The Scent of Sin
“Smells, I think, may be the last thing on earth to die.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past
I
Thomas finally opened his eyes. He noticed that his wife Rosemary was asleep beside him; he wasn’t aware of the moment she came to join him on the bed. He checked the alarm clock by the side of the bed, it was quarter past 4 A.M. In a few minutes the sun would rise. Even though he slept for only a few hours, his eyes felt blank, there was so much on his mind, that overwhelmed him. Her scent distracting his thoughts. She had gone to visit her lover again.
It was age. They had met each other and married quite young, so it was only natural when they burnt through their love, exhausting all the romance they had left. Now, there was nothing left but silence and boredom, which plagued the home they shared. At first both their careers took centre stage, distracting the fact that they were further driving a large wedge in-between the bond they once shared. But with time, it became apparent that the fire of their love was extinguished. For someone who smiled frequently, she consistently wore a frown when at home with him. They barely spoke, and for the few times they did, they argued fiercely over flimsy reasons. Then they began avoiding each other, which further expanded the rift between them.
They tried counselling, it didn’t work. They also tried improving the sex, but it failed. His touch made her recoil, and her skin harden. Her touch didn’t move him anymore. They tried oral sex, which further irritated both. At this point they were exhausted. They were merely housemates, nothing joined them, both superficially and emotionally.
Then something began to change. Rosemary began to smile often, to her phone. She wore more make up, dressed sweetly. He was confused at the sudden change, but he kept shut. Then the late nights began, the early mornings, the peachy and lavender scent, the occasional wine stains on her dress, the hickey on her neck, which she tries hard to hide with scarves which fails. At first, he felt anger and rage build up in his guts, which lasted for days. Then the shame and embarrassment he felt when he finally found them together – her lover, Philip. The way her body melted in his. The way she smiled and laughed heartily at his words. His deep baritone voice, his body, the colour blend of his clothes, the firmness of his grip over her waist, all these exposing Thomas’s insecurities. The day he discovered them several weeks back, he didn’t confront her, instead he went straight to bed once he got home.
He loved her once – His wife. A very long time ago, does he still love her? He couldn’t say. But he knew for certain that he just wasn’t comfortable seeing her in the presence of another man. He was aware that it makes him a jealous or selfish person, but what man would be comfortable with his wife’s constant scent of sin?
Tonight, he would confront her. Tonight, he would salvage what was left of their relationship. His phone vibrated, a message, it read: “See you tonight XOXO….” From his lover, Sandy.
He would postpone the confrontation tonight. Instead, tonight, He’d prefer to be distracted by the warm, soft and moist insides of her----Sandy.
II
It was in the heat of the moment with Thomas’s tongue lashing beneath his lover’s thighs that he heard his phone ring. He ignored the first ring, but the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. So, with a groan, he lifted his head from his duty and grabbed the phone, without looking to the screen to figure out who was calling, he screamed: what?
The call was from Rosemary, his wife. She sounded soft, he wondered why she had called him, sounding off alarm bells all over his head. She managed to say: I need your help, I think, he’s dead. Before the line cut. His manhood went limp, a confused brow rising from his lover’s face. He began muttering to himself, who died? How? While he began fiddling with the keys on his phone trying to call her back. After a few minutes, he reached her, he immediately blurted out, where are you? Her voice was coarse, he sensed that she was in tears, she manged to reply, I’ll text you the address.
Like a wild bull caught in a chase, Thomas bolted out of his lover’s house grabbing his clothes. In a few minutes which seemed like forever he found himself in the hotel. He had not known how himself or his car got there so fast and in one piece. He got to the room, knocked twice, entered, and was immediately hit by the scent of his wife’s perfume. He looked around the room and saw Philip, his enemy – her lover, lying lifeless on the bed, naked. She was seated beside him, wrapped in one of the sheets, looking rough, sobbing.
Thomas immediately went to his side, checked his pulse and to his amazement discovered that Philip had a very weak pulse. Immediately he started CPR and screamed at Rosemary to help him adjust her lover into an elevated position. He spaced the compressions, checking for pulse and began asking her general questions to understand how Philip might’ve ended up in this position. From her story he figured that he probably went out of breath, while they had sex. Thomas immediately instructed Rosemary to check Philip’s bag and possessions for an asthma inhaler while he continued with the compressions. After a few minutes of frantic searching, she finally found it. Thomas immediately inserted the inhaler into Philip’s mouth, pressing it down. After pressing the inhaler for more than three times he regained consciousness. Wheezing and coughing, Thomas immediately told Rosemary to call an ambulance to assist Philip’s recovery. Thomas waited in the room till the ambulance came, the wait was dreadful for him, Rosemary was filled with shame, her lover – Philip, grateful to be alive. She was fully dressed once the emergency services came, Thomas took the time to explain what happened and what he did to resuscitate him to the team in charge, and they took it from there. Thomas left the room, took a very long sigh, and started the long journey in search of his car.
By the time Thomas found the car, he was long exhausted. He noticed that he had parked haphazardly and even left the key in the ignition, he also noticed a pink ticket on the windscreen showing that he had been fined for wrongful parking. He was too tired to pay any attention, he grabbed the ticket, squeezed it into a ball and threw it into the car. He sat down behind the steering, checked his phone, and saw numerous call and text notifications from Sandy – his lover. She was worried, understandably. Just as he was about to pull the car out to head home, he heard a light knock on the side window, it was his adulterous wife, Rosemary standing with her bag by her side. He unlocked the doors; she stepped inside the car, and they went home.
The ride home was long, silent, and tortuous. When they got home, they respectively went to bed and back to their former lives, like nothing happened. Nothing happened, except a person almost died.
III
They both woke up the next morning to a banging noise on their door. Thomas went to check who it was. He peeped through the pin hole and saw armed officers by the door, holding a warrant. Shocked he opened the door and they immediately walked in asking for his name, he told them, and he was immediately placed in handcuffs and told he was being arrested for attempted murder. By this time, Rosemary was also out and was confused, she kept screaming at the officers till he was led away.
For more than five hours he was left alone in a poor lit room, his throat dry, his wrists hurting, his feet hurting too and his head aching. Suddenly two officers came in, introduced themselves and began explaining why he was arrested. The charge was that he had caught his wife cheating on him with the defendant and then attacked him, thus, knocking him unconscious to the point of death. He tried explaining himself over and over, telling the officers what he knew and what happened, including how he had helped, but they didn’t believe him. When it seemed like the more, he spoke, the more he implicated himself, he decided to keep shut and request for the presence of a legal counsel. He was led to a prison cell, there he spent the next two days, alone and hungry.
By the time the legal counsel came, he was already on the way to court. The lawyer he was provided didn’t seem too keen to hear his side of his story. The court process went swiftly and after the initial hearing he was denied bail and remanded in custody to be transferred to a minimum-security prison to await trial and sentencing. The whole thing looked like a dream to him. He couldn’t imagine how the whole process seemed staged, like someone was pulling the strings and he had just fallen six feet deep into the trap.
The day after the initial court hearing he was transferred to the minimum-security prison. On getting to the prison, a guard gave him a Bible. Inside the bible there was a letter, addressed to him, he could recognize the handwriting. It was his wife.
Also enclosed in the letter were divorce papers. That was when he realized that all he had suspected were true. He had been set up. In the letter she wrote about how she had loved him and how they had fallen apart, also highlighting how she felt when she discovered that he had began cheating on her. How she had devised this plan with her lover to punish him for the numerous years of neglect and betrayal. She concluded the letter by imploring him to sign the letters and not fight her, because her lover was a very influential man who had various the resources at his disposal.
The first night in the prison was very excruciating. His thoughts almost drove him insane. That morning he borrowed a pen, signed the papers, and delivered it to the guard. He accepted his fate and resolved with his conscience that he was paying the price for being an unfaithful husband and for not trying hard enough to fix his marriage. If this was penance, then he was ready to pay it back in full.
Eighteen months after, he was released. The previous judged had died mysteriously and the new judge the case was transferred to, didn’t think the case had any merits. He didn’t know what to do with his freedom, he was homeless and without any friends or family.
But all of this happened more than fifteen years ago. He eventually found his feet, after starting afresh. A few short years after his ordeal and release, It was all over the news that his ex-wife was gruesomely murdered by her husband – Philip, who was now serving the rest of his lifetime in jail. None of Rosemary’s misfortunes gave him joy or closure. Instead, they provided him with extreme grieve towards the way she ended and the way their love ended. Even now as a middle-aged man with a wife and kids who mean the world to him, he still sometimes remembers the scent of his sins which will forever linger around him.
Note: This story doesn’t represent anyone dead or alive. Any identical character or representation is purely coincidental.
The author of this story is not prejudiced towards any person(s) or gender. The author won’t be responsible for any misrepresentation.