Note: This event occurred in December.
Three days ago, a foul stench began wafting from my food cupboard. The first day it was unpleasant. The second day it was slightly reeking. The third day it was vile, and I was disturbed. Not able to take the stench any longer and worrying about my past few days’ indifference to hygiene, I shoved aside the objects on the counter and began pulling items from my cupboard, passing each item near my nose on its way out, hunting for the foul source.
Cereal #1? No.
Lentils? No.
Peanut butter? No.
Cereal #2? No.
Bananas? No.
Out each item went, subjected to nose inspection.
Cajun spice? No.
Cereal #3? No.
Apples? No.
Oatmeal? No.
The contents of my cupboard spilled across the counter until one item remained. Tentatively, with a single foreboding finger, I reached into the barren cupboard, and hesitating, slightly lifted the lid on the crate of brown eggs.
My hand whipped back, clamping over my mouth and nose, spurred by some primal instinct of self-preservation.
Definitely the eggs.
With one hand still over my smell orifice, I pulled the egg crate out of the cupboard, setting it on the counter. Then taking a deep breath, I opened the lid, fully, stench curling through the air, slipping between the cracks of my fingers.
I flung open the window, sticking my head out, inhaling deep breaths of cold December air. Lungs stinging, I pulled my head back in, and breathing as shallowly as possible, I returned to the eggs. They were tan, smooth, egg-shaped. From the outside, I couldn’t see anything wrong. Gingerly, anticipating regret, I lifted an egg out of the crate and sniffed.
Relief. It smelt like an eggshell.
I lifted out a second egg and sniffed—fine. Down the row I went.
Fine.
Fine.
Fine.
Holy shit!
I almost dropped it, tightening my grip just in time. I had found the source.
Making sure that this egg was the only culprit, I sniffed each of the remaining eggs. All fine.
I looked back at the reeking egg in wonder. How could something so small give off something so powerful? I held it up to the light, turning it, tilting it. It looked like all the other eggs, tan, smooth, dry. Taking a deep breath, I drew the egg closer. And closer. And closer. Finally, five inches from my pupils, I could just make out faint, black lines running along the outside of the shell, veiny, twisted lines like a scrawled message from a fine-tipped pen.
Suddenly, I knew this egg was not like all the other eggs. Something unnatural, something dark and dangerous lay in my hand. And I knew this egg, this thing needed to be destroyed. Immediately. But how?
I couldn’t throw it in the bin; it would break and breed its smell throughout the kitchen for weeks.
I couldn’t throw it outside; it would smash and attack every person who walked by with its stench.
There was only option left. Besides…I was curious to what lay inside.
Taking one last look at the cryptic veins, I made my decision. Expanding my abdomen wide with breath and raising the egg above the sink, I brought my hand down, hard, locking my lungs, fragile shell smashing against stainless steel, cracking the egg in two. Out gushed, watery, green liquid, spewing like a projectile vomit of snot. A similar liquid shuddered up my body, searing the back of my throat.
Holding my head as far back as possible, mouth sour, air still locked, I tilted half the broken shell towards me, and angling my head, peered into its depths. There, sitting at the bottom, perfectly round, perfectly still, sheenless, sat a death-black yolk, waiting, watching, staring, unblinking.
Air running low, I tilted my hand further. The death-black yolk slipped forward, nearing the edge of the shell, poised to slide out; when the yolk caught the broken edge, tearing the membrane, rupturing the perfect roundness. And from that tear, out dribbled, deadly, hauntingly, slowly, thick black liquid, dripping from my hand onto the gleaming metal, seeping into the sink, lost in the unseen bowels of twisted pipes.
Staring at the bleeding yolk, my lungs began to shudder. Air expired. Chest, throat, face burning. Heart screaming, demanding oxygen. Throat closing, feeling a red hand circling round, squeezing. I glanced at the open window, but it was too late. My nostrils flared, wide. Lungs filling, desperately, hungrily. Stomach retching.
Dropping the shell into the sink, I threw my head out the window, blast of frozen air hitting my face; but the stench followed me out into the winter, burying into my skin, infesting my hair, coiling between the fabric of my clothes, and crawling, crawling, crawling into my nostrils.
I wanted to light my nose hairs on fire. Send all sense of smell into an orange and blue blaze. I inhaled the icy air, again and again. Cold searing my nostrils. Capillaries bursting. Fire ripping down my windpipe and deep into my lungs. I welcomed the pain. Breathing, feeding the fire, praying to kill the crawling, to smolder the smell.
But still the stench cut through the biting wind.
I began coughing. Bile rising. Wind howling.
What was scrawled on that outside of that egg I will never know. But what I do know is that that egg was the Egg of Death. And it smelt, not like rotting eggs, but like the rotting, shit-caked shithole of the diabolic chicken created by Satan to lay that Egg of Death. And once fertilized, that Egg of Death would take over the world, rallying the Chicken Zombie Apocalypse. But plans went array, and instead of fertilization, the Egg of Death arrived in my egg crate and is now lost in the Birmingham, UK water system.
World, your welcome. Birmingham, sacrifices must be made.
