell like maybe Ricky Werner's son was just lying by the door just waiting for the chance to complain about anyone wanting to spring the fucker in business hours. There was silence until you decided to introduce yourself through the door. That you were there to clean the fridge, and uh--

"Cup size." He slurred back through the door like that was how this type of thing always went. Get with it and spare everybody your fucking life story. You went along with it and told him. This was followed by a slurry of dissociative groaning, kind of like disapproval you assumed at what you had said, and you were for a moment glimpsing the relief of his rejection and you going home to survive another day to get you closer to that passport without having to just straight up murder your employer, Mr. Sendonanza. Because you totally you weren't about murders and shit. Unfortunate for you, there was then the sound of a man clawing his way up to the handle and eventually the door coming unlocked and open.

You knocked again just for safety's sake and "Yeah yeah fucking just hurry up get in and close it behind you forfucks" came from the naked body back facing you headed toward the kitchen, dark hair coating him from shoulders to achilles.

You approached the fridge and reached out to the handle. He turned to you, gently placing his hand over yours, his eyes signaling it was not yet time. His other hand pulled open a drawer full of mixed junk from where he took one of those disposable painter's masks and strapped it onto his face. He nodded to you that it was OK now. Ricky Werner's son then went over to the couch of cracked green faux leather and sat down to commence his afternoon fix of pornography on the hi-def LCD he'd got his daddy to get him.

* * *

It was not a matter of the intensity of stench. In your profession you'd had it all, but in most cases, even in the most chronic instances, there was generally a sense of knowing what you were dealing with. Ricky Werner's son's refrigerator had the unique quality of not smelling like anything in particular, because it had so much intensity streaming from so many different sources. You couldn't even narrow it down to the homogeneous odor of putrefied food product; there were still more layers. Dense, complicated layers.

Over your shoulder, your employer's acquaintance's son was lazily, like he could hardly be bothered today, rubbing at his crotch area to the tune of Burnin Rubber Mommas blaring at him in full five-point-one, where one of the title's ladies was shaking a loose-fitting bikini-bottomed ass around the face of a young man built out of steroids and orange tanning solution posing extreme facial gestures like he was about to embark on some four-wheel-drive skateboarding or some mountain bike riding off of a cliff that would end on a jet ski punching some angry wide-bodied latino women in the tits as they bobbed up and down in a path for him howling in Espanol for him to keep his dumbfuck hands off of their pristine daughters. As Ricky Werner's son's afternoon onanism grew audible you began to panic with confusion about your role in this whole thing.

Your employer had never had you perform lewd acts for him in the past, but you'd known that something like this was a long time coming. That this would be the doorway to the slippery slide, those last three months of your employer pimping you out to his friends--as you came to the very back of the compartment above the vegetable crisper, past the thick shake containers that had fused together in the puddles of congealed pig fat, and the shopping bags filled with used tissues disposed of in the fridge for no other conceivable reason other than it was closer than going downstairs to the sulo bins, right there against the back wall was a matchbox you assumed either to still contain matches, or to be empty. But it had some weight to it. As you removed it you noticed that the sides of the box had been taped over with electrical tape sealing it shut. You removed the tape, jiggled it open to find a naked, blue, and very dead Ricky Werner with a look of absolute horror left on what was once his tiny face. He'd been soaking in a pile of his own piss and shit, leaking through into the palm of your hand.

* * *

You did not flinch. Instead you very carefully placed the matchbox among the piles of other rotting debris and for a moment remained very still. But right then Ricky Werner's son knew.

"What you think you were fucking gonna take me out just like that?" He muffled at you through the mask concealing enough of his face to emphasize his ocular malice. "Come clean my fridge like some dumbshit like I wasn't even on to youse from the start?" Now standing his penis in full erection with preseminal fluid flicking onto the television screen as he threw his weight around. He had already shocked you into paralysis with the tazer gun hidden between the sofa cushions before you could make a run for it off the balcony.