Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24864717-20141030212533

I have written a story called, "I did it." and it seems to set off this site's spam filter, because I haven't been able to post it at all. I get the classic extension hook message whenever I try. The strange thing is that there's nothing spam-like about my story that I'm aware of, except for possibly the title.

Anyway, here it is:

I have a long walk from school to my apartment. On the way, I have to pass a vacant lot, which is home to a lot of my city's homeless population.

And for the most part, they leave you alone. They might ask you for change from time to time, but after you give them a piece of your mind a couple of times, they learn to leave you alone.

But the one thing I can't tolerate about them is the way they smell. I just can't stand it. I shower every morning, after every workout, and sometimes again in the evening, but these fucking homeless people just smell nasty. And whenever I pass them, I feel like their stink clings to me.

So imagine how I felt when I found one of their blankets on the sidewalk across from my house. The damn thing was stinking up a storm, and I'd had a tough day that day, so I gave it a kick. Then I went home and showered.

But when I went to class the next day, the blanket was still there. I live in a city with a lot of wind--I'm not going to say which one--so I'd have thought that it would have blown away. But nope, it was still there, and smelling worse than ever. I didn't want to get anywhere near the gross thing, so I crossed the street and didn't give it another thought.

At lunch, I was in the cafeteria, hanging out with my bros and some girls when some fucker turned off ESPN and switched to some news site. Seemed that some homeless person had turned up dead in our city. Which is nothing unusual, one of my bros told me, they die all the time. He said that it had to be something special for the news to run a story on just another dead homeless person.

They showed the usual pictures of this smiling, happy person, as if he's just a normal guy, and talked about how hard his life was and how he became homeless when his company got bought out and he lost his job and his pension. Boo fucking hoo.

But then they showed a picture of him after he died. He was this skinny, shriveled up little thing, couldn't have been ninety pounds soaking wet. His neck was broken from a massive impact, they said, and that explained why it was twisted at this weird angle. His skin was the shade of a leather couch, they said it got like that since he was left out dead like that. They interviewed one of the EMTs who had recovered him, and the dude said that the smell coming off of him was unbearable, they had to wear hazmat suits just to get close.

That's when I started to smell it again. It was the same smell I smelled when I passed that blanket the last night, and that morning. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but it was so strong that I gagged. I ran to the bathroom to throw up, but as I did, the picture on the TV changed to how they found the homeless guy: bundled up in the same blanket that I kicked the night before.

I haven't told anyone about this, and I keep telling myself that he was dead before I kicked him, or that I just kicked the blanket and missed him, or that someone else killed him and put him in the blanket. But I can still smell the smell of that nasty dead homeless person, every hour of every day, everywhere I go. And I can't stand it. 