Fishy Brown Curse

Have you seen fish blood after it sits for days and turns putrid brown? Probably not. People like you would throw it away long before that. God loves cleanliness, right? If that’s true, then Satan must love filth, just as I do. A pure and clean environment sickens me, so I leave dust and dirt on the floor. My kitchen is littered with years of rotting food particles that feed the cockroaches and mice, my nocturnal friends.

There was a time when no one noticed me in this town. It was a crumbling blue collar wasteland. The citizens here were poor left behinds from an old textile factory that shut down decades ago. They didn’t mind that my home’s gutters were falling down, the paint was peeling, and the broken windows were boarded up. Their bodies were in a similar broken down state. Most of them were old and dying of cancer caused by chemical pollution that the factory dumped in the river.

Dead things have a power over the living, don’t you think? I know it’s so. Would you like to know how I know that? I suppose I should tell you before I send you on your way.

This town has been changing for some time. People want to live here now. They can build new houses on our cheap properties and drive into the city for work. These are a different class of people, young with families. Now my peeling paint and broken windows are an eyesore and they say my “infested” house is uninhabitable.

Last year, a wealthy couple bought the property next door and built a mansion. It was nonstop hammering starting at 7 am for months. I couldn’t sleep or get any work done at all. After all that still no complaints from me even though the pure white siding reflected blinding sunlight into my workroom. I simply covered those windows in aluminum foil to reflect it right back at them. You see, I’m an artist, and I need darkness to focus.

It wasn’t a week after they moved in that my doorbell rang. The husband was at my door. He was a clean fellow. His hair was coiffed and his beard and mustache trimmed. He was the type to rub beard oil on his face every morning to make it shiny and attractive.

“Hello, sir. We just moved in next door. Nice to meet you.”

I stared back blankly. I had been in the middle of finger painting and my hands and face were smeared with black paint.

“Well, we know you’ve been here a long time, but we couldn’t help but notice a lot of mice coming onto our property from yours.”

In fact, I had been tossing some of my friends over their fence at night.

“So we were wondering if you might be able to hire an exterminator to fix that problem. We’d be willing to split the bill with you.”

I continued staring.

“Or we could pay for the whole thing. That’s really not a problem for us. My wife’s pregnant and we just want a sanitary space for the new baby, you know? We’ll pay whatever it costs.”

The bastard wasn’t leaving. I could see I needed to actually open my mouth and speak for the first time in weeks.

“I’m afraid I can’t let anyone in this house. This is my sacred workspace.”

“Oh, come on. Sacred? This place is falling apart.” He stroked his shiny beard from agitation.

I slammed the door. He rang the doorbell several more times, but I was already back to fingerpainting another masterpiece.

I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. I tried to put it out of my mind, but a few days later, I couldn’t stop thinking about what might be coming, how these new neighbors might retaliate by physically attacking me, burning my house down, or even getting the town involved. I took a walk to clear my head.

I found myself by the river for the first time in ages. The smell of toxic chemicals and rotting fish was nostalgic and transported me to a simpler time. I was smacked with comforting visions of my father nervously chain smoking and my mother drinking vodka straight from the bottle. I could almost hear her shrieks and feel the bottle crashing against my head as I stroked the ancient scar. Dead fish along the shore were in various states of decay. What if I could bring home the scent that I loved? It might help me focus on my work. I gathered several fish corpses and skipped back home with a smile on my face and a renewed sense of artistry.

When I arrived home, someone was waiting at my front door.

“Excuse me, are you the owner of this property?”

I stared blankly.

“Let me introduce myself. I’m Bill Nance, the building inspector for the town. Can I come in?”

The dreaded town involvement. My worst fear. I continued staring.

“Um, well, we’ve received a few complaints about your home, and just from a glance, I can already see a lot of problems, a lot that’s not to code. I’m going to have to report this and we’ll be giving you a notice. If you can’t fix this up so that it’s safe for you and your neighbors, we’re going to have to condemn. God, what’s that smell? Are those dead fish?”

I rushed in and slammed the door behind me. The doorbell rang a couple more times before he left.

Bill Nance. Bill Nance. Filthy building inspector. Nosy person. I hadn’t slept that day, or any day since the new neighbors visited. My skull was cracking in that special way that led to a burst of creativity beaming out. I brought the fish back to my workroom and jammed my fingers into the most rotten one. Brown blood. Perfect for Bill Nance’s nosy nose. Black-brown blood, perfect for the hair on the sides of his bald head. Pink-brown guts for his flannel shirt. Grey-brown fish brains for his slacks. Red-brown liver for the hole in his neck and the blood spilling out. Corpse fish to paint corpse Bill Nance. A new masterpiece. I hung it in the middle of the room from fishing line. I studied it all night, my greatest work in years. At dawn, I fell asleep.

I stopped worrying about the neighbors and Bill Nance. All my frustration had been put into the painting. Days passed. That Sunday, I brought in the paper to check the obituaries. I checked the obituaries every week to see which of the decrepit old townspeople had died.

Oh no, not Ron McCauley. He was the meanest old crank the town had ever known. Bessie James, how sad. She’d be missed. She lived next to the toxic river and went crazy 30 years ago. She gave children cat feces and hairballs on Halloween. Hold on a second… Bill Nance, nosy building inspector. It was an accident. The story was on the front page. He had been driving behind a truck that was transporting rebar to a new construction site when a bar slid off and gored him in the neck. Good. Just like my painting of corpse Bill Nance. Rotting fish makes rotting Bill.

I could feel the power of death and decay coursing through me. What else could I paint and curse? The bearded neighbor? I grabbed a fish and got right to it.

Brown blood for a shiny brown beard. Pink-brown guts for his smug mouth. The dead fish's eye for his eyes. But how should he die? Not eyes, just one fish eye. Red-brown liver for the blood flowing from his other eye. Ha-ha! A hole in his head. Splash splash, more blood and guts to paint the rest. I finished and smeared some brown on my face to fully bask in the fragrance. How long would it take? Bill Nance had died that same day. I hung my new piece from fishing line and sat and studied my new piece as I waited.

I heard a scream from next door. It worked. I ran next door and rang the doorbell. A woman, belly swollen with baby, came to the door.

“It’s Logan! He fell! Oh my god, what do I do? Call an ambulance!”

And there was my bearded neighbor on the floor in the hallway, a pair of scissors in his eye socket. Running with scissors? Everyone knows not to do that! Good riddance. Nosy bastard eyeing my property.

So you see, that’s how I know about the power of dead things. Do you know how many people in this town I’ve cursed to death? I’ll never tell. But I will tell you this: I wrote the draft of this story in brown ink from fish guts. I’m certain anyone who reads it will die soon after under mysterious circumstances. Oh goodness, sorry. Is that you? Ha-ha! Good riddance!