It’s over. Everything is dead. And I can smell it. I can smell the death, it’s everywhere. It’s a rotten, sweet smell that sticks to anything it can touch. But everywhere I look, I cannot find the bodies. I know everything is dead, I can smell it, I can feel the scent pushing on me, forcing its way into my lungs and never leaving. It’s there, I know it’s there, I just need to find it. I need to find it and get rid of it. I don’t want it near me. I tried to run, but no matter where I go, the smell always follows. I feel insane. Is it even real? No, though I can’t find the dead, I know it’s there. I just need to keep looking. I need to get rid of the smell. Even in sleep, I smell it. Penetrating its way into my dreams. I am stained. It’s on my hands, it’s in my flesh. Filling every crevice and tainting every room. I keep searching. I keep looking. Only to be found with nothing. I can feel the smell itching under my clothes. Telling me to keep moving and I can’t refuse. I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want this life, surrounded by death but never finding it. I am alone. Marked by its pungence. Unrelenting and outwardly refusing.

  That was, until I wasn’t alone. Laid beneath the settling sands of the fallen cities was a body. Lost of consciousness, reeking of that horrible scent of death. The tainted sweet smell that has haunted me for too long lays peacefully and unmoving. I begin to dig, no time to find a shovel, no time to search for any tools. The sharp sand cuts along my hands, the stench of blood, a warm welcome to the presence of life instead of the sickening decay of sinewy muscles that leaches through the air. I dig through the night, until the sun rises once more. A large pit meant to hold. I drag the body from its resting place, though dead for sometime the body still holds its weight. My hand grips its arm and as I pull, the skin that has forever lost its elasticity breaks, sliding along the ooze of the body's fluids as it separates from the bone. I adjust my grip to where the skin once was, my fingers slide between the radius and ulna as I tug once more. Heaving the body to where it belongs. I stand along the edge of the pit, but no peace comes from where the body lies. The stench of death still everlastingly present. So I continue the search, I search not for the dead, but for solace. Cradled in the destruction of what once was a baronial building lays yet another body. Its flesh long gone, but the stench still present. I hook my arms under the skull and pull from its once chin. Through the broken city, through the barren streets until it is where it belongs. Draped in the pit, against the body of the first. But the search is yet complete.

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  In school, I had learned that once an ant dies, it releases a scent that tells the other ants they are dead. I understand it now, it’s not a warning nor a testament, but a call. It calls to me. It longs for me. So I do what the ants do. I find the bodies. I put them in a pile. I’ve had to change where I stay too many times. The smell is stuck to me, no matter how far I go. I am owned. If I can move all the bodies in one place maybe the scent will stay there? Far, far away from me. That's what I keep telling myself, but I can still smell it. It is endless, but I can’t stop. Are there more? Are they hidden somewhere? I don't want to look anymore, I don’t want this life, surrounded by death. That ratched, pungent scent. But what else can I do? Do I hope? I hope and I hope that someday the smell won't mark me, that I can someday live peacefully? Death could easily be an option for me, but I can’t. Not yet. Not until the scent is gone. I can never quit. Only until the smell stops invading my very being. Every orifice, every place on this wretched planet I will scour. I will hunt it down and I will end it. Hoping for solitude and ending in pointlessness.