Ersa

(continued from Kemesh's House)

A breath of sweet saccharine came in behind me. This was not your everyday plume, no, no, not this no not never. Mib do you smell that? I said, but it was too late, I was outside her ten-foot hearing range. Mib? Still nothing. My own ears, trusty, they were still hanging on there, they. You two still with me? I said, and sure enough I was sure I said it. The heweh sound of with was even audible, that. My stars.

So it was upon me and me alone to turn up those stairs and seek out this pallor. Step one, step one, step one, I said aloud (and sure of it) for in these mephitic times the numbers tend not to go up but in, not down but in. Finally I reached step one and the smell was stronger still. These are some days, these. Are you on to something Ersa? Mib said from the bottom of the stairs, Are you on a trail? Sniff sniff my nose replied. Can you hear me Ersa? Mib said again. She needed visible evidence, it was clear, so I raised my hand, hush.

I left her and headed toward a window down the hall upstairs. It wasn’t getting any stronger necessarily but the dust down the hall had been disrupted, I could see that, I could see that in the way it waited around in front of the window. Crick crick went the floorboards beneath the carpet. Can you hear me? Mib said once more, belching like the trusty foghorn out on Hare Wick point. She, Mib, bone and morrow. As things turned out the smell was indeed getting more something. The dust paid its respects as I blustered in and reached for the knob of a door as yet unseen. As…yet………….unseen….and opened it.

Center of the room stood a creature the likes of which I don’t feel at liberty to describe. My, I said, this is a big one. It was draped in stretch blue from head to heel and from the sides of its head sat these scraggly-looking dust mops. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was overweight – not knowing what truly constitutes the species’ range of girth – but were he man I would not hesitate to say he were fat, no. And how. My eyes traced up his dimpled forelegs, over a strange turnip that must have been the source of his reproductions, over the vast pillow of a midsection, only arriving at last at his eyes. They met my look and replied to it with a serenity not known since the sweet pulp slid south through Eve’s untarnished pubic hair. I did the only thing I could think to do and sat entranced. That were the last thing I remember with any amount of certainty.