stinky smell bad smell

Around 7:30AM, the divorced lady Struthers confirmed her earlier ambitions: she wouldn't be going to work today. She was not ill, though notified her place of business otherwise.

But what would she do on this day? She knew she had to make it count.


Around 1PM the snooze blasted the afternoon daze and haze into the cracks in the ceiling. Sally stared at these cracks, and saw it as some sort of metaphor for her life. She didn't like it one bit. She remembered when she and Dr. Charlie Sheen had married in the '70s how promising life once seemed. She campaigned for children all over the globe until the doctor and she produced one of their own. Who fights for her? Who fights for Dr. Charlie Sheen?

The Pringles man -- not English goalkeeper David Seaman -- cared not for Sally's midlife strife. He judged not that the lady Struthers was remembering a 10-pound candy bar she had purchased the winter past. The candy has been sitting in the back of a cupboard perhaps with some dust atop it. She dusted off the candy, and resolved herself to an afternoon of decadence.

For today was the day that is the stuff of legends. She caught the tail end of a Spanish soap opera where the cast attempted to out do each other in both melodramatic stares and motormouth dialog. The commercials all featured men in expensive jackets screaming about what must be an impressive sale, or a store going out of business. She couldn't understand them but didn't need to. Sally's been all over the world and had learned from a Vajrayana Buddhist monk how to tune the world out as she dealt with more important matters. These techniques were taught after saving Lusoy Bhanasa (not his real name) from choking on a sizable wing bone and were intended to reach an elusive level of inner peace. Sally mainly used it to block out Jehovah's Witnesses as she focused her intellectual prowess on higher minded affairs: "Is 3 down 'Sudoku' or 'Sardine'?" Oddly, most of the monks employed these techniques in a similar fashion.

At 4:13PM exactly she had to go to the bathroom. This day was slowly going down the toilet as well, and she had to make it count. She finished her duty and went to her car, risking the chance that someone, anyone, might see her out on a personal day. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, she figured. So she drove out to a dirt road and to the unfortunately titled TNT Fireworks Hotstuff store for festive explosives. After paying $3.19 for what is effectively a land mine that can be launched skyward, she headed to the woods. She left her shoes behind in the car and made foot prints to a local creek, past the enchanted bushes. Even though the berries all cried "Eat, it's good for you!" to her, she was on a mission.

When the cluster of mourning doves plummeted toward the earth, their wings tattered, their grey matter blasted, their souls climbing up to birdy heaven, Sally rocked herself into a comalike state of insincere comfort.

The berries all cried "It was their time, now it's yours."

"Shut up, enchanted berries," Sally countered. "Your ass is grass."

With that, Sally ate the forbidden, enchanted berries of the enchanted shrubs. What happened next eludes description, though I shall try my best as narrator to do so.

One thousand skinned rabbits fell into a sinkhole in the sky and turned their backs one by one, revealing a communal mouth only Struthers can see. "The deed is done," they said. "You have taken a personal day, and for this you shall perish. Prepare to pay dearly for your life."

Sally Sturthers had an okay life.