Maximilian Culbern petered about his kitchen as the water boiled for his daily tea. At precisely two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit, he would remove the kettle, pour the water into his white cup, and let his tea steep for five minutes, during which he would arrange three ovals of biscotti upon a tiny plate. Then, he would sit and wait to sit and drink.
Currently, Maximilian was washing dishes, an unlikely and unscheduled occurrence. The culprits had been created after last night’s dinner, a delicious vegetable lasagna made of three year old noodles that would remain his staple of choice for the next few days, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The only exception would be his tea and his biscotti, at four o’clock, every afternoon.
With a sigh, Maximilian replaced the dishes in their designated spots. Just then, the whistle of the kettle called him to attention, and he twisted the knob on his stove to shut off the gas and consequent flame. A puff was the only complaint the dying fire gave, used to the routine.
The water slurped into the cup, settling at the ring around the white cup that had refused to vacate despite many scrubbings. Maximilian liked his black tea, and his cups liked to retain a mark of their being used, even if it was by the same person in the same manner.
His tea and his snack ready, Maximillian proceeded to his small living room, adjacent to his kitchen. There, he plopped down to the floor with practiced ease that failed to free even a drop of the precious liquid in his cup. He had a couch, of course, but it was occupied and he always took the floor. In his stead, sat stuffed animals, dogs and crocodiles with black noses and felt teeth sticking out, defending their territory.
The couch was not the only roost either. Bunnies grouped together under a chair set in the corner, and birds perched on every shelf available. Snakes curled around the table’s legs, and though gravity would have kept them down, their great number amassed to let them ascend on the coils of one another all the way up. Possums and jaguars and elephants and marsupials all stared out from their respective habitats.
No corner of fur threatened to pull upwards and reveal the cottony white fluff underneath, and any loose threads were immediately doctored by a swift and steady hand. Black noses and eyes of every color lay under careful organization in several drawers, as did replacement tails and ears. A animal impaired by the loss of one of its senses wouldn’t last long in the wild; it wouldn’t be fair to deprive them of an equal chance.
Maximilian sat contentedly as he sipped his tea, staring as unblinkingly as his stuffed animals save for a flicker every so often. No television set decorated any wall, and his book shelves were already packed full with a commodity he found far more valuable than printed words. Instead, he took a deep breath through his nose, his great nose, the nose that had exiled him indoors.
He didn’t know why – he hadn’t asked for such a curse surely – but Maximilian had found himself designated with an abnormally sensitive nose. From an early age he had been able to pick up on scents others couldn’t even describe, let alone sense the presence of, and he had learned to keep quiet every time some unusual sensation tickled his nostrils. It wasn’t much fun to ask what a smell was when no one else smelled it, much less when they began giving you strange looks because you asked it so often.
He quickly learned, too, that there were a good deal many unpleasant smells, much more than pleasant ones. Rotten mice first found his nose to prey upon, and the out of doors was a veritable battleground. From weeds to feces, the moment he stepped outside the combination of odors hit him as surely as a smack in the face, making every excursion out an avoidable trip at best. However, as a child, no one had understood this. They claimed he made too big of a fuss, never suspecting that he sensed things they had not the capacity for. He was written off by countless psychologists as an attention-seeker, a boy trying to find originality and the ever-illusive uniqueness that all so desperately craved. He had stopped correcting them after a while, because they never started listening. He’d take a little less uniqueness if it were all up to him.
But as his explanations were ignored, so too were his complaints. Every wrinkle of his nose went unnoticed, until it became an offense to his parents, punishable by the strictest of measures. It just helped that when they sent him to stand in a corner, more often than not something was dead, dying, or stuck there. And so the agony continued as fetid scents impressed themselves upon his olfactory memory.
Yet once he turned eighteen, Maximilian fled his house with all the stuffed animals he had ever been gifted with. Though they provided vesicles for mold and mildew and other plagues, he had found the keys to cleaning them so that they were no worse to him than the smell of his own skin. And they didn’t think he was crazy, not them. They sympathized with him, all the elephants and dogs and rhinos. A nose was a terrible thing, they all agreed.
He had moved into the house he lived in on a gift from his grandmother, who most of his family agreed was an old coot, though they would give Maximilian a run for the title once he reached the requisite age. Old coot though she was, his grandmother bought him a house and sent him a weekly allowance. Whether she believed his plight or merely sympathized that he had belief in it, he didn’t know. He tried to tell himself he didn’t care.
So it was that for the last twenty-seven years Maximilian Culbern had never set foot outside. Outside was the realm of torture, and he saw no reason to seek it out now that he was not forced to walk to school or play with the other, filthy boys of the neighborhood. With his allowance he had subscribed to a grocery delivery system, though he didn’t frequent their services any more often than he had to. Even opening the door to receive their packages could be risky.
He had arranged with the postal service, too, to have his letters delivered to a slot in his door rather than the mailbox he had called and paid a neighbor to cut down. He paid them electronically, and kept up the requisite Christmas emails to his family by the same medium. And he was happy.
Then there was a knock at his door.
Maximilian jumped, spilling his tea. The hot liquid traced down onto his leg that had twitched, pooling to create a stain matching the one filling out the white carpet.
“Oh no,” he groaned. Both stains would be near impossible to get out, and even then neither article would ever be the same. He would have to throw both out.
Having so decided, he wiped his hands on his pants lest they drip on anything and cause him even more work. He was just unbuckling his belt – on which there was a spot of tea; it would have to go too – when he remembered the cause of the great unsettling. The knock.
It wasn’t Thursday, the time for his grocery deliveries, and it was after the hours when the mail was delivered. He had already stooped to the ground once today to retrieve it, always a little flummoxed by the random piles forced by the postal worker. With two taps on either side, the piles came together, from whence he sorted them from smallest to largest. Only then did he begin to look at the labels.
No one ought to have been at his door, but he had heard a knock sure as he had smelled all those smells that people told him he made up. He sighed, casting a furrowed brow at the stains. And he had just gotten new carpet too. This was what happened when one broke routine, he realized, and decided that he would have a gate set up around his house. Those on deliveries could request his admittance, which he would all too readily give at the appropriate time, but all these annoyances could be avoided. Who would knock at such an hour anyway?
Come back soon for part 2!
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