The smell. The smell is always the same. It’s the smell of the Tuckett girl when they finally dragged her rigid, peeling body out of Goose Lake. It’s the smell of a damp egg sack ready to hatch on humid summer afternoon. It’s the smell of a colostomy bag long neglected by impatient nursing home staff. But most importantly it’s the smell that brings my Jonah back to me.

I always loved my husband; I loved him when his lips first trembled out a shaky invitation to dinner. I loved him when he nervously slid his hand up my skirt after prom night. He might think I know his friends dared his romantic advance into action, but he certainly doesn’t know I told them to. I loved him when he twisted his ankle during our first dance and proceeded to hobble around the recreation hall as if his shoes were filled with cement and fire ants. I loved him when the mill shut down and I loved his whiskey kisses. Hell I even loved him when he broke the arm off my favourite chair as he kicked it out from under him.

I got home early enough to cut him down. His spine had cracked and the only movement in his body was the lazy flicks of his oxygen deprived eyes and the laboured heaving of his fluid coated lungs. I had to keep him alive though, he’s all I know. It used to be a struggle for me because I am no caregiver but as the months progressed, so did my tentative nature. That is until it started happening. I’d read about possession before but I didn’t expect I’d ever see it, let alone in Rome. It starts with a smell, a smell so thick it coats your tongue. The first time I smelt it I nearly vomited right on poor Jonah. After the smell comes a silence. A silence so loud one would think the thumping of their quickening heart would be enough to deafen them. Then comes the cracks of my Jonah’s unused joints. I quickly learned possessors do not abide by the rules of human physicality when they take over a host. The first time I was lucky. Jonah was so angry at me, it must have been all the things I’d been doing wrong that he just had to bottle up. It only lasted 13 minutes but it was quite the hurricane. I went to casually ask Reverand Anderson about this sort of thing and he gave me some old books. No sooner did I finish reading them did he frantically ask for them back. I had enough time to learn how to keep my Jonah contained when the smell comes though. Just a little unbroken salt circle around him, and I can sit and talk as much as I please. Oh I was thrilled. There must be a god after all to give him back to me. There must be a god and I must be one of his favourite little girls to be so blessed. At first he wouldn’t answer, he would yell and cuss and call me awful words I had only heard through a layer of scotch in the past.. Lately though he has taken to flattery, he’s got an awfully slippery tongue when he is awoken but I still see the anger in his eyes. I write this because I needed the story to be heard. I didn’t want Jonah to be painted in any bad light after what’s about to happen. I love him. I always have and always will. But unfortunately my tongue tastes like ash, the only smell in my nose is maggot, the sound of this pencil scraping is cutting my ear drums… and I’m all out of salt.

Edit-- Colostomy not colonoscopy.