wash your mouth out with soap

tw: sexual violence, gore, murder.

"knock knock." 

Corinne heard the tap on the door and sighed, the steam from a freshly boiled pot of spaghetti was just starting to open up her sinuses.

She ignored the light knock and continued straining her noodles. The knocking continued- this time a bit louder.

She rolled her eyes, slammed the pot on the counter, and stormed into the living room, where she peeked through the peephole and saw a man in uniform.

She could tell he was some sort of serviceman, so she opened the door ever so slightly and rudely asked "Can I help you? I'm kind of in the middle of something."

She waited impatiently for the young man to respond.

Although taken aback by her rudeness, he kindly replied "Good morning ma'am! I'm here from Incinia. Your neighbor reported a strong smell of gas leaking from somewhere in between your two houses. I'm gonna have a look at everything outside, but-" "You won't have to come inside, will you?" she interrupted.

"um, yes, ma'am, as I was saying, if nothing obvious on the outside is wrong, I would like to take a look at the main pipe inside, make sure everything is good to go before I head out. Have you noticed any strong gas odors today? It's pretty standard to...."

His voice trailed off as the inside of Corinne's head became a frantic stream of anxious thoughts and concerns. Her cheeks were bright red, her ears felt like they were on fire, her heart began beating frantically, her breath became more shallow.

The beginning of a panic attack, she knew the signs well. She slammed the door shut in the man's face, ran to the bathroom, slammed the door shut, and turned on the water and vent fan. She sat on the toilet, put her head between her knees and began breathing deeply, forcing the panic to even out into small puddles of anxiety instead, and then to a simmered steam of reassurances and solutions. 

Once she regained her composure, she opened the front door again, to find a surprised, and, if her mind didn't decieve her, concerned, perhaps, gas company man looking at her. "...Are you okay?" He asked, seeming genuinely worried.

"Yes, yes I'm fine. And yes, it's fine if you come inside, if you insist."

The gas man looked at all the main pipes outside, and found nothing wrong. He walked up to the door and was about to knock when he saw the note.

"I had an emergency, the door is open. Please, don't touch anything and go as soon as you're done. I have cameras and will know if you steal anything." 

"What a strange woman..." He thought, and proceeded to step inside.

At the grocery store around the corner from her house, the woman fidgeted her thumbs in the band-aid section while she internally scolded herself. 

"How could you leave him there with all your things? are you stupid? what if he steals them? even worse, is he judging me right now? 

Oh, of course he is, you idiot! You should have hidden them! 

I didn't have time!

Sure you did, you just didn't have space! Where would you put them, your tub? nope, that's full too! You're pathetic. truly, truly pathetic.

Oh, screw you! surely he's gone by now. after all, I didn't smell any gas in the first place."

There were a lot of shocking things about the inside of Corinne's house, but the first thing that caught Dan's attention was the smell. It hit him in the face like a volcano. First of all, there was most definitely a gas leak. But something even more sinister than that was overpowering his nostrils; something he couldn't quite place- but it was the worst thing he had ever smelt. 

The second thing he noticed, was the soap.

Rarely did he get creeped out by things....but what he saw made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. 

Shelves of soap. Boxes of soap. A christmas tree with soap ornaments. Soap for your face. Soap for your body. Dish soap. Homemade soap. Big name soap. Generic brand soap. Laundry soap. There was an infomercial about soap on the tv. 

There were thousands of bottles and bars of soap. Boxes lined the hallways. 

He walked into the bathroom. There was soap on the sink. Okay, that's normal. but what isn't normal is soap being where the toothpaste goes. Right beside the toothbrush. 

He walked to the kitchen, there was soap. 

He had heard of hoarders, but he thought they collected a bunch of different things. Not just a bunch of one thing. Weird was an understatement.

Corinne was too busy arguing with herself inside of her head to notice the looks people were giving her in the store. Although, perhaps at this point, she was simply use to the looks.

Disgust. 

Contempt.

Pity.

All things that, at some point or another, she had felt in her childhood.

The look of disgust, from students in school, who would tease her and physically abuse her for her grungy outfits, and greasy hair.

It wasn't her fault, how is a 6 year old suppose to know how to practice good hygiene when nobody teaches them?

The look of contempt on all the teachers faces when they scolded her.

 At one point she had tried to wash her hair in the bathroom sink with hand soap, but was reprimanded when a student saw and told the teacher. She was bullied even more after that. They called her 'hand soap' for the rest of the year. 

The look of pity from social workers.

When she was old enough, she figured out how to make it to the supermarket without anyone's help.

She was 8. 

That's the year she started stealing.

The first time her dad caught her, she got beat so badly she couldn't walk for week.

After that, despite his speech on morals, he began requesting things for her to steal things for himself whenever she would leave the house. 

If she couldn't do it, he would beat her.

She got really good at stealing. So good, in fact, she became friends with all the staff, including the manager of the store, and they never suspected a thing throughout the years. 

One time her dad had requested a cigar. She told him she couldn't get them, due to the fact they were behind the registers and you had to ask an employee to get them for you. 

To punish her for her back-talk, he made her drink an entire bottle of hand soap.

She vomited for days. As soon as she was starting to feel better, he came in her room, slowly took off his belt, and told her to pull her pants down.

Whenever she refused, he ripped the covers off her and starting whipping her visciously, over her entire, cowering body. 

He caught her cheek first, leaving a huge gash right below her left eye.

Later that day, he still made her go to the store.

She ended up getting the cigars after she convinced the cashier they werre for her mean dad, who would ground her if she didn't show up with them.

Not too far off from the truth.

She also stole a candy bar that day. It was the least she deserved, she thought.

She shuddered, and pushed the memories out of her head as she walked towards the registers.

Despite Dan's curiosity, he went straight to work. He didn't dare snoop around the house the way he wanted to. He didn't know when she would be back. 

He didn't know if she would rather stay gone and worry about a stranger in the house, or come back and face the embarrasment of someone seeing, and smelling, such a home. He wasn't usually one to judge, but the house was like nothing he'd ever seen before.

He tried to distract himself with the task at hand. Identifying the problem was easy. It was a broken pipe. It looked like something fell on it and bent it, creating a tiny hole in the metal pipe.

He could fix it in a couple of hours. Replace the pipe and he was out of here. He had to go buy the right piece first, so he left a note to Corinne on the front door.

"Ms Schauf, I have to replace your pipe. Gas leak is bad, must be done today. I'll be back in half an hour. See ya soon!"

Before he left he opened a couple windows to let some air in. It was giving him a headache after a few minutes, and he wasn't looking forward to being here for hours.

Corinne was about to check out when a delightful scent caught her attention. She followed her nose and it led to the soap aisle. 

She walked towards it slowly, savoring the moment. The smell of soap, something she never had as a child, was now addicting to her. She couldn't get enough. Before she was old enough to get a job, she would go every friday and, hidden between the legs of the adult shoppers, slip a bar or a bottle of soap into her coat pocket and leave the store virtually unnoticed. She did this every week for a year. She began using so much soap her skin became dry and cracked. 

Even as an adult with a job who could now afford it, she felt compelled to continue her routine every week. 

"Ah, a new scent from Dove. Lemongrass Lavender, how lovely." She muttered to herself. Looking around, she made sure nobody could see her, and quickly and casually slipped the bottle of soap into her purse. 

She left unnoticed as usual. 

Walking up to the porch, she spotted Dan's note. After cussing profusely, she resigned to being on the back porch while he worked. 

Weird, she never smelt any gas. She made a pit stop in her bedroom and put the soap on the nightstand. She enjoyed sleeping with it the first night. Her therapist said it might have something to do with her dad spanking her in the same place as he made her eat soap, the bedroom. The two events triggered a routine like response that she compulsively carries out on a weekly basis. 

Corinne always felt that there was something more to it, though. Some tiny detail that she was forgetting, like it was there, but hiding behind a screen. 

Or a shield.

Maybe her brain was hiding something from her. Something too bad to remember. 

They say the worse the coping mechanism, the worse the truama. 

'Good thing my coping mechanisms aren't that bad...' She thought, and looked down at her hand.

Her fingers were bleeding. Dry spots she had been picking at all day.

She walked to the bathroom, closed the door, and washed her hands.

Dan worked quickly. Not only did he feel unwelcome from the start, but the smell of the place was so bad, it was taking everything in him not physically gag the entire time. After unscrewing the broken pipe, he noticed a can in the corner of the small room holding the water heater. His curiosity got the best of him and before he knew what he was doing, he had grabbed the can and pried the lid off. 

What he saw inside shocked him. He dropped the can and backed away.

Outside, Corinne heard a loud clang, and wondered figured all the commotion must have had something to do with the pipes being repaired. Little did she know her biggest secret had just been discovered. All these years she had been trying to cover what had happened to her so hard, that she never stopped to think about the holes in the cover. like the fact that she lost her sense of smell from eating soap for the past 30 years.

Or the fact that every man she saw that looked like him took her back to the moments her own father raped her, and that it was the only way she could get the taste out of her mouth. 

Or that she had been gifted such a hatred for men that it was beyond her control the way she dealt with the ones that reminded her of him. She tried to erase the thoughts from her head by getting into gardening. It helped a lot. One day, she had come across some information regarding fertilizers. 

It was controversial, but scientists were saying that human fertilizer is actually the best.

Dan reached for his phone to call the cops, when he noticed something else.

The can that had fallen had come from a shelf above him, although it was so far up it was in the attic. What he saw up there gave him chills. 

Soap wasn't the only collection Corinne had in her house. 

This was the smell that overpowered the soap when he first walked in. 

As corinne fertilized her rose bushes, she noticed how quiet it had gotten inside. 

"Human fertilizer, huh? Well that makes sense. I bet men make the best then, since they're so full of shit." 

That was 20 years ago. Only problem with human fertilizar is, its illegal.

Laws, Corinne felt, were for the average person, and she was far from average. 

Every memory she had of being abused was stored away deep inside of her. The only way she felt she could get it out was by stealing soap.

She told herself that for every bottle of soap she stole, she was transferring some of her trauma to it, and then she would eat it.

That would stop the memory from ever affecting her again. 

Only problem is, there was far too many. If she ate her way through that much soap, she would surely die.

She couldn't even smell the gas leak in her own house.

Dan could hardly describe what he was seeing.

It smelled like fertilizer...but something was so off about it, like the fertilizer wasn't made right.

And the texture was weird. It didn't just look like dirt, or cow shit.

It looked like, he didn't even want to think it, ground up bones and pieces of skin. Human skin.

He fumbled for his phone again, and dialed 911. 

"911, what's your emergency?"

"Hi, um, I'd like to report a suspected crime. This is gonna sound crazy, but I think this old lady is-"

THWACK 

He was hit on the back of his head with something extremely hard, and knocked unconscious.

Corinne was old and feeble, but she wasn't new to this process.

She had dealth with many men in such a manner. Men who would have her locked up.

But she had done nothing wrong, you see.

She had only put the dead to good use.

Like her father.

The day he slipped and fell off the roof, she was left all alone to clean up the mess herself.

She chopped him up into pieces, cooked him in the oven, and ground him into fertilizer. Then reported him as a missing person.

She did the same to her first husband, although she didn't report that. Nobody would miss him and they had a joint bank account anyways where his retirement would continue to flow into. 

And now this new man. Another trauma to resolve.

She didn't know what she did wrong, but she knew she needed to wash her mouth out.