SMNTY Fiction: Gone to Rot

A woman searches for a new home. She finds one, but not the one she expected.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, Sanny and Samantha. I'm welcome stuff I never told
you production of My Heart Radio, and we are back
with another edition of Sminty Fiction, which is something that
we do about once a month. I think we're going

(00:26):
to take a break for the rest of the year
because they are more time consuming for Christina. We just
wrapped up the three part the trilogy of Terminus, so
if you want to go check that out, they're all
out now. If you're someone who likes to binge, this
is just a creepy little one shot for Halloween, and
yeah it is. It's got these sound effects that Christina

(00:49):
puts in there and makes it amazing. I really enjoyed
writing this. It's you know that Samantha and I love
like a good kind of story. I'm trying to really
get into the Halloween mood right now, and this was
a fun one to write. I do have a big

(01:10):
caveat that I'm going to put at the end, but
you have to wait till the end to hear it.
But if you're listening to this when it comes out,
it is Halloween. So well, Halloween, Happy Halloween, and let's
get into this fiction. It was hard to pinpoint when

(01:32):
her life fell apart when she let things fall apart,
and the thing was by the time she realized it happened,
it was too late. How far back did she have
to go to find where things went wrong? Was it
a series of multiple bad decisions? Was it a culmination
of things outside of her control? The sensation of everything

(01:57):
being wrong seeped into her life slowly and then crashed
over her like a hurricane. As soon as she graduated college,
she moved out of her small hometown and into a
small apartment in a big city. While the space was limited,
it somehow felt larger than anywhere else she'd ever lived.

(02:18):
It was hers to fill more room, to reinvent herself,
to try new things, to just exist without every single
person whispering about it. Anonymity, freedom from the expectations of
who she was projected onto her by others that trapped
her in an internal performance. At first, it was very liberating,

(02:41):
like removing an old, heavy, constricting coat, but she soon
found out she was putting on a new one, something
that felt lighter and less effocating until the days it
didn't until the days, the proverbial coat didn't offer the
protection she wanted, and drew more danger than offered safety,

(03:03):
closing around her neck like a noose. To be a
stranger in a new place, trying to figure out how
to behave to keep herself safe, to find whoever she
was without all of the shared memories and histories that
informed her own opinion of herself was a weight that
grew increasingly heavier. Trying to make herself a home, or

(03:25):
at least a place to go to feel safe, a
task increasingly daunting. Over time, the armor it took to
go outside became exhausting, and she stayed in more and
more and more. While she couldn't know when things started
to go wrong, she didn't know when she started noticing things.

(03:49):
The first instance that stood out in her mind was
that the sink would be clean when she went to
sleep at night, a pristine white, and in the morning
sponged with black. Every morning she clinged it with a
tired but grim, detached determination. She purchased a water filter
and tried not to think about how long she'd been
drinking that water. Without question. She contacted her landlord and

(04:13):
was assured it was normal. So it just became a
piece of her life, a ritual in her mornings, something
to live with something to be erased. If she had
guessed nothing to worry about, nothing she couldn't handle. One day,
her smoke detector went off for no reason, no smoke,

(04:35):
fresh battery, and still it rang on like a clocksain
until she detached the whole thing, and a cloud of
ash crashed into her face and into her mouth and nose.
She couldn't stop herself from breathing it in. Her lungs
caught and she toppled backwards off her step ladder, landing
hard on the hardwood floor, pain lancing through her back

(04:57):
and head, ears ringing, and blackness encroaching her vision. She
struggled to take a breath, coughing harshly, Dimly aware the
alarm was still ringing, She blinked rapidly to rid her
eyes of ash, sucking in air, and the alarm stopped.
The air felt heavy and resulting silence sore, she pushed

(05:21):
herself to her feet, stumbling to the bathroom to furiously
scrub the ash off her face, gagging at the feel
of it in her mouth. When she finally could open
her eyes, her chest heaving and tight, the first thing
she focused on was the black, curling and dotting from
her sink, so she cleaned that too, just as she

(05:44):
had in the mornings over and over. Her mirror was
dirty when she glanced up into it, she didn't care
to clean it. As the weather got cooler, she started
to notice a series of banging sound loud metallic clanks.
They woke her in the night with their sudden demands

(06:05):
for attention. In their newness to her used to her
small town cicadas, the mysterious clangings made her feel small.
Was this just something she didn't know about? Was this
a normal part of living in a city and she
was just ignorant? She lay awake, her skin crawling on edge,
waiting for every unpredictable bang. Then a new sound came,

(06:31):
a hissing sharp in the dark. She shot up in bed,
breath catching in her throat trembling. She turned towards the source,
and in the moonlight she could see swirling steam illuminated
in the opening to the kitchen. The hissing got louder
and louder. Suddenly there was the sound of water spewing

(06:53):
out in hisses, steam billowing into the small space with
frightening speed the air until she was coughing again until
she felt like she was drowning in it. She careened
out of the bed, the steam hot and sticking to
her skin. Her hair grew heavy with dampness, and she
was uncomfortably warm. The water collecting on her peeling towel

(07:15):
floor made her toes curl. More water poured from the
detached tradiator pipe in her kitchen. The water was black,
with some kind of debris spilling across the checkered, white
and black floor above her. The crack and the ceiling
split even further at the dampness. Panicked, she scrambled under
the sink for a bucket and put it under the

(07:37):
spitting pipe bucket. After a bucket of hot, black water
collected and poured into the sink, the smoke alarm went
off again. She jerked, spilling hot water on herself, burning
her skin. Staggering, she poured the water into the sink,
the squealing from the pipe spiking into her brain a sharp, ringing,
creshndoing sound until it all stopped. The alarm stopped blaring,

(08:04):
the whining, the banging, the hissing of the steam. Slowly,
she realized the only sound she could hear was her
own ragged breathing the slow drip of water from the pipe.
She cleaned the floor, racing what had happened, but she
couldn't erase the burns on her hands and feet, nor

(08:26):
the memory from her mind. It lingered at night, keeping
her awake. Over the next few weeks, the radiator would
occasionally clang, the pipe would steam and drip. She was
assured it was normal. Every morning she cleaned the sink,
and the nights came earlier and earlier. The air was cool,

(08:47):
the changing leaves rustling against her windows like fingers, something
trying to get in. Searching for normalcy, to create a
sense of home, she purchased a pumpkin. She had to
care mary it awkwardly on the walk to her apartment
because her car wouldn't start, another thing to add to
her ever growing list of problems. With a strange sense

(09:10):
of dutiful detachment, she scooped out the pumpkin guts and
carved a face into it, a grim smile with menacing eyes.
She studied the face staring back at her, wondering at
how she felt just as empty as the pumpkin, This
empty gourd held by this empty body, and this empty apartment.

(09:32):
Her silence was loud in her ears. Her breath fogged
in front of her face. The next morning, when she
stood by her car trying to diagnose why it wouldn't start,
the door resisted. When she tried to open it, violent
coughs erupted out of her throat. When she did so,
a puff of dust billowed out, accompanied by the smell

(09:52):
of mildew. Blinking, she swiped at her eyes at the
back of her hand. The inside of her car was
coated in dust and gross that looked like some sort
of roots, veins branching off in all directions. Small blue
mushrooms sprouted from the vents. Horrified, she slammed the door shut,

(10:14):
the wind sending leaves swirling around her. What if she'd
breathed in spores? What if it was something toxic? Why
was it growing in her car? She locked the door,
resolving to deal with it later. Everything would be better later,
She would have the strength to deal with it later.

(10:36):
It was not soon after that she started noticing the bugs.
Small cockroaches get her out of sight. Spiders gone as
soon as she saw them. Their numbers were enough to
make her skin itch, keep her lying awake, keep her
from turning on the lights at night for fear of
what she would see. Her apartment getting smaller and smaller.

(10:58):
The refrigerator stopped working, and all of her food rotted,
filling the space with the sickeningly sweet scent, and a
ray of multicolored molds grew along the walls of the
once gleaming white innards of the fridge. Flies and maggots
feasting on the rot. Her stomach roiled, her throat dry,
her body heaving. She closed the door, promising to deal

(11:21):
with this problem later. Over the days, the pumpkins slumped
in on itself, its face collapsing slowly, inexorably. Black mold
lined the cuts that she'd made, the eyes, the mouth,
the nose, the teeth. The smell of rot permeated her apartment.
Blue mushrooms, just like those in her car, started to

(11:43):
grow from the pumpkins collapsed mall liquid leaked from it rancid.
She cleaned it up like everything else, covered it up
as best she could, But the pumpkins she kept. She
couldn't find in herself to throw it away, even when
dark black vines started to creep from it along the

(12:06):
floors and along the walls. Deep purple flowers sprouted around
the top, spouting spores into the small space She breathed
them in. She drank the water, dark with mold. The
cracks in her walls and ceilings split apart, dark veins
spilling from them like a spider web. They cracked across

(12:27):
her own skin, small blue mushrooms blooming along them. She
stared at the pumpkin, her skin melding into the wooden floor,
too tired to move, long full with spores, she could
imagine the mushrooms sprouting in her lungs, an entire colony,
stealing all of her air. The vines wrapped around her calves,

(12:50):
anchoring her to the floor. She could feel the mushrooms
dotting her face, her eyes, her ears, the edges of
her mouth. She could feel them in her heart, seeking
life and growth. At least she was no longer empty.
She stared at the pumpkin, rotting and home to new life,

(13:14):
and thought, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll let it get
so far. But nothing could convince her to move, nothing
could convince her to fight her own rotting, her own
consumption transformation. As the blue mushrooms pushed painfully out of

(13:35):
her skin. She breathed, and her breath caught in the
steam from the boiler so that she could see spores. Home,
she thought, and then she didn't think anything anymore. And

(14:10):
that brings us to the end of this short fiction episode.
I really hope you enjoyed it. I have to say
the caveat I brought up. This is not a cry
for help, I promise, but it is all based on
things that have happened in my apartments. Oh no, they

(14:30):
are exaggerated, hopefully obviously, but all of this comes from
something that did happen in my apartment. And I got
to thinking about how when you condense those things down,
it does sound like a haunting. It sounds like something
is a miss. And my mom was staying with me

(14:51):
last night, and it was funny how many times she'd
be like, is it supposed to do that? Or be
like that? And I just would shrugg and I'm like, yeah,
I think so. I've been living here for ten years.
I don't know, uh, And I've thought that after staying
at your place, Samantha Ware. You know, sometimes you just
have these things that if it was through the frame

(15:13):
of a horror movie, everybody in the audience would be
screaming at you to get out. But when it's just
kind of your life and it's you know, your old
boilers acting up again, you don't. All you are is
annoyed that the broiler is acting up. It's just another
rat eating through my dishwasher exactly, which is a thing

(15:33):
that did happen to Cement. But you could see that
in a horror movie. Absolutely, as my dog's starting to
stare into the void, Yes, Peaches, she does have that
kind of haunted horror movie dog vibe too, And then
she she'll stare at something, she'll bark and there's nothing there. Yes,
another thing. We've discussed this in recent and not so

(15:59):
recent episodes, horror episodes, but the thing about the mushrooms
is actually true. That did happen in both my car,
my refrigerator, and actually a pumpkin. So I didn't I
exaggerated it a lot. This is not a cry for help,

(16:19):
but that did happen. I like that caveat everybody's going
to be a get out of that apartment, right, Yes,
And I realized as we were recording this intro an outro,
I haven't named this yet. I will come up with
a name, but it is as of yet unnamed, but
you will know when it publishes what it is called. Hey, Samantha,

(16:47):
you got this this? I already have a couple. I
have a couple of ideas. I just I and you
know we love a good title. I can't believe I
forgot this. I know I can't believe in it either. Actually,
usually I start with the time. That's how I tell
them exactly the thought. It's like, I usually think of
the title first. Yeah, I usually do too. I guess

(17:08):
I was just I was doing something different anyway, Happy Halloween, Hallen. Yes, listeners,
we would love to hear from you. If you're doing
anything fun or if you have any ideas for what
we can do with this fiction segment, please let us know.
You can email us at Hello at stuff Onenever Told
You dot com. You can find us on Blue Skyite
Mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff

(17:29):
I Never Told You were also on YouTube. We have
some new merchandise at Cotton Bureau, and we have a
book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
as always too, our super producer Christina Exeter, Prusino Maya
and a contributor Joey, thank you, and thanks to you
for listening. Stuff Never Told You is Prediction by heart Radio.
For more podcasts from My heart Radio, you can check
out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast or if you

(17:50):
listen to your favorite shows, Yes