AI

Smell Complaint

a horror short story

 

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A peaceful building with cozy apartments, and neighbors who keep to themselves; it seemed like a perfect place for Lena to run away to after her life in Finland met a dark end. This beginning grants her a new home, a new remote job...and a new, ever escalating problem.

 

First start the tortured screams. Then a stench starts to waft through the vents, crawls past the floorboards, and clings to her clothes. Is it just spoiled meat from a broken freezer or is her next door neighbor perhaps rotting away?

The police can’t help before there are corpses - but can Lena find the source just with sheer determination, a bucketful of cleaning supplies, and deep empathy she didn’t know she could feel towards a sickly stranger?
 

Trigger warnings: Gore, cursing, mention of suicide/depression, and descriptions of filth.