Jesse

The smell was gone.

I went back inside and finished my log.

The smell came back the next evening.

Same time, same intensity, same duration.

About ten seconds of thick, sweet rot, then nothing.

This time I was already outside, sitting on the bench by the door eating dinner.

I stood up and tried to track it, walking into the wind, but it vanished before I could locate a source.

Third evening, same thing.

I started to think there was a carcass somewhere nearby that I couldn't find, maybe in a ravine below the ridge where I couldn't see it.

I planned to hike down and look for it the next morning.

I didn't have to.

On the fourth evening, the smell came and didn't leave.

It intensified.

It went from noticeable to overpowering in the space of about a minute until my eyes were watering and I was breathing through my sleeve.

And it changed.

The sweet rot was still there but there was something under it now.

Something sharp and chemical, like burnt hair or scorched plastic.

Two smells layered on top of each other, neither one natural by itself, and together forming something that triggered a physical response I wasn't expecting.

I was afraid.

I hadn't been afraid.