Your New Pillow

You went to the local discount store, because who pays full price for pillows these days? You can’t stand the price they want you to pay for something that would end up flat within a week or two anyway. You go through the smoosh test. The all batting one is too hard. The half batting half down is still too hard and feels odd. And the all down is too soft. But your friend said it would change your life, so you pause. The pillow rolls around in your hands as you mull it over until you notice the clearance tag. It’s marked 50% off, and to the register, you go. Honestly, who wouldn’t?

At home, you pop the plastic bag, and a funk oozes out along with the pillow. It’s not bad, just not pleasant. You wonder if it’s the way they’re supposed to smell since you’re sleeping on dead bird feathers. Wouldn’t they clean them, or maybe they had something left on them? Or maybe it’s just a bit moldy or something. To be sure, it gets sprayed with Febreze or something to make it smell…less weird, then it’s eased into the pillowcase, so it isn’t angered or scared into releasing another blast of whatever its defense mechanism is.

Days are rough now. The funk seems to grow more powerful, and you even wash it to see if that would help; it didn’t. You ask others about the funk from the down under your pillowcase, and they say it’s not supposed to smell like that, but maybe it’s the brand? That it might be organic? That it might be old or a bad batch of feathers? No help. No answers. But you still don’t want to buy a new pillow because it’ll most likely be flat in a week or so, and it just got to that comfortable spot of shaping more to your body, and you can deal with a few more weeks of this odor. Maybe it’ll have mellowed by then anyway.

A few more nights pass as the funk upgrades to rank. It chokes your sleep as it burrows into your nose. Setting up a fetid nest to toy with your sinus cavity as it lounges in its filth. The stench is between a rotten potato and dead mouse but has a hint of Febreze and laundry detergent for that edgy effect. Your gag reflex is on overdrive, and you’re delirious from sleep deprivation. You do what any sane adult would do and grab a steak knife from the kitchen and gut that fucking pillow until it bleeds feathers.

You’re sifting, digging, and rifling through the mass of plumage until the air is cluttered with their deranged aerial acrobatics. Nothing. No mass of bloody feathers with a mummified wing attached, or a detached head. No finger. No dead mouse or rat. Just clean down and cotton-polyester blend cloth. The clock screams that it’s time to get ready since you’ve spent the night tossing and turning until you snapped and murdered your new pillow. You might as well start your morning routine. It’s time for the medications. The new allergy meds, antibiotics, and extra histamines to make sure you don’t sneeze because of your deviated septum surgery. The doctor wants it healed a bit more before that happens.

At the doorway, the tickle begins. Your head tilts, eyes seek the light hoping the old wives’ tales work to stop the sneeze. Stench and light cause your eyes to burn, and water as your lungs suck in air until they’re ready to burst. It holds and releases. Your eyes close—your hands reflex to our face. Your nose explodes in spectacular pain as your knees buckle and hit the floor. Light dances behind your eyelids as the world becomes a merry-go-round you can’t get off, and the speed increases.

You want to vomit and clear your stomach and your nose, but both are empty or should be by now, so your stomach growls, and something feels like it’s running out of your nose into your hands. They’re clammy and sticky, but you’ve never sneezed like that, so you pass it off to some snot and spit.

As you wait for the lights to dim and return to black, because honestly, this is worse than your twenty-first birthday party when you were trashed to the point of blackout drunk, but stopped just short to get the spinning drunk and threw up until you passed out. It still wasn’t this bad.

The stars settle, and you open your eyes because someone hit the kill switch on the merry-go-round, and the carpet blurs come back into focus. You move your hands from your face to stand, but they don’t look like your hands. It looks like someone coated your palms in black ink and wanted to grab your face. Or it might be something more awful. The stench it emits is horrendous and as close to death as you’ve ever been without a body. And you stare at it because that can’t have come from your body, but something wiggles in your nose as you go to sniffle. So, you scramble to your feet and run to the bathroom, hit the light switch with your elbow, and look in the mirror. A blackened, puss, and blood covered miniature piece of gauze wags from your nostril. You pull it out and throw it away as a stream of black puss runs into the sink, and tendrils of rot float through the air.