What’s that wretched smell? Not wanting to be rude, especially within five minutes of arriving, I kept this thought to myself. But the putrescent funk that leapt up my nostrils at my parents’ front door hounded the wife and me all the way down the hall, like an attentive but gassy poodle. It lingered outside the bedroom as we set down our bags then circled us as we reemerged. And as we descended the basement stairs to the TV room and my dad’s office, so my mother could show us the damage we’d come to repair, the noxious cloud closed in.

“We’re getting rid of the broken recliner,” she said as she waved her hand through the rank basement air. “And the carpet’s going.”
The ratty blue shag had been peeled back from one wall, exposing the encrusted padding.

Cobwebs dangled from the acoustic tiles overhead. I sniffed the room’s corners for the stink’s source, meantime estimating how many tubs of spackle it would take to fill the dings and divots and also plug my nasal passages.
“We had a guy seal the cracks where the flood came in,” my mother went on, clearly embarrassed by the squalor yet too kind to lay blame.

For two years, while she and my father lived overseas, my house-sitting brother neglected even the basic repairs, ripping out only the most sodden strip of carpet after the flood and reattaching a broken doorknob at the front of the house as-needed — and otherwise storing it atop the adjacent light fixture. My father, since returning home, had been grading papers in his mildew dungeon as if nothing were amiss, and had solved the unrelated doorknob dilemma by attaching a cheap brassy lever so that its immovable handle extended the wrong direction, beyond the doorframe, like a mailbox flag at half-mast.

Despite the evidence, my mother spoke as if the house’s recent deterioration resulted from the meddling fingers of a vengeful god.
“You can see what shape the walls are in,” she sighed. “I guess the flood was pretty bad.”
“That’s one explanation,” I mumbled.
“And then there’s the odor, which is not from the flood,” my mom conceded. “I put out some baking soda, but it doesn’t seem to do the trick.”

Unfortunately, neither did holding my breath. Within 48 hours, the strengthening stench had permeated my piriform cortex then migrated all the way to my medial amygdale, triggering a series of ghastly, even shameful recollections. As I was edging the trim outside the bathroom, recalling the cat urine and mold spores that plagued us at the outset of our own renovations, my heart grew sick with memory.

Then, as I crawled along the baseboard and accidentally inhaled, it hit me hard. I had located the problem. My brother shoved his schnoz into the quarter-inch gap beside the laundry room door to confirm my hunch and reeled back, coughing, as I grabbed a hammer.

A moment later I’d knocked a softball-sized hole in the drywall while my family looked on. “Flashlight,” I commanded with veteran confidence. My brother dutifully illuminated the opening while I peered in at the corpse of a tiny house mouse curled between the studs. “For the love of God,” I whispered as the flashlight’s feeble ray danced upon its folded grey ear. “It’s like the ‘Cask of Amontillado.’”

Two years ago, of course, I would have turned such a moment into a metaphor for my own immurement, quoting Poe and bemoaning a thousand overblown injuries. This time, however, fully confident in my ability to smash holes when necessary then patch them, good as new, I merely fished out the dead creature, tossed him in the trash and got back to work.

Craig Brandhorst is a freelance writer. To read more  visit his blog at deconstructionfables.wordpress.com.